Being a chief negotiator for a union is not easy – which has been especially true this year. On one hand, the whole purpose of the labor movement has been to ensure good wages and living standards for workers everywhere. On the other, we promised the older workers we represent everything including the moon and beyond, and someone has to pay for it. So the challenge is simple – how do we screw younger workers to the wall in order to pay for the older folks, without getting them so pissed off that they break the union all together and stop paying the dues that I live off of?

It’s been a fine line, but I’m proud to say to day that my brother and sister unions have now managed to walk that line now a remarkable 1,647 times in a row – a procession of job cuts and wage decreases for young workers and new hires, making the young ones pay more into the pension plans while agreeing to take less from them (if anything is left for them at all, that is), increased contributions to health care plans that they’ll never get a dime from – you name it, we’ve managed to do it. And in many cases, not only have we managed to shield the older workers from most of the pain, we’ve figured out how to get them into early-retirement instead! How sweet is that?!?

So as we continue on this journey through these tumultous economic times, citizens of this fine country can rest assured that your union representatives stand ready to do anything – and I do mean anything – we possibly can to continue our fine tradition of impoverishing younger workers for the benefit of older ones, just as Marx intended. Marx being my buddy that I just got packaged off for an early retirement package at the age of 57 by merely agreeing to a 22% wage cut for new hires, of course.

After centuries of struggle, we have finally realized Marx’s vision of the workers assuming control of the means of production- and I am a certain that he would be proud of this monumental achievement, if he hadn’t died several years ago. What? How along ago? Holy s$%t, why are we… er, never mind. Now we must follow through on the next, though less publicized, step in his plan – to drastically cut wages for all current workers, layoff all the young ones, and ensure that no new workers whatsoever can secure a unionized job of any kind at any point in the future.

You see, Marx was a true visionary in realizing, according to his unpublished memoirs that are only available to us, that the promise of high paying, secure jobs with good pensions should be available to all workers born before 1960. It would then be incumbent on these same workers to assume control of the productive capacity of the economy, and take whatever means necessary to secure a lucrative, multi-decade retirement for themselves. In turn,  by cutting wages, firing all the young people, and being damn sure that no new young people are hired, we are really just following the path that Marx blazed for us – a good living for the people no longer working and with no financial responsibilities whatsoever, even if it comes at the expense of people that would use their incomes to feed their young children, etc.

So I’m proud to be standing here, arm-in-arm, with my UAW brothers and sisters of certain age and seniority, on this historic day. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go ensure that the labor movement lives on by getting rid of all those damn people hurting our profitability ratios, which in turn threaten our debt convenants, which in turn threatens to destroy everything Marx was hoping to achieve in terms of me spending leisurely winters in Florida. Thank you, and God Bless all the ‘older, unionized workers who have accumulated enough seniority to matter’ of America!