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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 ]

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Very interesting - how diabolical - and effective.

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.

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Originally posted by Egalitarian American:

quote : originally posted by Pimji:
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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.
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Very interesting - how diabolical - and effective.

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

[ 26 February 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

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:

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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.

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[ 26 February 2005: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]