Reply #9: notes

[rapier]

While the 'Labor Movement' was crucial in bringing all those things from the 40 hour work week to safety laws to those myriad things we take for granted it is best to accept the fact that those good and noble things don't mean that unions have always been good and noble.


I suppose a book is in order but really, to laud the nobilty of unions is pouring it on a bit thick. Partly this sprang from the fact that unions were forced by politics and culture to abondon virturally all issues except money. While to this day the political corner of the AFLCIO puts out work that would be reconginzed as progressive that output has zero meaning for most members and zero in the political sphere as well.

I'm not here to bash unions but getting dewey eyed about the Teamsters is beyond silly. Yes, the Teamsters are a particularly bad case but in a way tell the story. In a sense the powers that be embraced the corruption and thuggery of the Teamsters because it was a total rejection of the political foundation of unions. Now unions are politically without meaning. Never mind the occasional whines of the Conservatrians about the evil teachers or more comical, 'union bosses'.

I've worked in enough union shops to know how ossified they have become. Often dominated by shop floor lawyers and the laziest of the lazy.

Nowdays of course unions represent few industrial workes, as service and governmental employees now are the backbone of unions. With $58 a month the minimum wage in China and Bush suggesting we offer a service to hook up Mexican with American firms. probably union busting ones the end of industrial unions is at hand. Progressive politics died in, oh.... let's say 68.