But the Republican and corporate campaign to vilify and
belittle unions and labor has turned the public against those profit draining employees.
Breaking the American workers spirit appears to be working,
as demonstrated below by the average working family’s comments below.
I’m hoping this heartbreaking example isn’t becoming the
prevailing attitude by many.
WSJ: REEDSBURG: As a bagger at the Viking Village Foods grocery store here, Thane Rogers sees firsthand the importance of a job. In less than a year, the 17-year-old senior-to-be at Reedsburg High School has seen his hours reduced, meaning he doesn't have as much money for gas and spending money when he's hanging out with friends.If Americans don't catch on and see what's happening, that it doesn't have to be this way, than I feel horrible for my young sons. This wasn't what I picture for them and their future families.
But it's better than nothing, and he cherishes his job where he works 10 to 12 hours a week for $7.25 an hour. "Some of my friends aren't able to get a job," Thane said. "So I make do with what I've got."
That's an attitude Thane's parents, Phil and Emily Rogers, wish more Americans would adopt … "We have this idea that we'd rather be unemployed and promote our master's degree and tell them we're worth $70,000 a year and we'll wait till we make that salary," said Emily Rogers. "Let's hire the whole group of people in between and have them help out with services we need," she said — even if it's bagging groceries. "We need people to get back to work doing something."
Marc Levin's HBO documentary Hard Times shows us people trying to find work and the crushing consequences of joblessness. Michael Smirconish:
So just what did unions do to help this situation -- while your point is overall spot-on, your rational is disjointed (at best).
ReplyDeleteYes, unions have been put down by powerful economic forces.
But they themselves accept 2-tier wages now, public service work is based on cronyism not qualifications or competence, and the movement here in America has divided workers -- business interests came in and conquered what unions alone created.
If you were starving or had nothing, you'd be glad to have a job -- WHAT DID UNIONS DO TO INCREASE THAT WORKER'S WAGE?
Answer: NOTHING
And here's a fact: If he was in union now (which I doubt) they told him that was all they could get.
If here were to join a union, he isn't going to see "big bucks" -- he will pay dues and be told that a quarter more is a big deal.
Once you see the tiny impact on your paycheck -- doesn't appear to be worth the dues?
Don't believe me? Ask union food service workers!
I am a liberal and progressive, but can't just accept the mindless UNION UNION UNION UNION UNION crap without pointing out that they have proven to be entirely unable to help the majority of workers.
And if you pull out the crap that says we all benefit, even when we are unemployed, you are a liar too.
@ anon- without unions , nonunion workers are weakened in many ways. Busting the public sector unions in Wisconsin amd elsewhere gave permission to private companies to start busting their union workers. The race to the bottom in wages will only add fuel to this country's decline. I happen to know the lowest paid union workers in our company and 100% have paid their dues because they know a collective voice is stronger than just one worker standing naked by himself.
ReplyDelete1. Unions Gave Us The Weekend: Even the ultra-conservative Mises Institute notes that the relatively labor-free 1870, the average workweek for most Americans was 61 hours — almost double what most Americans work now. Yet in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, labor unions engaged in massive strikes in order to demand shorter workweeks so that Americans could be home with their loved ones instead of constantly toiling for their employers with no leisure time. By 1937, these labor actions created enough political momentum to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped create a federal framework for a shorter workweek that included room for leisure time.
2. Unions Gave Us Fair Wages And Relative Income Equality: As ThinkProgress reported earlier in the week, the relative decline of unions over the past 35 years has mirrored a decline in the middle class’s share of national income. It is also true that at the time when most Americans belonged to a union — a period of time between the 1940′s and 1950′s — income inequality in the U.S. was at its lowest point in the history of the country.
3. Unions Helped End Child Labor: “Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined” in U.S. history, with organization’s like the “National Consumers’ League” and the National Child Labor Committee” working together in the early 20th century to ban child labor. The very first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national convention passed “a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment” in 1881, and soon after states across the country adopted similar recommendations, leading up to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act which regulated child labor on the federal level for the first time.
4. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage: “The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers. In 1942, “the US set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering “fringe benefits” – notably, health insurance.” By 1950, “half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another.”
5. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.”