RIGHT-TO-WORK LAW WILL ALTER UNION EQUATION
(FRAZER CHRONICLE)
(All
the News That Nobody Else Will Print)
Ya think…..Wisconsin will
pass their right to work law on Monday, March 9 unless Madison burns to the ground. Governor Scott
Walker has vowed to sign the bill when it crosses his desk, which will be
Monday. The landscape of union influence in Wisconsin will be changed for the
foreseeable future…..not forever, just the next several decades.
No matter the pros or cons
of the issue, one thing everybody involved with the issue will have to admit is
that both the public and private sectors of labor will be losing a strong
supporter of the worker. Wrapped up in the debate are several issues, is it ever any different in the United
States with controversial subjects where government allows public debate?
The issues with union
representation in the workplace in Wisconsin has several layers that need to be
peeled away to give the people involved with the issue an honest and concise
view of exactly what is connected with the issue, and also allow for the
reasoning behind the basically conservative move.
There is at least envy
involved with the right to work issue that boarders almost on hate by some. There
also is much misconception by many, and I’m talking about huge amounts of
misconception.
There is politics that are
involved with the right to work issue (a
whole bunch of politicking), but that is the way that in today’s political
world things are accomplished. There is ignorance involved with the issue,
mostly by lawmakers, how can somebody who has been involved with being an
elected official understand the rigors, hardships, and the trials and
tribulations of labor in the work-place?
Conservatives as well as
public management and private business have actually conspired to completely
take the teeth out of the union power, not only in Wisconsin, but the entire
United States. I’m not too sure that people understand the path that government
has taken, but at least here in Wisconsin it was 1st the public
sector unions that lost their molars, and now it’s the private sector that has
been gutted.
To understand the issues
involved people in both the public and private sector need to understand the
history of unions not only in Wisconsin, but in the entire United States. Union
organizers and the membership that evolved from their efforts didn’t happen
overnight, and in the beginning were desperately needed.
UNIONS
IN THE 21TH CENTURY AND BEFORE
Labor unions are legally
recognized as representatives of workers in numerous industries in the United
States. Today union activity centers on collective bargaining over wages,
benefits and workplace conditions for membership. In addition unions also are
representatives of their members over disputes with management over violations
of contract provisions, and also have engaged in lobbying for certain
candidates at the city, state and federal elections process.
In 2014 there were 14.5
million dues paying union members in the United States, down from 17.7 million
two decades earlier. Most unions in the United States are aligned with two
large umbrella organizations; the AFL-CIO created in 1955, and the Change to
Win Federation which splintered from the AFL-CIO in 2005.
Contrary to what some
conservatives think, or say, the union movement in the United States has been
around since the Polish craftsmen, who produced glass, pitch and tar called for
a strike all the way back in 1619…..the reason, these people did not have
voting rights. The incident ended peacefully when the Poles were granted full
voting rights.
In today’s work world here
in the United States, many, many workers take for granted labor laws which
protect them from the evils of unregulated industry. Possibly lost in the
equation when arguing the merits of free enterprise
and the removal of restrictions on capitalist’s corporations is the fact that
throughout US history, workers have fought and died for protection from these
US corporations, and their deregulating attitudes.
In many instances government
troops were called in to not only quell labor activity, but to crush it
completely out of existence. From early minimum wage work stoppage by the
Philadelphia printers in 1786, to Philadelphia carpenters striking
unsuccessfully for a 10 hour work day, to children employees in the Paterson,
New Jersey silk mills going out on strike for 11 hour work days/six days a
week…..the struggle has encompassed men, women and children.
The history books are filled
with atrocities committed by corporations against their laborers, and the
graveyards holds thousands of hard-line union organizers, sympathizers and rank
and file workers, brothers, sisters, fathers, sons and those young children who
were put to work in all sorts of menial labor for pennies a day, six days a
week.
What happened when the union
movement gained first a foothold, and then a stranglehold on corporations was,
and is predictable…..they asked for, and received all sorts of concessions from
management. These concessions are exactly what has caused a rift between union
members, and the general public, those
workers unaffiliated with labor unions.
In the 1950’s there were
about 65 million people in the work-force, of those men and women who worked
during this time, about 35% were dues paying union members. In the late 1970’s
union membership was around 21 million card carrying membership. By 2013 there
were roughly 125 million workers in the United States, but only about 14
million union workers, or right around 11% of eligible workers.
Way too much of a good thing
is what happened to the unions and those dues paying workers who advocated all
sorts of silly demands. Sick days, personal days, escalating vacation time,
medical insurance demands without out of pocket money to the rank and file, and
retirement plans that were really the envy of every non-union worker throughout
the United States.
Counting benefits, garbage
collectors were never meant to be paid $28 an hour, cops were never meant to be
paid $75,000 a year, street workers were never meant to be paid $25 an hour,
and firemen were never meant to be paid $60,000 a year…..but they are.
General Motors employees
were never meant to be paid (with benefits) $35 an hour, and the same can be
said for all sorts of other huge corporations throughout the United States that
are represented by a union.
AN
ATMOSPHERE OF ENVY AND TOTAL MISTRUST
During my working life, I
was never paid what I figured I was worth, pretty much because the guy next to
me was making the same as me, but he didn’t put out the same effort on the job
that I did. Now I don’t know whether this is true or not, but it’s the way I
felt at the time.
I have never been a card
carrying, dues paying union member, so thirty or forty years ago I understood
little about how unions worked for their members, or what they meant to the
rest of those workers, like me, who weren’t union members.
But about a decade ago I had
to research union activity for a book that I was writing, and the research
opened up a whole new territory for me with regards to what unions really
were…..in the beginning. 100 to about 140 years ago, when unions in the United
States were in their infancy, workers needed them for protection.
During the second industrial
revolution in the United States, also known as the Technological Revolution which corresponded to the latter half of
the 19th century until World War I. This second revolution which was
spurred on by the introduction of the Bessemer steel process in the 1850,
calumniating in early factory electrification, mass production and the
production line.
Before these introductions
into the workplace, some of which are still in use in the 21st
century, business owners view their employees almost on an equal footing,
referring too many of them as artisans, “experts
in their chosen fields”.
However with each innovation
into the process of producing products in greater quantities, the need for more
unskilled workers was necessary. Gone was the age of the artisan who had honed
is efforts in one particular area of an industry.
Child labor was used; adults
and children alike worked in unsafe working conditions, and were expected to
work a minimum of six days a week, sometimes twelve hours a day. If a worker
was injured on the job there was no workers compensation, he simply was on his
own until he was able to resume his work. If a worker was disabled for life on
the job there was no compensation of any kind.
It was said by iron miners
in the wilds of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that a miner “should either be injured for a short
period of time, or die in a work related accident”, because there was no
death benefits in the industry.
The unions throughout
America have come a long way since the dawning of serious efforts which always
started in the same way. Union organizers, holding secret meetings, confronting
management, and eventually going out on strike, was the usual recipe, which
early on did not work.
Company’s reaction was
predictable, with little exception these companies had been in the driver’s seat for so long that they
didn’t know how to function out of it. In the beginning of unionizing efforts
the issues were always about workplace safety.
As time went forward into
the 20th century other issues became paramount, benefits, the more
the better, more pay, better vacation time and many other issues that I am sure
made corporation owners cringe. I am also sure that there was a resolve by
these businessmen, these owners of companies that were being defeated in union
negotiations…..their time would come,
and they knew that history is like a wheel, what
goes around, comes around.
There time is now, and as
always these businessmen (many ancestors of men who fought the unions decades
ago) are getting help from law enforcement and their political connections.
It’s a recipe tested by time from a century ago, even before the word lobbyists
was a word.
So even though almost 90% of
the American worker toils at his job without the benefit of a union
representation, if things continue government and business will completely
eradicate the labor union, or professional union that actually protect the
worker.
What most people do not
understand is the fact that unions protect their members as well as those
people who work without the benefits of union representation. That’s right,
business is afraid of unions, and the threat to their bottom line mentality…..to
make a buck at all costs.
That wheel of history will
continue to go around, and after years of worker neglect, and record profits
for companies, the union movement will once again rise up and actually smote
business and their management agents.
Wisconsin Governor Scott
Walker and his cronies in the state legislature have accomplished exactly what
the business community of Wisconsin wanted, an
unthethered hand in dealing with their workers and the contracts that they
sign.
What we have just seen is
how politics work in the rarefied air of
big time business and politician’s hob-knobbing.
With just 11% of all workers in
Wisconsin, it was deemed by business that they represented a threat to
all of the people who might want to apply for a job, but didn’t want to become
a member of a union.
Plainly that’s just one in
ten people who might apply for a job who would be affected, come on, adjust
your panty-hose people, the issue was, and is insignificant. But once again we
were suckered into a really poor rule that’ll become a state law.
Why…..envy, greed and
stupidity, you pick whichever one closely matches where you ought to sit the
next time you watch Fox News!
HAVE
A NICE DAY!
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