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Author Topic: How Did We Get Here?
Boinker
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Babbler # 664

posted 22 February 2005 10:28 PM      Profile for Boinker   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
FATE OF THE UNION
Organized labor is steadily declining in membership and influence. Survival will require a radical shift.
(AlterNet)

(note: title of link edited by robbie_dee per post below)

quote:
Union-busting is increasingly a large and lucrative crusade. It brings together managers, highly paid anti-union lawyers, "human relations" experts and communications specialists to pound into submission workers who even might support unionization. The deunionization jihad also works incessantly and effectively to discredit any and all unions in the minds of the general public. As if that weren't enough, the global mobility of capital has evolved to create exactly the right environment to make good on employer threats to eliminate union work, especially in the private sector.

That is the century old respect for unions is seen as vulnerable on two fronts. Firstly that it is a weak agent for social organization in a rich society and hence it can generate little genuine allegiance. Secondly, because of capital flight, unions are strategically weak and in a standoff well funded corporations can easily beat a well funded strikeor labour disruption.

The idea of social unrest is no longer seen as the flip side of the social contract.

quote:
Consider that organized labor still insists that unions are critical to sustaining the American middle class. At the risk of being rude, isn't that a great big elephant there in labor's living room? Hardly anyone, including employers, denies that industrial unions were essential in creating the middle class as we understand it today. But clearly, unions are not sustaining the middle class in 2005. Nor have they been for quite some time.


The problem with this article is that it does not address the main puropose of unionism: to develop a working class conciousness, to link it with universal sufferage, and the goals of a true communism.

[ 26 February 2005: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]


From: The Junction | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
The Other Todd
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Babbler # 7964

posted 25 February 2005 12:09 AM      Profile for The Other Todd     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Boinker:
The problem with this article is that it does not address the main puropose of unionism: to develop a working class conciousness, to link it with universal sufferage, and the goals of a true communism.

I think Trotsky, Lenin, and Marx would beg to differ with you.


From: Ottawa | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
Pimji
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Babbler # 228

posted 25 February 2005 12:57 AM      Profile for Pimji   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The company I work at has sucessfully managed to get some long term skilled workers to "feel" as if they are owners and behave as if they actually are on a board of directors. This is done by allowing workers to hob knob with the men who are the corporate owners, going to the annual meeting at the head office, playing favourites (inviting them to the cottage), going to the golf tornament. In exchange the workers do management work, which allows them them to play make believe company owner but they don't have a vote on the board or any other corporate control nor any other monetary benefit.

The reality is that these skilled workers are doing work of management as well as production with none of the benefits of being a partner or shareholder. Essentially working overtime for free with no long term gain.

I guess a few years back these guys would have willingly (or unwittingly) given their lives for a country today it's for a company.


From: South of Ottawa | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Américain Égalitaire
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posted 25 February 2005 10:39 AM      Profile for Américain Égalitaire   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Pimji:
I guess a few years back these guys would have willingly (or unwittingly) given their lives for a country today it's for a company.

Very interesting - how diabolical - and effective.

Reminds me of one of my favourite Hitler quotes: "The lowliest street sweeper in the Reich must feel himself above a king in a foreign state."


From: Chardon, Ohio USA | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
Pimji
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Babbler # 228

posted 26 February 2005 12:42 AM      Profile for Pimji   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This is an old game indeed. The truly bizarre thing is that in a military totalitarian structure a person who doesn't follow an order would find themselves in a concentration camp. In Hitler’s Germany there was no unemployment.

In my post above all these guys have to do is say no to the non compensated overtime and at least negotiate without putting their best offer first. Instead they offer voluntary servitude out of an irrational fear that they won't be liked by the old men. The company owners, who have tons of cash, would readily negotiate. There isn't any need, in that coercion costs pennies. I don't even think this is some kind of planned out conspiracy. It's merely a path of least resistance.

Unfortunately, I don't think the bulk of the working population has a clue about what it means to be incorporated or what a corporation is.

The company today handed out a memo making us aware how much the company pays into the group insurance plan, trying and succeeding, to come across as being excessively generous. The reality is that no company pays a dime into benefits (or taxes for that matter). The money come straight out of the labour pool which is all costed into the price of the goods or services. All taxes as well are always paid by the end user. If not then the company goes bust.


From: South of Ottawa | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Hephaestion
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posted 26 February 2005 05:15 AM      Profile for Hephaestion   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Egalitarian American:

quote : originally posted by Pimji:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I guess a few years back these guys would have willingly (or unwittingly) given their lives for a country today it's for a company.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Very interesting - how diabolical - and effective.


I b'lieve the term you're wanting is "false consciousness" — Uncle Karl 101, textbook case.

[ 26 February 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]


From: goodbye... :-( | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
robbie_dee
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posted 26 February 2005 01:04 PM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Boinker, your link above goes to an excellent article by Frank Joyce on AlterNet, and the quotes you select are snippets from it. However, the title of the article is "Fate of the Union," not "How do you drive out a union?" as you originally posted.

The title you originally chose for your link is actually the title of another excellent feature story that ran in the New York Times before Christmas. I am afraid that some people might not realize the two articles are different and will fail to follow your link to read the new article if they already read the old one. In fact, I had not bothered to follow your link until just today.

I am going to take the liberty of editing your post to change the title of your link. I hope you don't mind. Please feel free to change it back if you had some other reason for doing things the way you originally posted them.

Also, here is a link to the original New York Times article, republished at truthout.org:

"How Do You Drive Out A Union? South Carolina Factory Provides a Textbook Case." By Stephen Greenhouse, New York Times, Tuesday December 14, 2004.

The article by Stephen Greenhouse is an excellent spotlight on the practical reality many unions face while trying to organize in the United States. It is a good background piece for understanding Frank Joyce's analysis that Boinker linked above. Here is a snippet:

quote:
Sumter, S.C. - Tom Brown, the leader of an anti-union campaign at the EnerSys battery factory here, made some surprising admissions in recent testimony about how his campaign had been run and financed.

Mr. Brown, a longtime maintenance man, acknowledged that a mysterious consultant known as Mr. X had advised him on how to oust the union and had helped him write fliers that called the union's leaders names like "trailer trash," "Uncle Tom" and "dog woman." Not only that, Mr. Brown testified that envelopes filled with cash had often been sent to his home. He said he had no idea who had sent them. "I don't look a gift horse in the mouth," he said.

Across the South companies have long used bare-knuckled tactics to fight unions. But now a surprisingly detailed roadmap to such tactics has emerged from an unusual court battle between EnerSys and its law firm over whose wrongdoing - the company's or its lawyers' - led to a $7.75 million settlement that EnerSys entered into after federal officials accused it of 120 labor law violations in its seven-year effort to eliminate the union.

The company has accused the firm, Jackson Lewis, of malpractice and of advising it to engage in illegal behavior. The law firm says that EnerSys ignored its sound advice and that the company is trying to avoid paying its legal bill.

The wrangling has cast a spotlight on how the company fired and harassed the union's top officials and aided Mr. Brown, the anti-union leader, although federal law prohibits companies from financing or otherwise assisting efforts to get rid of a union.


[ 26 February 2005: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]


From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged

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