Daily Kos: We are a union household

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/6/899428/-We-are-a-union-household

by teacherken
Mon Sep 06, 2010 at 03:14:26 AM PDT

Why? Because we believe in fairness.

Not only for ourselves, but for all who work.

Because we believe in the dignity of work.

Because we both understand something about history, including economic history.

She is Harvard, Junior Phi Beta Kappa, Marshall Scholar, M. Litt. from Oxford, Ph.D. from George Washington.

I am BA from Haverford, two masters degrees, ABD in Educational Administration and Policy Studies.

We both work with our minds.

She is on her local's negotiating team.

I am my building's union representative.

Had we any doubt, two pieces in today's Washington Post might help convince us.

E. J. Dionne offers When unions mattered, prosperity was shared: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/05/AR2010090502814.html

Harold Myerson offers Hard times for workers on Labor Day 2010: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/05/AR2010090502815.html

You should read both.

I did, and decided to offer this diary.

Dionne reminds us that we have gone from one third of the workforce unionized to less than 13%, that there are now more unionized workers in the public sector in which my wife and I both work (7.9 million) than in the private sector (7.4 million). And he then writes this:

Even worse than the falling membership numbers is the extent to which the ethos animating organized labor is increasingly foreign to American culture. The union movement has always been attached to a set of values -- solidarity being the most important, the sense that each should look out for the interests of all. This promoted other commitments: to mutual assistance, to a rough-and-ready sense of equality, to a disdain for elitism, to a belief that democracy and individual rights did not stop at the plant gate or the office reception room.

Read that list of values. Ask yourself if this nation will survive as a democracy if we allow their abandonment.

Our workers are still not sharing in what economic recovery there is. Myerson put this in stark terms, by comparing the U.S. to other industrialized democracies whose recovery has in fact been weaker than our own. He writes

Consider: As of this year, U.S. gross domestic product is about 1 percent beneath its 2008 peak, compared to a drop of roughly 2 percent in France and Germany and 5 percent in Britain and Japan. But U.S. unemployment has increased roughly 5 percentage points since 2007, compared to just 1 point in France and Japan and 2 in Britain. In Germany, unemployment has actually dropped a point since the recession began.

Our corporate profits have exploded by $388 billion since the low point of the recession, while wages are up only $68 billion. For comparison, Myerson notes:

At a comparable point in the 1981-82 recession, corporate profits came to just 10 percent of the combined uptick in profits and wages. This time around, they amount to 85 percent.


FULL story at link.

[pipoman]

1. I am not nor have I ever been union member

none of my professions have even had representation that I am aware of. I do like and appreciate union history in the US. IMHO, the single biggest factor in the death of manufacturing unions has been and will continue to be trade agreements and rules/laws concerning trade. Trade agreements were designed to break the back of labor and collective bargaining. If manufacturers don't like demands by labor, they simply move manufacturing to a country which doesn't allow for collective bargaining or labor organization. The only unions which can remain strong and/or in existence under current laws are those which provide services which must be performed on US soil. Electricians, construction related, etc.

We, as a collective, simply must demand trade agreements be renegotiated so as to discourage exportation of jobs and make collective bargaining viable...again, imo.