Er… I was being sarcastic, but yes, unions in America have a long history of both racism and thuggish behavior.
If you’re going to demand that unions be “thanked” for behavior of several generations ago, don’t they deserve to be criticized for more recent behavior.
Don’t you think unions deserve to be condemned for their treatment of those they’ve disgustingly referred to as “scabs”?
Similar look at how they’ve fought against things like secret ballot that everyone who believes in democracy should support.
When I worked in Houston, it was several years before I learned there was a union and that was because someone complaining about a new policy casually mentioned going complaining to the union. I don’t recall hearing anything about the union after either.
I’m sure the union members on the picket line who I saw shouting at the African-American driver “fuck you Nigger!”, “You’re taking our jobs”, “Fuck you scab” while making a point of taking pictures of him were “acting in their own best interests” but to me they were a bunch of white trash losers behaving like assholes.
Do you think I’m wrong?
Or would you agree that white people who scream “fuck you nigger” are peckerwoods I should hold in contempt, or is your belief that it’s okay to call black men “nigger” if they’re hardworking guys trying to feed their families if they are what morons would call “scabs”?
For the record, I agree that like the police unions have done many good things, but I find this veneration they’re undergoing from many and their ignoring of the abuses quite nauseating.
I’ve worked in both union and non-union shops in the same company. For me, the overriding factor as far as being “a good job” was concerned, was the quality of my first-level manager.
I enjoyed some great benefits because of the union (white-glove move from San Jose to San Diego plus a week to do recon plus $6000 cash because I was surplussed), But I didn’t share my coworkers’ over the top hatred of management when contract time came around. I stopped being a member when some hardcore union people talked about sabotaging equipment on the eve of a strike.
Now I’m in a “non-represented” work group but the rules are pretty much the same. I think my job would be a little more secure if we were a union shop, but it wouldn’t make any difference in my job satisfaction or fulfillment.
No kidding. One of the things they list is public education for children. States began making it compulsory as early 1852, about 30 years before the first unions in the US. Did they help with the last states to require public education (1917 for the last)? Who knows, they didn’t tell us.
Thanking current day unions for union backed causes generations ago seems roughly the equivalent to me of thanking the current day Republican party for Lincoln and ending slavery. While unions may have once been a decidedly positive force in the labor market, which is something I would agree with, it doesn’t necessarily follow that their current incarnations are also unreservedly positive.
You dont have to be a union member to benefit from these 36 reasons to thank a union
Weekends
All Breaks at Work, including your Lunch Breaks
Paid Vacation
FMLA
Sick Leave
Social Security
Minimum Wage
Civil Rights Act/Title VII (Prohibits Employer Discrimination)
8-Hour Work Day
Overtime Pay
Child Labor Laws
Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
40 Hour Work Week
Worker’s Compensation (Worker’s Comp)
Unemployment Insurance
Pensions
Workplace Safety Standards and Regulations
Employer Health Care Insurance
Collective Bargaining Rights for Employees
Wrongful Termination Laws
Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
Whistleblower Protection Laws
Employee Polygraph Protect Act (Prohibits Employer from using a lie detector test on an employee)
Veteran’s Employment and Training Services (VETS)
Compensation increases and Evaluations (Raises)
Sexual Harassment Laws
Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
Holiday Pay
Employer Dental, Life, and Vision Insurance
Privacy Rights
Pregnancy and Parental Leave
Military Leave
The Right to Strike
Public Education for Children
Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011 (Requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work)
Laws Ending Sweatshops in the United States
to see more labor related stories check out big corporations blog at
http://bigcorporationusa.blogspot.co…ions-have.html
I like every one of those things. And every one of them was passed into law over the objections of corporations. Most are still objected to by corporations and opposed by Republicans.
With a special thanks to our favorite Airman for pointing out that I originally posted this in the WFT.
I should thank a union for making all of these things mandatory instead of allowing me to negotiate an employment arrangement with my employer? Maybe I’d be willing to work under harsher conditions if the employer paid a premium. Maybe I’d be willing to work overtime as straight time if the other option is no overtime at all. Maybe I’d take a job under minimum wage if it meant I was learning skills that could give me a good wage. Maybe instead of the government confiscating several percentage points of my wages and holding them until I get old, I could take the money, invest it, and if I die before I would collect SS, my children would have some money to help them out. Yadda yadda yadda.
Thanks a lot unions for lobbying government to increase the cost of employment so that your union members are protected from competition.
This post should be 36 reasons why you should thank the division of labor and capital accumulation.
Maybe you would be willing to do so. If so, you can always do that for your employer and never turn them in for violating the labor laws. But my guess is that in actual life you aren’t willing to do those things and don’t do those things. Did I guess wrong? My guess is that you would like to do those things to others. The law prohibits that. For good reason. But if I didn’t guess wrong, then you are willing to do those things for cheap and not turn people in and get screwed on the pay, doesn’t that make you a wage slave and a chump?
Slavery is illegal. Child labor is illegal, and worse than slavery in many ways. 18 hour days are illegal and terrible. The law prohibits them, and unions made them illegal after convincing legislatures to pass laws and executives to sign them. Over the objections of people who would like to use human beings as slaves and worse and dispose of them. There are people who think such abuse should be legal. They call themselves conservatives. They are not, they are exploiters of children, poor and the desperate.
History tried tyrannical bosses, and we had terrible conditions. What arose in opposition were various anarchist movements, communism and organized labor. Organized labor made the best solution to the problems of the industrial revolution. Not perfect, and just like any other movement there were abuses, but 36 things in this list of how they make your life better today. The only thing you can point out in opposition is that you would like to have the choice to be abused as a hypothetical. Yeah, right. What you really mean is that you’d like to take advantage of others. I’m not impressed with your independent spirit, I’m disgusted at your insistence on making the abuse of others legal.
For the record, my earlier posts probably made me sound vastly more anti-union than I am.
My point was you can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to demand we thank the present day unions for the actions of a hundred years ago, then you also need to condemn them for actions of a hundred years ago.
I’m reasonably sure that if I had made a post attacking unions based on the way the Knights of Labor were virulently racist against Chinese immigrants most people would have said, “hey that was over a hundred and twenty years ago, you can’t condemn them for that.”
As someone who got fired while advocating unionization (for sending personal e-mail over a company server in remoye Alaska) I like the idea of unions. Workers need a counter weight to big business.
However when Unions are run like big business (profits vs ‘x’) unions lose relevance.
I’m pretty libertarian, and I’m largely pro-union. I think believe people should have the right to join a union or refuse to do so, and management should have the right to bargain with them or not. (I realize that’s not how it actually works, but like I said, I’m largely pro-union.) The Libertarian Party and I agree!:
I see nothing contradictory with my libertarian sensibilities between a single person bargaining hard with management and a group of people joining together to do the same. That’s their right, and if their position is strong enough, they’ll win the day. And they should. Corporations are associations of people too, who have gained strength in that association. Why shouldn’t the workers? Seems perfectly libertarian to me, right up to the point where government unduly mandates how the negotiations must take place. But given the choice, I’d rather have the current structure than no unions at all.
Unions have done an enormous amount of good in the U.S.
That’s a pretty bold maneuvre, to invoke the “but I was only joking!” gambit and then in the next post go back to trying to tie one person’s behavior to the behavior of the group in general after you just denied trying to do so.
"I’m sure the union members on the picket line who I saw shouting at the African-American driver “fuck you Nigger!”, “You’re taking our jobs”, “Fuck you scab” while making a point of taking pictures of him were “acting in their own best interests” but to me they were a bunch of white trash losers behaving like assholes.
Do you think I’m wrong?"
I would never defend racist behavior. But what’s offensive about “You’re taking our jobs”? And yes, scab is the term. Someone who crosses a picket line, or scabs for the employer, is definitely placing there own short-term interest above the union’s. Which is their right, as well as accepting the social consequences of their decision. Scabbing just helps employers in their race to the bottom in wages and benefits. Of course, employers count on their being workers needy enough to bust the union. Which is, if you follow the circular reasoning, the argument for unionization in the first place. “St Peter, don’t call me, cause I can’t go, I owe my soul to the company store”
How about no, I won’t, on balance condemn unions. I will condemn the racism of the past, including in unions, but I won’t condemn unions. I will condemn violence in the past, including that done by union members, but I won’t condemn unions any more than I would condemn corporations in general. I condemn violence done by corporations, the greed of corporations, but I’m not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, either with unions or corporations.
How about they were wrong to shout a racist epithet? That isn’t union policy, that is their anger taking over. And it is wrong.
As for “scab”, well the guy is a scab. Nothing wrong with calling a scab a scab. It is a pretty damn low thing to do to cross a picket line.
All you people with objections to unions, you take the 36 benefits for yourself and your families and then rhetorically bite the hand that delivered them. You pretend that you are a rugged individualist and personally are tough enough and successful enough that you could have got these things by yourself. Well, you didn’t and you couldn’t. The only people who do not use the labor of others are in business for themselves without any employees. They don’t get an 8 hour workday.
(For the record, I am the only employee in my own business. I damn well appreciate labor laws because I don’t have the benefit of many of them.)
It wasn’t one person’s behavior, it was a picket line. So yes, when I see a whole picket line joining in such chants, I’m going to make judgements about the union they’re a member of.