THE AMERICAN DREAM

One of the illusions dreamt up by supporters of capitalism in the USA is that whilst in backward Europe you may have remnants of the old class struggle, in modern America they have left all that behind them. Recent developments there seem to give the lie to that notion. "Unions reacted furiously Friday to a proposal by the Postal Service to lay off 120,000 workers by breaking labor contracts and to shift workers out of the federal employee health and retirement plans into cheaper alternatives. Labor experts and other unions also sounded the alarm that any move by Congress to break postal contracts would further wound an already ailing labor movement, much as President Ronald Reagan's firing of striking air traffic controllers did in 1981." (Washington Post, 13 August) Many US workers are about to learn that in a time of economic crisis it is they who will suffer the consequences. For 120,00 of them the American dream is about to become the American nightmare. RD