This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was first published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1430906
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1430906
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I remember watching the TV show Paper Moon back in the day and child actor Jodie Foster sang a pro union song at an event and the conservative crowd went apoplectic.
I’m sure it’s happening again.
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Is there any chance they’ll have sustained gran mal seizures and not just stroke out?
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In my hometown in PA, there used to be an enormous Labor Day parade (the route went right past the front of my late mom’s church, so they’d do a fundraiser of hot dogs, snacks and water).
Today, that parade is a long-ago memory - most of the unions that marched in the parade are no longer in place, because the companies they worked for closed up and moved out. Some of the companies’ buildings have been torn down, virtually to brown field.
A company I worked for in the 90s was targeted with a strike (just before I was employed), forcing the office to go to the plant to assemble the product. The union won but the company put nothing aside for the workers and that caused another major litigation. The company responded by opening a maquiladora in Mexico and transferring other work to a non-union shop in North Carolina. The plant I worked in is now a superfund site.
We need stronger unions.
Dear Hubby said he would never join one, but the American Red Cross lab he’s working for is unionized. He has joined.
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BTW, I just figured out discobot is always first on every thread.
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And now this Union hater lies just like every other Republican.
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Roll tape.
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No one bitches about the higher wages, benefits and job protections (i.e., due process rights.) As likely as not, they complain about the quality of what they’re getting or the payroll deduction, as if all that other stuff just dropped from space.
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Good to these young people!
My dad was part of the 1936-37 sit down strike in Flint that resulted in the recognition of the UAW by GM. The UAW became the major union for the automotive industry.
His memories about the time was both the solidarity of the workers and the ever present threat of violence. They earned benefits through collective bargaining, and when that failed, through strikes.
The unions gave us a decent life with decent wages. The middle class started with union success and the GI bill expanded it to many more.
I remember with pride the sacrifices of my parents generation. Without their sacrifices, I never would have had the opportunity to go to college and become a professor.
Eighty plus years later, the young generation of union organizers face similar struggles. I wish them strength and success.
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The union negotiations are often unsatisfactory with their representation, but no one has ever suggested (in the roughly four years he’s been a member) that a strike is in order.
The damage that would do to ARC’s reputation would be enormous.
F’rinstance, in the case of dear Hubby, blood donations would be lost due to timestamps, were it entirely up to the management to process everything. As it is, with all present, the team is often asked for one or two hours mandatory overtime and they sometimes can’t keep up.
Imagine, if you’re a regular donor, that your donation is lost due to lack of personnel in the lab. Or if you’re a recipient, e.g., a surgery patient.
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They can’t fire all of us.
#IWW since 1977, right here.
Big Bill Haywood in Lawrence, MA, 1912.
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I remember the times when I used to see George Meany mentioning the President of the United States (which Meany would say in its entirety) on the regular News Show back in the day…
And we all knew that he talked to the man.
Regularly
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Not a surprise coming from frontline workers.
They have spent the past two years being called ‘essential workers’ without getting the wages, benefits or working conditions associated with being essential. The fact that corporate America saw all this coming and still didn’t change course shows that the reasons for unionization remain as relevant today as they did 100 years ago.
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But what kind of pet does discobot have? Inquiring minds want to know.
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You know what Ron, if you want to end deficit spending then maybe large companies and the wealthiest among us need to pay their fare share.
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Dear Hubby was eligible to apply in Minnesota (where his lab is) for essential worker pay, but my income put him out of the running. It’s a shame that him having to work hundreds of hours of overtime to process blood donations from folks who wanted to see if they were positive for COVID earned him nothing because I continued to work through the pandemic. He isn’t rewarded for his efforts. But here in Minnesota, it’s household income to qualify, not just his.
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Means-testing pay - the height of absurdity.
You are either an essential worker deserving of that pay, or you’re not. That many of these workers are now successfully organizing is all very predictable based on the absurdities they’ve experienced during the pandemic.
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The US has never had a balanced budget for more than a few months—first in 1837 (I think) and then in Clinton’s presidency.
Deficit spending is how the US economy works.
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To be fair, he didn’t deal with a scintilla of aggravation during the pandemic. The State gave him a document through ARC to ensure that he could get to work in a massive shutdown, but that never materialized. No one was spitting at him, attacking him or verbally abusing him.
And in the case of the ARC, they’re already organized. So there isn’t much more he can do.
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The country had pretty much balanced budgets under Ike. The last LBJ into Nixon 68-69 budget was balanced and had a surplus. The top marginal tax rate was 77% and included a surcharge for Vietnam. Oh and the same year we put a man on the moon that year and the hippies frolicked at Woodstock.
Late 90’s into 2001 we had balanced budgets with surpluses. We all know what happened to that.
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