Labor in America: Those were the Days - (A Repeat)

Note:  Labor Day weekend is here once again, and let's enjoy it while we can.  I have a feeling, if things keep going this way, anything that smacks of celebrating labor in this country will disappear. 

I guess you've heard that Michigan, my Michigan has become a Right-to-Work state?  Who would have dreamed it would ever happen to Michigan?  Are businesses flocking to our border now, wanting to take advantage of cheap, unprotected labor?  Do I even have to answer that?  (I'm throwing this in because I'm still so mad about the whole damned thing.  I may throw it in many more times in future posts. Because I'll never stop being mad about the whole damned thing.)

So, since I'm going to be busy all weekend helping our daughter move into her new digs, and since I feel the need every Labor Day to acknowledge, appreciate and celebrate our labor force, I hope you don't mind if I do a repeat here of a blog post I wrote in 2010.  Are things any better for labor three years down the road?  Not much.  Can we fix that?  I don't know, but there is a new awakening.  People are trying.  That's all we can ask. 

(By the way, just ignore that first sentence if you can.  It's a bit of hyperbole just to get your attention.  Of course I feel like celebrating Labor Day.  As long as there's a Labor Day I'll feel like celebrating it.)
_____________________________

Every year for the past two dozen or so, I've felt less and less like celebrating Labor Day and more and more like forgetting the whole damned thing.  It used to be that we actually set aside that day to acknowledge and pay tribute to our vast labor force.  We had parades and speeches and presentations all across the country, with union leaders sticking verbal pins in the Big Guys, and the Big Guys pretending not to notice as they got ready to hold their noses and gush over the workers who made their products and sold their products and fixed their products (and--it should be noted--bought their products).

Labor and management have always had a love-hate relationship but there was a window--a brief window in time--when nearly everybody was making money and spending money and for most Americans life was good.  Cheap goods were coming in from the slave-labor countries but we still  made enough to be self-sustaining and proud.

A chicken in every pot. 

"Made in America".

"Look for the Union Label".

Then came government-approved off-shoring and outsourcing, along with cheap labor and non-regulation, and suddenly the Big Guys saw gold in them thar hills and weren't even our pretend friends anymore. We stopped making things and became the poor step-satellite of industrialized nations like China, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Korea, Macau (I'm reading labels here in my house).

And now here we are, looking at another Labor Day and wondering how the hell we got ourselves into this fix, considering the rich history of the labor movement and what those people put themselves through in order to make life fair for all of us.  I'm glad they're not here to see this.  On the other hand, we could use their fierce commitment to us right about now:

Cesar Chavez - Si Se Puede

There has never been a law at the state or national levels that has ever been enforced for farm workers and against growers: child labor, minimum wage and hour, occupational health and safety, agricultural labor relations.
Now will agribusiness protect farm workers from pesticides?
The agrichemical industry won't do it.
It's out to maximize profits. Using smaller amounts of safer chemicals more wisely is not in the interest of chemical companies and agribusiness groups like the Farm Bureau that have heavy financial stakes in maintaining pesticide use.
There is nothing is wrong with pesticides, they claim; the blame rests with abuse and misuse of pesticides.
It's like the N.R.A. saying, 'guns don't kill people, people kill people.'
Universities won't do it.
America's colleges and universities are the best research facilities in the world. But farm workers are of the wrong color; they don't speak the right language; and they're poor.
The University of California, and other land grant colleges spend millions of dollars developing agricultural mechanization and farm chemicals. Although we're all affected in the end, researchers won't deal with the inherent toxicity or chronic effects of their creations.
Protecting farm workers and consumers is not their concern.
Doctors won't do it.
Most physicians farm workers see won't even admit their patients' problems are caused by pesticides. They usually blame symptoms on skin rashes and heat stroke.
Doctors don't know much about pesticides; the signs and symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning are similar to other illnesses.
Doctors who work for growers or physicians with close ties to rural communities won't take a stand.
Two years ago in Tulare County, California 120 orange grove workers at LaBue ranch suffered the largest skin poisoning every reported. The grower had changed the formulation of a pesticide, Omite CR, to make it stick to the leaves better. It did.
It also stuck better to the workers. Later they discovered the reentry delay had to be extended from seven to 42 days.
After the poisoning, the company doctor said workers should just change clothes and return to work. When we demanded the workers be removed from exposure, the doctor replied, "Do you know how much that would cost?"
Workers endure skin irritations and rashes that none of us would tolerate. They continue to work because they desperately need the money. They don't complain out of fear of losing their jobs.
Farm workers aren't told when pesticides are used. They have no health insurance. They are cheated out of workers compensation benefits by disappearing labor contractors or foremen who intimidate people into not filing claims.
In the old days, miners would carry birds with them to warn against poison gas. Hopefully, the birds would die before the miners.
Farm workers are society's canaries.
 
ADDRESS BY CESAR CHAVEZ, PRESIDENT
UNITED FARM WORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO
Pacific Lutheran University
March 1989-Tacoma, Washington

 _________________________________ 

As a nation, we need to work out a list of national priorities.  We need to sharpen our vision and we need to rededicate ourselves to the basic human and democratic values that we believe in, and we need to put first things first.  We need to overcome the serious deficit in education, which is denying millions of our children their rightful opportunity to maximum growth.  The American labor movement can be proud that it was among those who pioneered for free public education.  American labor shares the belief that every child made in the image of God is entitled to an educational opportunity that will facilitate the maximum intellectual, cultural and spiritual growth.  We need to wipe out our slums and build decent, wholesome neighborhoods.  We need to provide more adequate medical care available to all groups.  We need to improve social security so that our aged citizens can live out their lives with a fuller measure of security and dignity.  We need to provide all of our citizens, without regard to race, creed, or color, equal opportunity in every phase of our national life.  We need to develop more fully our natural resources so that continued neglect will not put in jeopardy the welfare of future generations.

Walter Reuther, Labor Day speech, September 1, 1958

______________________________

No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.

Unionization, as opposed to communism, presupposes the relation of employment; it is based upon the wage system and it recognizes fully and unreservedly the institution of private property and the right to investment profit. It is upon the fuller development of collective bargaining, the wider expansion of the labor movement, the increased influence of labor in our national councils, that the perpetuity of our democratic institutions must largely depend.

The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners in production, secure in their homes and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against the intrusion of alien doctrines of government

John L. Lewis
, United Mine Workers of America, Labor Day speech, 1937

____________________________________

Now, my boys, you are mine; we have fought together, we have hungered together, we have marched together, but I can see victory in the Heavens for you. I can see the hand above you guiding and inspiring you to move onward and upward. No white flag — we can not raise it; we must not raise it. We must redeem the world!
Go into our factories, see how the conditions are there, see how women are ground up for the merciless money pirates, see how many of the poor wretches go to work with crippled bodies.
I talked with a mother who had her small children working. She said to me, "Mother, they are not of age, but I had to say they were; I had to tell them they were of age so they could get a chance to help me to get something to eat." She said after they were there for a little while, "I have saved $40, the first I ever saw. I put that into a cow and we had some milk for the little ones." In all the years her husband had put in the earth digging out wealth, he never got a glimpse of $40 until he had to take his infant boys, that ought to go to school, and sacrifice them.
If there was no other reason that should stimulate every man and woman to fight this damnable system of commercial pirates. That alone should do it, my friends.

Mother Jones to striking W. Virginia coal miners, 8/15/1912

______________________

We want eight hours and nothing less. We have been accused of being selfish, and it has been said that we will want more; that last year we got an advance of ten cents and now we want more. We do want more. You will find that a man generally wants more. Go and ask a tramp what he wants, and if he doesn’t want a drink he will want a good, square meal. You ask a workingman, who is getting two dollars a day, and he will say that he wants ten cents more. Ask a man who gets five dollars a day and he will want fifty cents more. The man who receives five thousand dollars a year wants six thousand a year, and the man who owns eight or nine hundred thousand dollars will want a hundred thousand dollars more to make it a million, while the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day. We live in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the age of electricity and steam that has produced wealth a hundred fold, we insist that it has been brought about by the intelligence and energy of the workingmen, and while we find that it is now easier to produce it is harder to live. We do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more. And we shall never cease to demand more until we have received the results of our labor.

Samuel Gompers, Address to workers, Louisville, KY 1890

President Obama talked about the needs of workers and the declining middle class in his Weekly Address.  If he lets us down this time, I'm going to go out and find me my own bibble-babbling mob and take action.

And maybe I missed it, but whatever happened to the Employee Free Choice Act?

(Oh, and did you catch "Sunday Morning" on CBS yesterday?  Did you see their tribute to Labor?  It was about German workers in a BMW factory.  Management came up with the idea to put older, more experienced workers in one section on one shift and let them come up with ways to improve productivity.  At their suggestion the company put in wooden floors, gave them more comfortable shoes, gave them hairdressers chairs to sit in, increased the size of the computer fonts, and fixed up places for them to stretch.  Over time productivity went up 7%, absenteeism went down, and the assembly line defect rate was non-existent.  Damned Socialists. . .)

Enjoy our day. Keep the light shining.  Solidarity.

Ramona

FRIDAY FOLLIES: Labor Day Edition

This is the start of the Labor Day weekend.  We've been celebrating Labor Day since 1882,  an amazing feat considering all those bastards throughout these long years who would like to strike from our memories the fact that it was labor unions who started the whole thing.

Lately it has become not much more than the last weekend of the summer to go out and get recreational, and on the face of it, that's a good thing.  All work and no play and all that.  But can we just take a moment this weekend to celebrate the movement that is Labor in our country? 

First Labor Day Parade - New York City, 1882

The history of Labor Day  (A 3 1/2 minute video.  Won't take long.)

Striker's children picketing - Flint Sit Down Strike

Marisa Tomei reads the words of a female factory worker involved in the GM sit-down strike, 1936-37, Flint Michigan.

Mother Jones, 1913 Copper Mine Strike, Calumet, Michigan

The only known film clip of Mother Jones - interviewed on her 100th birthday in 1930. 

From left:  Mary Heaton Vorse, Upton Sinclair, Eleanor Roosevelt, Walter Reuther. Photo:  Walter P. Reuther Library

In 1940, Walter Reuther wrote a letter to FDR proposing to turn half-empty auto plants into airplane factories.  His claim, that they could turn out 500 planes a day, might have been a bit of an overreach, but the plan made perfect sense.  Europe was already struggling with Hitler's onslaught, and it was clear it would take years to prepare for it.  But guess who were vehemently against losing even an ounce of profit to help out?  The heads of the companies whose plants Reuther was proposing to use.  The labor leader's plan never got off the ground (not until after That Day that will live in Infamy, when the nation turned to its factories to build up a massive war machine in a hurry), but the letter brought Reuther to Roosevelt's attention and they became friends and allies.  He and his wife were invited to the White House on several occasions.   Roosevelt, it's been reported, actually listened to what Reuther had to say.

So yes, it can be done.  It has been done.  The American Labor Movement has been long recognized as a force for good, except by those who see no profit in admitting it.  
 
 And for your reading pleasure, labor quotes from the American Labor Studies Center.  (A subversive organization if ever I saw one.)  Their admitted goal is to provide labor history materials to Kindergarten through 12th Grade teachers in order to "provide students with an opportunity to explore the many facets of a very complex and important part of our nation’s history and contemporary life. Teachers are encouraged to use a variety of research and inquiry approaches as they select their pedagogical strategies."  

Oh, my...

Cartoon of the Week:

Mark Hurwitt is an Illustrator, Cartoonist, Designer, Writer and Teacher residing in Brooklyn New York

His website is HurwittGraphics.com

Have a grand and glorious weekend, everybody.  Have fun, stay safe, but come Tuesday let's get back to it -- it's jobs, jobs, jobs.

In an Era of Super-Villains we need Super-Heroes

Since the dawn of man there has always been the need for a healthy society to smack down villains.  Villains are the human version of opportunistic rats:  There is no compunction about doing us in if that's what it takes to keep their kind going.  If their population is allowed to grow and thrive, their numbers will take us over.

In this country we're finally waking up to the evidence before us: our home-grown rats have blind-sided an easily distracted population, speedily metastasizing into super-villains.   For over two centuries they've been working on doing us in, taking us over, and now they own us.

They've commandeered our congress, corrupted our governors, pirated our airwaves, and swayed our elections, recently spending untold millions to create a phony, astro-turfed movement with no real goal except to destroy whatever safeguards are left to keep us safe, civil and healthy.

They own us.

Who are they?  We all know who they are.  They know who they are.  They take pleasure in their mischief-making, periodically rubbing our noses in it, lest we forget.  Their goal, as stated, is to destroy Barack Obama and the Democrats so fully there will never, ever be another Democratic majority.  Not ever.  Their goal is to turn all public works over to private interests and to keep it that way for all eternity.  Their goal is to dehumanize the worker bees and make them dependent on the benevolence of their bosses.  Their goal is to lead us into temptation and make sinners of us all.

They are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  They are the Heritage Foundation.  They are the Religious Right.  They are Dick Armey and FreedomWorks.  They are the Koch Brothers.  They are Fox's Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.  They are Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove.  They are John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.  They are the same people you knew they would be.   The same bunch we've outed hundreds of times before. The same bunch still moving forward unimpeded, more bloated, more dangerous, less likely to look back.

The last thing they want or need is the presence of a Super-Hero.  But not to worry.  They're breathing easy, sleeping well at night, knowing there are no Super-Heroes on the horizon.  They're safe from us.  While they've been forming legions of followers, we've been looking in vain for our 21st century redeemers.

Where are this century's Mother Joneses?  The Walter Reuthers? The Martin Luther Kings?  The larger-than-life figures deep in the trenches, laying down their lives for causes that seem beyond any reasonable hope for success?  Where are the men and women who accept that they'll be jailed or bloodied or both but do what they need to do because it's the right thing at the right time and somebody has to do it?

Martin Luther King - March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963

 
Where are the leaders who understand that a country can't survive without livelihoods, without dignity, without fairness and justice?  Leaders who understand that there are promises to keep, obligations to fulfill?  Who understand that what is happening in our country is all wrong and something must be done now?

(There are a few bona fide heroes, such as the good senators Bernie Sanders and Al Franken. [And Elizabeth Warren.  Added 3/13]  They're working hard but they can't do it alone.  They could use a few Super-Heroes.)

So that's it, then.  Let me know if you find one.  I'll keep looking, too.

*
*

Labor in America: Those were the Days

Every year for the past two dozen or so, I've felt less and less like celebrating Labor Day and more and more like forgetting the whole damned thing.  It used to be that we actually set aside that day to acknowledge and pay tribute to our vast labor force.  We had parades and speeches and presentations all across the country, with union leaders sticking verbal pins in the Big Guys, and the Big Guys pretending not to notice as they got ready to hold their noses and gush over the workers who made their products and sold their products and fixed their products (and--it should be noted--bought their products).

Labor and management have always had a love-hate relationship but there was a window--a brief window in time--when nearly everybody was making money and spending money and for most Americans life was good.  Cheap goods were coming in from the slave-labor countries but we still  made enough to be self-sustaining and proud.

A chicken in every pot. 

"Made in America".

"Look for the Union Label".

Then came government-approved off-shoring and outsourcing, along with cheap labor and non-regulation, and suddenly the Big Guys saw gold in them thar hills and weren't even our pretend friends anymore. We stopped making things and became the poor step-satellite of industrialized nations like China, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Korea, Macau (I'm reading labels here in my house).

And now here we are, looking at another Labor Day and wondering how the hell we got ourselves into this fix, considering the rich history of the labor movement and what those people put themselves through in order to make life fair for all of us.  I'm glad they're not here to see this.  On the other hand, we could use their fierce commitment to us right about now:

Cesar Chavez - Si Se Pueda

There has never been a law at the state or national levels that has ever been enforced for farm workers and against growers: child labor, minimum wage and hour, occupational health and safety, agricultural labor relations.
Now will agribusiness protect farm workers from pesticides?
The agrichemical industry won't do it.
It's out to maximize profits. Using smaller amounts of safer chemicals more wisely is not in the interest of chemical companies and agribusiness groups like the Farm Bureau that have heavy financial stakes in maintaining pesticide use.
There is nothing is wrong with pesticides, they claim; the blame rests with abuse and misuse of pesticides.
It's like the N.R.A. saying, 'guns don't kill people, people kill people.'
Universities won't do it.
America's colleges and universities are the best research facilities in the world. But farm workers are of the wrong color; they don't speak the right language; and they're poor.
The University of California, and other land grant colleges spend millions of dollars developing agricultural mechanization and farm chemicals. Although we're all affected in the end, researchers won't deal with the inherent toxicity or chronic effects of their creations.
Protecting farm workers and consumers is not their concern.
Doctors won't do it.
Most physicians farm workers see won't even admit their patients' problems are caused by pesticides. They usually blame symptoms on skin rashes and heat stroke.
Doctors don't know much about pesticides; the signs and symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning are similar to other illnesses.
Doctors who work for growers or physicians with close ties to rural communities won't take a stand.
Two years ago in Tulare County, California 120 orange grove workers at LaBue ranch suffered the largest skin poisoning every reported. The grower had changed the formulation of a pesticide, Omite CR, to make it stick to the leaves better. It did.
It also stuck better to the workers. Later they discovered the reentry delay had to be extended from seven to 42 days.
After the poisoning, the company doctor said workers should just change clothes and return to work. When we demanded the workers be removed from exposure, the doctor replied, "Do you know how much that would cost?"
Workers endure skin irritations and rashes that none of us would tolerate. They continue to work because they desperately need the money. They don't complain out of fear of losing their jobs.
Farm workers aren't told when pesticides are used. They have no health insurance. They are cheated out of workers compensation benefits by disappearing labor contractors or foremen who intimidate people into not filing claims.
In the old days, miners would carry birds with them to warn against poison gas. Hopefully, the birds would die before the miners.
Farm workers are society's canaries.
 
ADDRESS BY CESAR CHAVEZ, PRESIDENT
UNITED FARM WORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO
Pacific Lutheran University
March 1989-Tacoma, Washington

 _________________________________ 

As a nation, we need to work out a list of national priorities.  We need to sharpen our vision and we need to rededicate ourselves to the basic human and democratic values that we believe in, and we need to put first things first.  We need to overcome the serious deficit in education, which is denying millions of our children their rightful opportunity to maximum growth.  The American labor movement can be proud that it was among those who pioneered for free public education.  American labor shares the belief that every child made in the image of God is entitled to an educational opportunity that will facilitate the maximum intellectual, cultural and spiritual growth.  We need to wipe out our slums and build decent, wholesome neighborhoods.  We need to provide more adequate medical care available to all groups.  We need to improve social security so that our aged citizens can live out their lives with a fuller measure of security and dignity.  We need to provide all of our citizens, without regard to race, creed, or color, equal opportunity in every phase of our national life.  We need to develop more fully our natural resources so that continued neglect will not put in jeopardy the welfare of future generations.

Walter Reuther, Labor Day speech, September 1, 1958

______________________________

No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.

Unionization, as opposed to communism, presupposes the relation of employment; it is based upon the wage system and it recognizes fully and unreservedly the institution of private property and the right to investment profit. It is upon the fuller development of collective bargaining, the wider expansion of the labor movement, the increased influence of labor in our national councils, that the perpetuity of our democratic institutions must largely depend.

The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners in production, secure in their homes and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against the intrusion of alien doctrines of government

John L. Lewis
, United Mine Workers of America, Labor Day speech, 1937

____________________________________

Now, my boys, you are mine; we have fought together, we have hungered together, we have marched together, but I can see victory in the Heavens for you. I can see the hand above you guiding and inspiring you to move onward and upward. No white flag — we can not raise it; we must not raise it. We must redeem the world!
Go into our factories, see how the conditions are there, see how women are ground up for the merciless money pirates, see how many of the poor wretches go to work with crippled bodies.
I talked with a mother who had her small children working. She said to me, "Mother, they are not of age, but I had to say they were; I had to tell them they were of age so they could get a chance to help me to get something to eat." She said after they were there for a little while, "I have saved $40, the first I ever saw. I put that into a cow and we had some milk for the little ones." In all the years her husband had put in the earth digging out wealth, he never got a glimpse of $40 until he had to take his infant boys, that ought to go to school, and sacrifice them.
If there was no other reason that should stimulate every man and woman to fight this damnable system of commercial pirates. That alone should do it, my friends.

Mother Jones to striking W. Virginia coal miners, 8/15/1912

______________________

We want eight hours and nothing less. We have been accused of being selfish, and it has been said that we will want more; that last year we got an advance of ten cents and now we want more. We do want more. You will find that a man generally wants more. Go and ask a tramp what he wants, and if he doesn’t want a drink he will want a good, square meal. You ask a workingman, who is getting two dollars a day, and he will say that he wants ten cents more. Ask a man who gets five dollars a day and he will want fifty cents more. The man who receives five thousand dollars a year wants six thousand a year, and the man who owns eight or nine hundred thousand dollars will want a hundred thousand dollars more to make it a million, while the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day. We live in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the age of electricity and steam that has produced wealth a hundred fold, we insist that it has been brought about by the intelligence and energy of the workingmen, and while we find that it is now easier to produce it is harder to live. We do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more. And we shall never cease to demand more until we have received the results of our labor.

Samuel Gompers, Address to workers, Louisville, KY 1890

President Obama talked about the needs of workers and the declining middle class in his Weekly Address.  If he lets us down this time, I'm going to go out and find me my own bibble-babbling mob and take action.

And maybe I missed it, but whatever happened to the Employee Free Choice Act?

(Oh, and did you catch "Sunday Morning" on CBS yesterday?  Did you see their tribute to Labor?  It was about German workers in a BMW factory.  Management came up with the idea to put older, more experienced workers in one section on one shift and let them come up with ways to improve productivity.  At their suggestion the company put in wooden floors, gave them more comfortable shoes, gave them hairdressers chairs to sit in, increased the size of the computer fonts, and fixed up places for them to stretch.  Over time productivity went up 7%, absenteeism went down, and the assembly line defect rate was non-existent.  Damned Socialists. . .)

Enjoy our day. Keep the light shining.  Solidarity.

Ramona

Chamber of Commerce vs. Labor Unions: Guess who Wins?

Labor is the great producer of wealth: it moves all other causes.
Congressman Daniel Webster, 4/2/1824

With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than the other association of men.
Clarence Darrow, The Railroad Trainman, 1909

Without labor nothing prospers.
Popular banner

The history of America has been largely created by the deeds of its working people and their organizations. Nor has this contribution been confined to raising wages and bettering work conditions; it has been fundamental to almost every effort to extend and strengthen our democracy.
William Cahn, labor authority and historian

We insist that labor is entitled to as much respect as property. But our workers with hand and brain deserve more than respect for their labor. They deserve practical protection in the opportunity to use their labor at a return adequate to support them at a decent and constantly rising standard of living, and to accumulate a margin of security against the inevitable vicissitudes of life.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, fireside chat, 1936

If I were a worker in a factory, the first thing I would do would be to join a union.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt

The first thing a dictator does is abolish the free press. Next he abolishes the right of labor to go on strike. Strikes have been labor's weapon of progress in the century of our industrial civilization. Where the strike has been abolished … labor is reduced to a state of medieval peonage, the standard of living lowered, the nation falls to subsistence level.
George Seldes, Freedom of the Press, 1935

The right to join a union of one's choice is unquestioned today and is sanctioned and protected by law.
President Harry S. Truman

Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.
President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961), general and Allied Supreme Commander in World War II

There's s a direct relationship between the ballot box and the bread box, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls.
Walter Reuther

In light of this fundamental structure of all work… in light of the fact that, labor and capital are indispensable in any social system … it is clear that even if it is because of production in any social system … it is clear that even if it is because of their work needs that people unite to secure their rights, their union remains a constructive factor of social order and solidarity, and it is impossible to ignore it.
Pope John Paul II

The history of the labor movements needs to be taught in every school in this land. America is a living testimonial to what free men and women, organized in free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life. … We ought to be proud of it!
Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (1865-1969), Lyndon Johnson Administration

Our labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor.
President John F. Kennedy, 1962

The AFL-CIO has done more good for more people than any (other) group in America in its legislative efforts. It doesn't just try to do something about wages and hours for its own people. No group in the country works harder in the interests of everyone.
President Lyndon Johnson, 1965


(Above courtesy of the American Labor Studies Center.)


The EFCA is an attempt to radically overhaul our labor law system in the favor of union organizers. EFCA is a power grab by union bosses who seek to inflate union membership by skewing the careful balance that is designed within our labor law system.
NAM (National Assoc. of Manufacturers) Talking Points against EFCA

_____________________________________

Nobody should be surprised that business organizations like the Chamber of Commerce , The National Right to Work Committee and the National Association of Manufacturers are looking out for themselves. The whole purpose of organizing is to build up membership, and thus the funding, to promote their own common welfare.

Labor unions are in business for the same reasons. There have always been labor or trade organizations where workers could gather in order to protect their livelihoods (and, in some cases, their lives.)

In the days before industrialization, there were guilds, alliances and brotherhoods. In every workplace, then and now, employers and employees had relationships that could best be described as contentious. Neither side has ever trusted the other. Every day in every way self-interest reigns supreme.

Often, as is the case with many relationships, the differences become irreconcilable. In the case of workplace irreconcilable differences, management prefers to call that "cause for dismissal" and considers it their duty to put an end to it.

Every now and then, in an all-too-rare but slightly enlightened environment, a stab at "concessions" is made. But even then, going in, it's a pretty safe bet that management will come out ahead 100% of the time.

Even the most labor-supportive of us can understand the reasons behind the statement above. The difference between labor and management--the main, the very ultimate difference--is that management holds all the cards. They don't have to do any of the things labor comes up with. Not unless they're forced to by some ridiculously tight-assed government agency. (Which, luckily for them, they haven't had to confront for ages now.)

Whole cities of people, especially in the South, think they understand the need to keep labor from gaining even an inch. Unbelievably , many of those naysayers and saboteurs are laborers themselves. Somehow they've been convinced that the way to success is to keep management happy at any cost. (It's an odd spectacle when workers cut off their noses to spite their faces. They look really, really foolish.)

Their motto: Never complain, always explain, give hosannas to the highest for your crummy workplace and your measly paycheck. And if you really want to keep management happy, get behind them in every skirmish, whenever unions rear their pushy little heads.

They'll chant, "I hate unions". They'll march against them and connive with management to keep them out. They'll even repeat management's talking points, as if they're their own:

1. Unions make workers lazy. They can get away with murder if there's a union behind them.

2. Unions try to bleed their nice company dry with "demands" for high wages and decent benefits.

3. Unions "demand" safe workplaces. All those regulations cause no amount of grief for the Lords of the Manor.

4. Unions "force" their will upon workers.

5. Unions are evil because, well, because they're UNIONS .

So I wonder--what is it going to take to convince the un-organized laborers of this country that it isn't the unions that are holding them back. One look at our history shows that we were stronger and healthier as a nation when the unions were stronger and healthier. There is no denying that, no matter who does the denying.

This is an argument that has gone on and on and on. I'm always shocked when I see how many workers have bought into the lie that unions will destroy our society. One brief memory of the past couple of decades, one look at the sorry state of employment today should be enough to convince even the harshest critics and the densest of dolts that the Chamber of Commerce, NAM, and every other group or politician who spends considerable amounts of time pretending that unions are evil are not now, and never have been, our BFFs.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here)