I am tired of the bad rap Unions get. You know why they get a bad rap, because they are one of the few institutions in society that can mount effective opposition to corporate power. You like your 8 hour work day? Thank unions for that. Health and Safety regulations? Thank a union for it. You know why you’re thanking a union and not your employer? It’s because they don’t give two shitz about you, your family or your future.
Union history does not get taught in the classrooms because of course like actual democracy, it is a threat to corporate control and power. I’ve been reading Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Hedges and Sacco and I will share a few excerpts with you today.
“Workers in this country paid for their right by suffering brutal beatings, mass expulsions from company housing and jobs, crippling strikes, targets assassinations of union leaders, and armed battles with hired-gun thugs and state militias. Unions created the middle class. They opened up our democracy. Federal Marshals, state militias, sheriff’s deputies and at times even U.S. Army troops, along with the courts and legislative bodies, were repeatedly used to crush organized workers. Striking sugar cane workers were gunned down in Thibodaux, Louisiana, in 1887. Steel workers were shot to death in 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Railroad workers were murdered in the nationwide Pullman strike of 1894. Coal miners were massacred at Ludlow, Colorado, in 1914 and at Matewan, West Virginia, in 1920.
The Rockefellers, the Mellons, the Carnegies, and the Morgans – the Goldman Sachs and Walmart of their day – never gave a damn about workers. All they cared about was profit. The eight-hour workday, the minimum wage, Social Security, pensions, job safety, paid vacations, retirement benefits and health insurance were achieved because hundreds of thousands of workers physically fought a system of capitalist exploitation. They rallied around radicals such as Mary Harris “Mother” Jones – arrested at one point in the West Virginia coalfields for reading the Declaration of Independence to a crowd of miners – United Mine Workers’ President John L. Lewis, and “Big” Bill Haywood and his Wobblies, as well as Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs.
“The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle […].” Frederick Douglas said. “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. […]” […] Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. “
From Days of Destruction Days of Revolt p. 159 – 160.
So before your next anti-union rant, maybe just stop and think of all things you are benefiting from right now that was paid for in blood and misery by people who had the courage and will to demand justice in society.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
3 comments
October 2, 2012 at 6:59 am
writerdood
“You know why they get a bad rap, because they are one of the few institutions in society that can mount effective opposition to corporate power.”
This is why corporations don’t like them, but it isn’t why people have issues with them. I think the reason unions get a bad rap from regular people is because they often overreach. It isn’t the protection from corporate power that’s the problem. That’s the good part about unions. That’s the part people agree with. The problem is that many union workers are paid more than their non-union counterparts, and they are protected from being fired when they don’t perform well. When I see a garbage man making 80,000 a year, I have a problem with unions. When I see burnt-out teachers that don’t try anymore, or treat students poorly, kept in schools because they have tenure, I have a problem with unions. When I see strikes and look at union demands, I frequently have issues with those demands – not all of them, but they often ask for things that are beyond the boundaries of what should be equitable. And when I see unions where relatives and friends are given hiring preferences, then I have a problem with unions.
When unions are protecting their workers from dangerous conditions, when they are ensuring their workers have decent health care and retirement benefits, when they ensure their workers are making a wage equitable with non-union workers, when unions allow the termination of workers who aren’t performing – then I agree. And when I look at the history of unions, as you have referenced it here, it is clear that historically unions served a greater purpose, one that was needed at that time. But in today’s world, I see that they have overreached in areas. That often their demands are too great. And I think that the backlash against unions among people who are not in unions stems mainly from these facts.
People like unions when they operate in the protection of workers and oppose corporate power. There are times when that is necessary. There are times when a company will shaft workers, and unions protect them. And not all unions are bad. Some of them function quite well, and do not overstep their boundaries. But some of them do. Therefore it is not “all” unions that people have issues with. But the bad ones get more press.
People do not like unions when they result in significantly higher costs for everyone because the unions have demanded and won more than is equitable for their members. People do not like unions when they strike, and garbage piles up because union workers want a raise when they already make more than non-union workers. People do not like unions when they strike and children can’t go to school because the union is demanding things that people don’t agree are good for their children. People do not like unions when they make it overly difficult to fire union workers who are not performing.
Some unions are good, and necessary. Some are bad, and need regulation and modification. As with all things, there needs to be a balance. The unions of the past served the people well, they served society well, they forced fairness when there was none, and gave power to the people. We need to keep what is good about the unions of today, but somehow, we need to remove what is bad without destroying them.
I do not know how to do that. I think it is up to the unions themselves, and so far they have no motive to do so. They are constructed to fight and to demand more regardless of current benefits and pay, regardless of what it costs everyone else, regardless of the work ethics of their employees. Some of them appear to resist the need to overreach. Others do not.
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October 2, 2012 at 10:40 am
The Arbourist
@writerdood
I understand some of what you’re saying here. Can we consider though that, if we apply the same to model to business – [business(s)] are constructed to fight and to demand more from workers, regardless of current benefits and pay, regardless of what it costs to everyone else [and society], regardless of the work ethic of those they employ.
What is the difference between the two statements? Both follow the same sort of mentality, yet one is considered ‘normal’ and the ‘way things are done’ and one is not.
I’m not a huge fan of arguing via parallel construction, but in this case I think it is a useful tack because it hints at the pro-business bias that permeates our society.
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October 2, 2012 at 10:59 am
writerdood
If you consider a union to be a business, then the analogy fits. But are unions a business? If so, then what do they produce? I think that perhaps a better analogy for a union might be an insurance company. But if we follow this, we’ll probably end up going down a rat hole, defining individual aspects, and representing them from individual viewpoints. And I have no desire to play devils advocate for corporations or for unions. Suffice it to say I believe they are both good and bad, just as corporations can be good and bad. They need to work together.
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