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Hephaestion
Deeply Shallow
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 24243
Location: Where the Wild Things Are...
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 Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 1:41 pm Post subject: Which Side Are You On? |
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Explaining what happened to labor in America
| Quote: | I've just finished Thomas Geoghegan's classic memoir of his life as a labor lawyer, "Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back," in its revised, 2004 edition (which includes a lengthy afterword on labor in the 2000s). This is one of the best books I've read about labor politics in America, striking a balance between the romance and heroism of the best labor struggles in US history -- the workers who risked everything to bring us vacation pay, a minimum wage, the weekend, overtime, an end to child labor, and fundamental free speech and free association rights -- and the venality, pettiness and criminality of the worst of labor, from the big unions' historic exclusion of the poor and non-whites to the corruption, violence and fraud that has dogged labor through its American history.
Throughout, Geoghegan keep the focus where it belongs: on the injustices faced by working people -- from labor, from management, from government -- and on the failures of these systems to improve their lot on life, and looks deeply into history, politics and sociology to explain why and how labor has failed laborers.
Geoghegan is a lifelong, old-time labor lawyer whose practice has encompassed defending unions from management to defending workers from unions -- representing clients whose corrupt Work Agents have had them beaten up, smeared and excluded; representing workers who've been robbed of their pensions, unfairly dismissed, even arrested, under the most shameful, sleazy circumstances. He writes like a poet, like a Hunter Thompson crossed with Studs Terkel, full of humility, wry humor, and a burning anger at all that's wrong in the world. He tells the stories of the fights he's fought -- with, for and against the Teamsters, the mine workers, nurses, pilots -- from union elections to wildcat strikes.
Geoghegan is unabashedly pro-union, even though he's seen the worst of what unions can become. In a world in which employers hold all the cards -- times like now, when every worker worries about job security -- workers who fight on their own to demand justice (fair pay, safe working conditions, fair treatment, pensions) always lose. Workers who fight together can win -- have won, anyway.
Of particular interest to me was Geoghegan's account of the changes in American labor law over the years, the systematic gutting of the legislation that unions won in the first half of the 1900s, changes that moved the fight from the right to strike to the right to unionize to the right to receive your pension to the right to be treated as an employee at all. In Geoghegan's view, it's this legislative failure that's put labor into its death-spiral -- and it was labor's failure to stand against legislative reform that paid the way for it.
It's hard to love imperfect things -- countries, movements, people -- but it's also fundamentally adult to acknowledge the imperfections in the things that matter to you, and to fight to improve them rather than writing them off.
For everyone who's ever retreated to the pat, easy position that "labor's gone too far," Geoghegan's book is an important, nuanced, gripping and immensely enjoyable rebuttal: proof that in many places, labor didn't go far enough. |
("Which side are you on?" was, of course, the memorable line uttered by the equally memorable Mother Jones...)
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 3:53 am Post subject: |
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How unions got it wrong by fighting for the middle class:
| Quote: | By the 1960s the promise of prosperity for all, which defenders of the middle class today harken back to, seemed within reach. Yet the consciousness of workers as workers was being sapped by consumption. No longer was the goal to transform social relations and bring forth the “New Man” (and Woman), it was to get a new Pontiac, an in-ground pool, a bigger house, a color television. When we identify as consumers, it leaves little space for workplace solidarity or worker identity. Today, it is almost impossible to find working-class culture or life beyond the market and corporate media.
Ultimately, the concept of the middle class is inherently anti-political. It is defined by consumption: a mortgage, multiple cars, stylish clothes, furniture and electronics, and affordable luxuries. We can’t have a yacht, but we can go on an annual cruise. We can’t buy a villa in Tuscany, but we can holiday in one. We can’t afford a private chef, but we can visit Le Bernadin on a special occasion. Many luxury goods makers – from Prada and LVMH to Mercedes Benz and Tiffany – have even aggressively expanded their businesses by creating lines of downscale luxuries for the middle class.
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For three decades, labor leaders have accepted market logic of givebacks: the pie is shrinking, we all have to share the pain, givebacks save jobs and help make American business more competitive. But concessions don’t save jobs they only increase profits. Unions have known this for decades, but are unable to formulate an alternative. In 1989 one labor leader told the New York Times, “The whole history of wage concessions since 1979 pretty much proves that they don't preserve jobs.” In a world with capital unbound, many regions have lower wages, fewer benefits, less regulation and higher profits, meaning one round of givebacks leads inexorably to the next.
The same logic is now being applied to the public sector. Wisconsin labor leaders capitulated on all wage and benefit cuts, begging only to save collective bargaining that was then eliminated in short order. If you accept market relations as the natural order and that the role of workers is to make firms more competitive or produce value for them – as we shall see some unions explicitly do – then there are no limits to givebacks.
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What if organized labor had poured one or two hundred million dollars into organizing the unemployed? This could have created a mass popular force on the left, but its politics might have been more radical than middle-class conformism. That’s because we have entered the jobless future. The market cannot provide for the 25-30 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed. The high level of unemployment is not an effect of the crisis, but a goal because it allows capital to force down wages and slash any and all benefits. |
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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ronb
mocker
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 2627
Location: Blackroof country, no gold pavement, tired starling
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| Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 4:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Awesome. |
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Rufus Polson
Purple Library Guy
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 3483
Location: SFU and/or the college of Riddlemastery at Caithnard
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| Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:45 am Post subject: |
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| Interesting and well thought out. |
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Tehanu
More or less, more or less
Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 17640
Location: Seceded from the Ford Nation
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| Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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Here's some good news -- a group of folks who have probably one of the more thankless jobs out there has succeeded in unionizing in the USA. Yup, airport screeners now have job protection. Bravo!
| Quote: | A Great Big Win for Labor and (Real) National Security: 40,000 TSA Screeners Go Union
... In a run-off election completed this week, the nation’s 40,000 Transportation Security Administration employees voted to become members of the American Federation of Government Employees.
AFGE will provide exclusive representation to the workers at airports across the country, who for many years after the creation of the TSA were denied the right to organize.
... Barriers to the organizing drive were erected by low-level federal bureaucrats at the Federal Labor Relations Authority. Finally, the labor relations authority board accepted petitions from AFGE and the National Treasury Employees Union to hold an election to determine which labor union would represent TSA workers. Then Republican senators got into the act, sponsoring legislation to end collective-bargaining rights for airport screeners.
... Wicker, Coburn, Collins and their allies in the right-wing echo chamber tried to gin up a fantasy argument that unionizing public employees would somehow threaten national security.
... TSA workers are only the latest federal employees in critical national security positions to unionize. And the attacks on them and their potential union representatives have been crude and insulting. |
The Nation. |
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al-Qa'bong
Fulltime enMasse Member
Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 6041
Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
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| Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 3:32 pm Post subject: Re: Which Side Are You On? |
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| Quote: | | ("Which side are you on?" was, of course, the memorable line uttered by the equally memorable Mother Jones...) |
Well, no it wasn't. That line is the title of a song writen by Florence Reece during 1931 during the Harlan County coal mining strikes.
While Which Side are You On? doesn't appear in the film, John Sayles' Matewan is a good cinematic representation of the song's message.
I play a version of that song, sung by Reece from a record called Coal Mining Women, on the show every May Day.
_________________
"The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi
"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:58 am Post subject: |
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The Day The Middle Class Died: Michael Moore
| Quote: | Reagan had been backed by Wall Street in his run for the White House and they, along with right-wing Christians, wanted to restructure America and turn back the tide that President Franklin D. Roosevelt started -- a tide that was intended to make life better for the average working person. The rich hated paying better wages and providing benefits. They hated paying taxes even more. And they despised unions. The right-wing Christians hated anything that sounded like socialism or holding out a helping hand to minorities or women.
Reagan promised to end all that. So when the air traffic controllers went on strike, he seized the moment. In getting rid of every single last one of them and outlawing their union, he sent a clear and strong message: The days of everyone having a comfortable middle class life were over. America, from now on, would be run this way:
...
But Reagan could not have pulled this off by himself in 1981. He had some big help:
The AFL-CIO.
The biggest organization of unions in America told its members to cross the picket lines of the air traffic controllers and go to work. And that's just what these union members did. Union pilots, flight attendants, delivery truck drivers, baggage handlers -- they all crossed the line and helped to break the strike. And union members of all stripes crossed the picket lines and continued to fly.
Reagan and Wall Street could not believe their eyes! Hundreds of thousands of working people and union members endorsing the firing of fellow union members. It was Christmas in August for Corporate America.
And that was the beginning of the end. Reagan and the Republicans knew they could get away with anything -- and they did. They slashed taxes on the rich. They made it harder for you to start a union at your workplace. They eliminated safety regulations on the job. They ignored the monopoly laws and allowed thousands of companies to merge or be bought out and closed down. Corporations froze wages and threatened to move overseas if the workers didn't accept lower pay and less benefits. And when the workers agreed to work for less, they moved the jobs overseas anyway.
And at every step along the way, the majority of Americans went along with this. There was little opposition or fight-back. The "masses" did not rise up and protect their jobs, their homes, their schools (which used to be the best in the world). They just accepted their fate and took the beating. |
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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al-Qa'bong
Fulltime enMasse Member
Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 6041
Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
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| Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2012 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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Happy 100th Woody.
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"The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi
"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl |
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6079_Smith_W
Fulltime enMasse Member
Joined: 15 Nov 2011
Posts: 571
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| Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2012 9:42 pm Post subject: |
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| There was a fabulous series of tributes to him at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. |
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al-Qa'bong
Fulltime enMasse Member
Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 6041
Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
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| Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2012 6:11 pm Post subject: |
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Brad Wall is taking notes...
| Quote: | South Africa's national police commissioner says 34 miners died and another 78 were wounded when police opened fire on striking miners outside a platinum mine, 90 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg.
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South Africa police defend shooting that killed 34 miners
_________________
"The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi
"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 5:51 am Post subject: |
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Big labour and minimum wage:
| Quote: | Kelber wants the AFL-CIO and its member unions to fight against this strip-mining of the American economy and work closely with labor unions from other countries with the same corporate employers.
In truth, to outsiders, Trumka’s labor federation appears a defeated giant in its great white headquarters on Washington, D.C.’s 16th Street, across from the White House. To be sure, it confronts formidable external trends which include a declining union membership, right wing Governors attacking its pensions, faster automation, corporate globalization, huge corporate slush funds to buy or rent politicians and anti-worker laws such as the notorious union-blocking Taft-Hartley Law of 1947 now in its 65th year of damage.
The old saying, however, is that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. That is not happening. Trumka delivers “give ‘em hell” speeches against corporate abuses, but gives the cowardly Democratic Party and its elected officials a pass. Consequently the Democrats take campaign money from unions and, led by a President who would not have been elected president without them, take the AFL-CIO support for granted.
Recently, Cong. Jesse Jackson, Jr. and other Representatives introduced HR. 5901 (The Catching Up With 1968 Act of 2012) to enact a $10 minimum wage to benefit 30 million workers languishing between the present $7.25 minimum wage and $10. So far the AFL-CIO hasn’t put any muscle or part of its multi-million dollar television ad buys behind it. |
_________________
This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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al-Qa'bong
Fulltime enMasse Member
Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 6041
Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
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| Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 5:50 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | A Chinese miner employed to work in a controversial northern British Columbia coal mine has launched a human rights complaint against the United Steelworkers Union.
...Steve Hunt, the union's western Canadian director, says the accusation is bizarre, because his union has been fighting for workers rights.
Hunt said the letter was written on HD Mining letterhead, and he says the union knew it would only be a matter of time before the company made racial accusations.
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Chinese miner launches human rights complaint against union
Some day in the future, when Canadian labour standars are as terrible as those in China today, we'll look back on this and say, "Here's where we could have stopped them." With Chinese corporations moving in, and a federal government and many provincial governments doing what they can to eliminate workers' rights, it won't be long before Canadian workers experience conditions that will make the Dirty Thirties seem like paradise in comparison.
I found the comments that accompany this story dismaying. Few of the posters recognise this as the first salvo in an attack on the union; most are saying "If that Chinaman doesn't like it here, he should go home."
_________________
"The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi
"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl |
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sparqui
Dog tired
Joined: 30 Apr 2006
Posts: 5152
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 6:42 am Post subject: |
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This war on labour from so many fronts is really depressing. The writing is on the wall and the end game is to destroy any real middle class. We are marching towards a reinvention of the start of the 20th century where the middle class were basically professionals and the rest were struggling between bare bones small businesses, underpaid skilled labour, low wage earners with no protections, seasonal workers, and unemployed.
The incredible growth in food banks is the equivalent of the soup kitchens of the great depression. Why don't we acknowledge that? The growing disparity between rich and poor has been hyper-charged in the last two decades. And yet, this is barely spoken about.
I will probably die in misery since i never made it my life's goal to make enough money to live well in retirement. That's my bed and I will lie in it but I feel bad for the next generation. I have no kids but it pains me to see my friends' kids have so limited options.
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“If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a tractor.”
-- Gilles Duceppe |
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The Evil Twin
Stoned Immaculate
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 3746
Location: Toronto
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| Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:11 am Post subject: |
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| al-Qa'bong wrote: |
I found the comments that accompany this story dismaying. Few of the posters recognise this as the first salvo in an attack on the union; most are saying "If that Chinaman doesn't like it here, he should go home." |
I've noticed that with a lot of these type of stories. The racist, right-wing trolls who populate the CBC and Star comment boards often can't see the forest for the trees. IOW even in situations where their agenda (smashing unions) is being supported, they only notice the fact that he's "not one of us".
_________________
I can't support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day. - Assclown Rob Ford |
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Maestro
Fulltime enMasse Member
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 2356
Location: Vancouver
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| Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:19 am Post subject: |
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| al-Qa'bong wrote: | | Quote: | A Chinese miner employed to work in a controversial northern British Columbia coal mine has launched a human rights complaint against the United Steelworkers Union.
...Steve Hunt, the union's western Canadian director, says the accusation is bizarre, because his union has been fighting for workers rights.
Hunt said the letter was written on HD Mining letterhead, and he says the union knew it would only be a matter of time before the company made racial accusations.
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Chinese miner launches human rights complaint against union
Some day in the future, when Canadian labour standars are as terrible as those in China today, we'll look back on this and say, "Here's where we could have stopped them." With Chinese corporations moving in, and a federal government and many provincial governments doing what they can to eliminate workers' rights, it won't be long before Canadian workers experience conditions that will make the Dirty Thirties seem like paradise in comparison.
I found the comments that accompany this story dismaying. Few of the posters recognise this as the first salvo in an attack on the union; most are saying "If that Chinaman doesn't like it here, he should go home." |
Of course the answer to 'temporary workers' is to invite them into Canada to stay, and to allow them to bring family, etc.
After all, if they're good enough to work here, why in heavens name aren't they good enough to live here? - which by the way would put both sets of workers on the same side of the issue, where they should be.
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On the wilds of the Drive |
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