See other Editorial Articles
Title: Cal Thomas: Unions, overregulation drove American Dream into a ditch
Source:
SacBee
URL Source: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/1920481.html
Published: Jun 5, 2009
Author: Cal Thomas
Post Date: 2009-06-05 16:06:01 by farmfriend
Keywords: None
Views: 1611
Comments: 137
By Cal Thomas America is asking you to call. Drive your Chevrolet through the USA America's the greatest land of all. Fifty years ago, those words set to music each week on NBC's "The Dinah Shore Show" reflected an America and an automobile industry that is no more. That time and that industry were laid to rest this week when General Motors filed for bankruptcy and the government effectively nationalized GM and Chrysler after wasting billions of our tax dollars on a failed bailout. Despite disclaimers from President Barack Obama that the government doesn't want to be in the car business, it is hard to see what it has bought with our tax dollars other than two of what used to be known as "the big three." Government by default or determination will choose the types of cars the companies it owns will make. Government will buy a lot of them because not enough customers will unless they are made offers they can't refuse, not by a car salesman in a loud sport coat, but by a government bureaucrat in a suit. It's difficult to let go of an American dream. When I was growing up, every kid wanted to drive his own car. Our frugal parents (who had just one car) would let us drive it, but with restrictions, including a set time to bring the car back in the same pristine condition in which we found it. A car was a rite of passage. It conveyed independence and status. Each September we salivated at the prospect of new models. There was always a big buildup and we'd go to the Chevy (or Ford) dealer early on the morning they were for sale. Sometimes they would be covered with sheets and a dramatic unveiling would take place. TV commercials would show parts of new models in a kind of striptease before their debut. Some believe the models between 1955 and 1959, especially the 1957 Chevy Bel Air and the 1958 Impala, are unsurpassed, though Ford devotees have their Mustangs and T-Birds. Pontiac's GTO and some Dodge and Plymouth models were also great. Chrysler had the Imperial, which resembled a boat with running lights, and the New Yorker for "old rich people." And then there was the one beyond our reach, but not beyond our dreams: the Cadillac. The song "Pink Cadillac" became a hit, in part because we saw Elvis in one. America's relationship with its cars has rightly been called a love affair. Though some have tried to replicate the smell of a new car in spray cans, there is nothing quite like the feeling of sinking into new faux leather and later, if you could afford it, the real thing. Much if not all of those thrills will be gone, thanks to greed by the unions, government overregulation and bad management. The customers, who once were always right, have been cheated. All one has to do is look at government-made cars to see they are about as attractive as government art, government architecture, or many other things government does poorly. The Skoda (when the Czechoslovakia communist party made them – they're nice now thanks to free-market capitalism) had its own jokes: "How much is a Skoda worth with a full tank of gas?" Answer: "Twice as much." East Germany's Trabant, a major polluter, was little more than a two-cycle engine encased in the thinnest veneer, and the old Soviet Union cars were about as appealing as a Siberian winter. These are the kinds of cars governments have produced. Obama says all of those laid-off autoworkers will have to "sacrifice" for the sake of their children and grandchildren. So much for their American Dream. If a Republican president had said that, he would have been denounced as insensitive and uncaring. Performance is sweeter Nothing can beat her Life is completer in a Chevy. Not anymore. Bye-bye Miss American Pie; drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry. This is the day GM died.Cal Thomas: Unions, overregulation drove American Dream into a ditch
Published: Friday, Jun. 5, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 19A See the USA in your Chevrolet
On a highway, or a road along the levee
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
Comments (1-74) not displayed.
.
.
.
#75. To: tom007 (#73)
Tom... You have to somehow make Americans understand that they are...programmed... During WW2 and there after, Americans received a steady diet of programming day after day, in school, in college and 24/7 via MSM. Prior to WW2, many did not go to school, few went to college, few had radios, so government poison was difficult to disseminate. Now it is in full force, every moment of our lives.
This I never knew. "Even the United States Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes's words in their own defense."
What the hell would he say today?
www.hsl.virginia.edu/historical/eugenics/ I didn't know.
Its not a topic that is well received by many. And I think I see why. They are Americans and they a "good" people - they will help someone on the side of the road, for instance. So they feel that their American leaders, usually presented with state accolades and glory, represent them. Thus the leaders MUST be good, since they are. An irrational substitution that politicians just love.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" Agreed... Excellent analysis. Sad. I have so many friends that still believe in the two party system. Long ago I stopped trying to pry open their eyes.
That needs to be reinforced over and over. All of the unionism of the late 1800's and on into the 1900's was for self protection. People who don't read history don't get it. The wages were awful. The working conditions were worse. Pensions? Fat chance. As soon as you were too old, or too injured, you were discarded like a broken toy. 8 hour day? You worked 12 (or longer), for subsistence wages, and overtime was never paid. The first breakthrough was on government jobs when the standard workday was reduced to 10 hours and half days on SATURDAY. The only day off was Sunday. Government Troops were used to massacre striking workers. As were hired Mercenaries such as Pinkerton. They were able to murder with impunity. Unions in turn became corrupted by success and by the Mob, (the Teacher's Unions have been corrupted by other agencies which mean the common man, and woman, no good, but that does not mean that honest unions did not serve a function, a valuable one, to curb abusive management and protect the legitimate interests and welfare of the workers.
"I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology...It's importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda...Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated." Bertrand Russel, Eugenicist and Logician
In 1932, Henry Ford cut workers pay in half, sped up the assembly line and refused all requests for safety features. The workers held a protest, unarmed outside the plant, Ford security people and city police shot 5 workers dead, and put dozens more in hospitals with gunshot wounds. No one went to jail, no one was arrested. At the time Ford was the richest man in the world and left billions to prove it. Money taken from the sweat of those he murdered and shot.
The workers held a protest, unarmed outside the plant, Ford security people and city police shot 5 workers dead, and put dozens more in hospitals with gunshot wounds. No one went to jail, no one was arrested. At the time Ford was the richest man in the world and left billions to prove it. Money taken from the sweat of those he murdered and shot. Gawd bless AmeriKa. Land that I love. Stand beside her, and guide her....PUKE. But then, I'm a liberal. LOL.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
A little history for those who have lived in a glass bubble. An Eclectic List of Events in U.S. Labor History (Lots of links at page.) * Compiled by allen lutins (allen@lutins.org) * Last Update 1 January 2009 * Click here for information about reproducing this article. Most citizens of the United States take for granted labor laws which protect them from the evils of unregulated industry. Perhaps the majority of those who argue for "free enterprise" and the removal of restrictions on capitalist corporations are unaware that over the course of this country's history, workers have fought and often died for protection from capitalist industry. In many instances, government troops were called out to crush strikes, at times firing on protesters. Presented below are a few of the many incidents in the (too often overlooked) tumultuous labor history of this country. NOTE: Please DO NOT mail me with requests for additional information (such as assistance in locating additional resources, etc.); all that i have to offer on this topic is presented on this page, and i regret that i am unable to assist the Internet community with anything more. For additional labor resources, check out the following: * American Labor History at University of Cincinnati * Cyber Resources and Links For Labour Activists * LaborNet home page * Timeline of labor issues and events from Wikipedia 1806 The union of Philadelphia Journeymen Cordwainers was convicted of and bankrupted by charges of criminal conspiracy after a strike for higher wages, setting a precedent by which the U.S. government would combat unions for years to come. 27 April 1825 The first strike for the 10-hour work-day occurred by carpenters in Boston. 3 July 1835 Children employed in the silk mills in Paterson, NJ went on strike for the 11 hour day/6 day week. July 1851 Two railroad strikers were shot dead and others injured by the state militia in Portgage, New York. 1860 800 women operatives and 4,000 workmen marched during a shoemaker's strike in Lynn, Massachusetts. 13 January 1874 The original Tompkins Square Riot. As unemployed workers demonstrated in New York's Tompkins Square Park, a detachment of mounted police charged into the crowd, beating men, women and children indiscriminately with billy clubs and leaving hundreds of casualties in their wake. Commented Abram Duryee, the Commissioner of Police: "It was the most glorious sight I ever saw..." 12 February 1877 U.S. railroad workers began strikes to protest wage cuts. 21 June 1877 Ten coal-mining activists ("Molly Maguires") were hanged in Pennsylvania. 14 July 1877 A general strike halted the movement of U.S. railroads. In the following days, strike riots spread across the United States. The next week, federal troops were called out to force an end to the nationwide strike. At the "Battle of the Viaduct" in Chicago, federal troops (recently returned from an Indian massacre) killed 30 workers and wounded over 100. 5 September 1882 Thirty thousand workers marched in the first Labor Day parade in New York City. 1884 The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, forerunner of the AFL, passed a resolution stating that "8 hours shall constitute a legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886." Though the Federation did not intend to stimulate a mass insurgency, its resolution had precisely that effect. Late 1885/Early 1886 Hundreds of thousands of American workers, increasingly determined to resist subjugation to capitalist power, poured into a fledgling labor organization, the Knights of Labor. Beginning on May 1, 1886, they took to the streets to demand the universal adoption of the eight hour day. Chicago was the center of the movement. Workers there had been agitating for an eight hour day for months, and on the eve of May 1, 50,000 workers were already on strike. 30,000 more swelled their ranks the next day, bringing most of Chicago manufacturing to a standstill. Fears of violent class conflict gripped the city. No violence occurred on May 1 -- a Saturday -- or May 2. But on Monday, May 3, a fight involving hundreds broke out at McCormick Reaper between locked-out unionists and the non-unionist workers McCormick hired to replace them. The Chicago police, swollen in number and heavily armed, quickly moved in with clubs and guns to restore order. They left four unionists dead and many others wounded. Angered by the deadly force of the police, a group of anarchists, led by August Spies and Albert Parsons, called on workers to arm themselves and participate in a massive protest demonstration in Haymarket Square on Tuesday evening, May 4. The demonstration appeared to be a complete bust, with only 3,000 assembling. But near the end of the evening, an individual, whose identity is still in dispute, threw a bomb that killed seven policemen and injured 67 others. Hysterical city and state government officials rounded up eight anarchists, tried them for murder, and sentenced them to death. On 11 November 1887, four of them, including Parsons and Spies, were executed. All of the executed advocated armed struggle and violence as revolutionary methods, but their prosecutors found no evidence that any had actually thrown the Haymarket bomb. They died for their words, not their deeds. A quarter of a million people lined Chicago's street during Parson's funeral procession to express their outrage at this gross mis-carriage of justice. For radicals and trade unionists everywhere, Haymarket became a symbol of the stark inequality and injustice of capitalist society. The May 1886 Chicago events figured prominently in the decision of the founding congress of the Second International (Paris, 1889) to make May 1, 1890 a demonstration of the solidarity and power of the international working class movement. May Day has been a celebration of international socialism and (after 1917) international communism ever since. The Bayview Massacre also took place at this time (for more detailed information visit http://www.execpc.com/~blake/rollin~1.htm), where seven people, including one child, were killed by state militia. On 1 May 1886 about 2,000 Polish workers walked off their jobs and gathered at Saint Stanislaus Church in Milwaukee, angrily denouncing the ten hour workday. They then marched through the city, calling on other workers to join them; as a result, all but one factory was closed down as sixteen thousand protesters gathered at Rolling Mills, prompting Wisconsin Govorner Jeremiah Rusk to call the state militia. The militia camped out at the mill while workers slept in nearby fields, and on the morning of May 5th, as protesters chanted for the eight hour workday, General Treaumer ordered his men to shoot into the crowd, some of whom were carrying sticks, bricks, and scythes, leaving seven dead at the scene. The Milwaukee Journal reported that eight more would die within twenty four hours, and without hesitation added that Governor Rusk was to be commended for his quick action in the matter. 23 November 1887 The Thibodaux Massacre. The Louisiana Militia, aided by bands of "prominent citizens," shot at least 35 unarmed black sugar workers striking to gain a dollar-per-day wage, and lynched two strike leaders. 25 July 1890 New York garment workers won the right to unionize after a seven-month strike. They secured agreements for a closed shop, and firing of all scabs. 6 July 1892 The Homestead Strike. Pinkerton Guards, trying to pave the way for the introduction of scabs, opened fire on striking Carnegie mill steel- workers in Homestead, Pennsylvania. In the ensuing battle, three Pinkertons surrendered; then, unarmed, they were set upon and beaten by a mob of townspeople, most of them women. Seven guards and eleven strikers and spectators were shot to death. 11 July 1892 Striking miners in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho dynamited the Frisco Mill, leaving it in ruins. 1893 The first of several bloody mining strikes at Cripple Creek, Colorado. 5 July 1893 During a strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company, which had drastically reduced wages, the 1892 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago's Jackson Park was set ablaze, and seven buildings were reduced to ashes. The mobs raged on, burning and looting railroad cars and fighting police in the streets, until 10 July, when 14,000 federal and state troops finally succeeded in putting down the strike. 1894 Federal troops killed 34 American Railway Union members in the Chicago area attempting to break a strike, led by Eugene Debs, against the Pullman Company. Debs and several others were imprisoned for violating injunctions, causing disintegration of the union. 21 September 1896 The state militia was sent to Leadville, Colorado to break a miner's strike. 10 September 1897 19 unarmed striking coal miners and mine workers were killed and 36 wounded by a posse organized by the Luzerne County sherif for refusing to disperse near Lattimer, Pennsylvania. The strikers, most of whom were shot in the back, were originally brought in as strike-breakers, but later organized themselves. 1898 A portion of the Erdman Act, which would have made it a criminal offense for railroads to dismiss employees or discriminate against prospective employees based on their union activities, was declared invalid by the United States Supreme Court. 12 October 1898 Fourteen were killed, 25 wounded in violence resulting when Virden, Illinois mine owners attempted to break a strike by importing 200 nonunion black workers. 29 April 1899 When their demand that only union men be employed was refused, members of the Western Federation of Miners dynamited the $250,000 mill of the Bunker Hill Company at Wardner, Idaho, destroying it completely. President McKinley responded by sending in black soldiers from Brownsville, Texas with orders to round up thousands of miners and confine them in specially built "bullpens." 1899 and 1901 U.S. Army troops occupied the Coeur d'Alene mining region in Idaho. 12 October 1902 Fourteen miners were killed and 22 wounded by scabherders at Pana, Illinois. 23 November 1903 Troops were dispatched to Cripple Creek, Colorado to control rioting by striking coal miners. July 1903 Labor organizer Mary Harris ("Mother") Jones leads child workers in demanding a 55 hour work week. 23 February 1904 William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Chronicle began publishing articles on the menace of Japanese laborers, leading to a resolution of the California Legislature that action be taken against their immigration. 8 June 1904 A battle between the Colorado Militia and striking miners at Dunnville ended with six union members dead and 15 taken prisoner. Seventy-nine of the strikers were deported to Kansas two days later. 17 April 1905 The Supreme Court held that a maximum hours law for New York bakery workers was unconstitutional under the due process clause of the 14th ammendment. 1908 The Erdman Act was further weakened when Section 10 was declared unconstitutional. This section had made it illegal for railroad employers to fire employees for being involved in union activities (see 1898). 22 November 1909 The "Uprising of the 20,000." Female garment workers went on strike in New York; many were arrested. A judge told those arrested: "You are on strike against God." 25 December 1910 A dynamite bomb destroyed a portion of the Llewellyn Ironworks in Los Angeles, where a bitter strike was in progress. 1911 The Supreme Court ordered the AFL to cease its promotion of a boycott against the Bucks Stove and Range Company. A contempt charge against union leaders (including AFL President Samuel Gompers) was dismissed on technical grounds. 25 March 1911 The Triangle Shirtwaist Company, occupying the top three floors of a ten-story building in New York City, was consumed by fire. One hundred and forty-seven people, mostly women and young girls working in sweatshop conditions, lost their lives. Approximately 50 died as they leapt from windows to the street; the others were burned or trampled to death as they desperately attempted to escape through stairway exits locked as a precaution against "the interruption of work". On 11 April the company's owners were indicted for manslaughter. 2 December 1911 A Chicago "slugger," paid $50 by labor unions for every scab he "discouraged," described his job in an interview: "Oh, there ain't nothin' to it. I gets my fifty, then I goes out and finds the guy they wanna have slugged. I goes up to `im and I says to `im, `My friend, by way of meaning no harm,' and then I gives it to `im -- biff! in the mug. Nothin' to it." 24 February 1912 Women and children were beaten by police during a textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. 18 April 1912 The National Guard was called out against striking West Virginia coal miners. 11 June 1913 Police shot three maritime workers (one of whom was killed) who were striking against the United Fruit Company in New Orleans. 5 January 1914 The Ford Motor Company raised its basic wage from $2.40 for a nine hour day to $5 for an eight hour day. 20 April 1914 The "Ludlow Massacre." In an attempt to persuade strikers at Colorado's Ludlow Mine Field to return to work, company "guards," engaged by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and other mine operators and sworn into the State Militia just for the occasion, attacked a union tent camp with machine guns, then set it afire. Five men, two women and 12 children died as a result. Additional web resources are catolged at www.holtlaborlibrary.org/ludlow.html#Web%20Sites. 13 November 1914 A Western Federation of Miners strike is crushed by the militia in Butte, Montana. 19 January 1915 World famous labor leader Joe Hill was arrested in Salt Lake City. He was convicted on trumped up murder charges, and was executed 21 months later despite worldwide protests and two attempts to intervene by President Woodrow Wilson. In a letter to Bill Haywood shortly before his death he penned the famous words, "Don't mourn - organize!" On this same day, twenty rioting strikers were shot by factory guards at Roosevelt, New Jersey. 25 January 1915 The Supreme Court upholds "yellow dog" contracts, which forbid membership in labor unions. 22 July 1916 A bomb was set off during a "Preparedness Day" parade in San Francisco, killing 10 and injuring 40 more. Thomas J. Mooney, a labor organizer and Warren K. Billings, a shoe worker, were convicted, but were both pardoned in 1939. 19 August 1916 Strikebreakers hired by the Everett Mills owner Neil Jamison attacked and beat picketing strikers in Everett, Washington. Local police watched and refused to intervene, claiming that the waterfront where the incident took place was Federal land and therefore outside their jurisdiction. (When the picketers retaliated against the strikebreakers that evening, the local police intervened, claiming that they had crossed the line of jursidiction.) Three days later, twenty-two union men attempted to speak out at a local crossroads, but each was arrested; arrests and beatings of strikebreakers became common throughout the following months, and on 30 October vigilantes forced IWW speakers to run the gauntlet, subjecting them to whipping, tripping kicking, and impalement against a spiked cattle guard at the end of the gauntlet. In response, the IWW called for a meeting on 5 November. When the union men arrived, they were fired on; seven people were killed, 50 were wounded, and an indeterminate number wound up missing. 7 September 1916 Federal employees win the right to receive Worker's Compensation insurance. 12 July 1917 After seizing the local Western Union telegraph office in order to cut off outside communication, several thousand armed vigilantes forced 1,185 men in Bisbee, Arizona into manure-laden boxcars and "deported" them to the New Mexico desert. The action was precipitated by a strike when workers' demands (including improvements to safety and working conditions at the local copper mines, an end to discrimination against labor organizations and unequal treatment of foreign and minority workers, and the institution of a fair wage system) went unmet. The "deportation" was organized by Sheriff Harry Wheeler. The incident was investigated months later by a Federal Mediation Commission set up by President Woodrow Wilson; the Commission found that no federal law applied, and referred the case to the State of Arizona, which failed to take any action, citing patriotism and support for the war as justification for the vigilantes' action. 15 March 1917 The Supreme Court approved the Eight-Hour Act under the threat of a national railway strike. 1 August 1917 IWW organizer Frank Little was lynched in Butte, Monatana. 5 September 1917 Federal agents raided the IWW headquarters in 48 cities. 3 June 1918 A Federal child labor law, enacted two years earlier, was declared unconstitutional. A new law was enacted 24 February 1919, but this one too was declared unconstitutional on 15 May 1922. 27 July 1918 United Mine Workers organizer Ginger Goodwin was shot by a hired private policeman outside Cumberland, British Columbia. 26 August 1919 United Mine Worker organizer Fannie Sellins was gunned down by company guards in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania. 19 September 1919 Looting, rioting and sporadic violence broke out in downtown Boston and South Boston for days after 1,117 Boston policemen declared a work stoppage due to their thwarted attempts to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor. Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge put down the strike by calling out the entire state militia. 22 September 1919 The "Great Steel Strike" began. Ultimately, 350,000 steel workers walked off their jobs to demand union recognition. The AFL Iron and Steel Organizing Committee called off the strike on 8 January 1920, their goals unmet. 11 November 1919 The Centralia Massacre. Violence erupted when members of the American Legion attempted to force their way into an IWW hall in Centralia, Washington during an Armistice Day anniversary celebration. Four Legionnaires were shot dead by members of the IWW, after which IWW organizer Wesley Everest was lynched by a local mob. 22 December 1919 Amid a strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers (ultimately unsuccessful), approximately 250 "anarchists," "communists," and "labor agitators" were deported to Russia, marking the beginning of the so-called "Red Scare." 2 January 1920 The U.S. Bureau of Investigation began carrying out the nationwide Palmer Raids. Federal agents seized labor leaders and literature in the hopes of discouraging labor activity. A number of citizens were turned over to state officials for prosecution under various anti-anarchy statutes. 19 May 1920 The Battle of Matewan. Despite efforts by police chief (and former miner) Sid Hatfield and Mayor C. Testerman to protect miners from interference in their union drive in Matewan, West Virginia, Baldwin-Felts detectives hired by the local mining company and thirteen of the company's managers arrived to evict miners and their families from the Stone Mountain Mine camp. A gun battle ensued, resulting in the deaths of 7 detectives, Mayor Testerman, and 2 miners. Baldwin-Felts detectives assasinated Sid Hatfield 15 months later, sparking off an armed rebellion of 10,000 West Virginia coal miners at "The Battle of Blair Mountain," dubbed "the largest insurrection this country has had since the Civil War" by The Battle of Matewan Home Page. 1920 and 1921 Army troops were used to intervene against striking mineworkers in West Virginia. Details of these events can be found in the extensive and excellent article at www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh50-1.html. 22 June 1922 Violence erupted during a coal-mine strike at Herrin, Illinois. Thirty-six were killed, 21 of them non-union miners. 2 June 1924 A child labor ammendment to the U.S. Constitution was proposed; only 28 of the necessary 36 states ever ratified it. 14 June 1924 A San Pedro, California IWW hall was raided; a number of children were scalded when the hall was demolished. 25 May 1925 Two company houses occupied by nonunion coal miners were blown up and destroyed by labor "racketeers" during a strike against the Glendale Gas and Coal Company in Wheeling, West Virginia. 1926 Textile workers fought with police in Passaic, New Jersey. A year-long strike ensued. 21 November 1927 Picketing miners were massacred in Columbine, Colorado. 3 February 1930 "Chicagorillas" -- labor racketeers -- shot and killed contractor William Healy, with whom the Chicago Marble Setters Union had been having difficulties. 14 April 1930 Over 100 farm workers were arrested for their unionizing activities in Imperial Valley, California. Eight were subsequently convicted of `criminal syndicalism.' 4 May 1931 Gun-toting vigilantes attack striking miners in Harlan County, Kentucky. 7 March 1932 Police kill striking workers at Ford's Dearborn, Michigan plant. 10 October 1933 18,000 cotton workers went on strikein Pixley, California. Four were killed before a pay-hike was finally won. 1934 The Electric Auto-Lite Strike. In Toledo, OH, two strikers were killed and over two hundred wounded by National Guardsmen. Some 1300 National Guard troops, including included eight rifle companies and three machine gun companies, were called in to disperse the protestors. 1934 International Longshoremans and Warehouse union strike of 1934. Two longshoremen, Nick Bordoise and Howard Sperry, were shot to death by the San Francisco Police. May 1934 Police stormed striking truck drivers in Minneapolis who were attempting to prevent truck movement in the market area. 1 September - 22 September 1934 A strike in Woonsocket, RI, part of a national movement to obtain a minimum wage for textile workers, resulted in the deaths of three workers. Over 420,000 workers ultimately went on strike. 9 November 1935 The Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) was formed to expand industrial unionism. 11 February 1937 General Motors recognizes the United Auto Workers union following a sit-down strike. 26 May 1937 The 'Battle of the Overpass'. Walter Reuther and a group of UAW supporters, fresh from having organized GM and Chyrsler, attempting to distribute leaflets at Gate 4 of the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge plant, and were beaten up (together with bystanders) by Ford Service Department guards. 30 May 1937 Police killed 10 and wounded 30 during the "Memorial Day Massacre" at the Republic Steel plant in Chicago. 25 June 1938 The Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) Act is passed, banning child labor and setting the 40-hour work week. The Act went into effect in October 1940, and was upheld in the Supreme Court on 3 February 1941. 27 February 1939 The Supreme Court rules that sit-down strikes are illegal. 20 June 1941 Henry Ford recognizes the UAW. 15 December 1941 The AFL pledges that there will be no strikes in defense-related industry plants for the duration of the war. 28 December 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the Army to seize the executive offices of Montgomery Ward and Company after the corporation failed to comply with a National War Labor Board directive regarding union shops. 1946 Workers in packinghouses nation-wide went on strike. 1 April 1946 A strike by 400,000 mine workers in the U.S. began. U.S. troops seized railroads and coal mines the following month. 4 October 1946 The U.S. Navy seized oil refineries in order to break a 20-state post-war strike. 20 June 1947 The Taft-Hartley Labor Act, curbing strikes, was vetoed by President Truman. Congress overrode the veto. 20 April 1948 Labor leader Walter Reuther was shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassins. 27 August 1950 President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize all the nation's railroads to prevent a general strike. The railroads were not returned to their owners until two years later. 8 April 1952 President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize the nation's steel mills to avert a strike. The act was ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court on 2 June. 5 December 1955 The two largest labor organizations in the U.S. merged to form the AFL-CIO, with a membership estimated at 15 million. 5 April 1956 Columnist Victor Riesel, a crusader against labor racketeers, was blinded in New York City when a hired assailant threw sulfuric acid in his face. 14 September 1959 The Landrum-Griffin Act passes, restricting union activity. 7 November 1959 The Taft-Hartley Act is invoked by the Supreme Court to break a steel strike. 1 April 1963 The longest newspaper strike in U.S. history ended. The 9 major newspapers in New York City had ceased publication over 100 days before. 10 June 1963 Congress passes a law mandating equal pay to women. 5 January 1970 Joseph A. Yablonski, unsuccessful reform candidate to unseat "Tough Tony" Boyle as President of the United Mine Workers, was murdered, along with his wife and daughter, in their Clarksville, Pennsylvania home by assassins acting on Boyle's orders. Boyle was later convicted of the killing. West Virginia miners went on strike the following day in protest. 18 March 1970 The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Post Office Department began with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan, soon involving 210,000 of the nation's 750,000 postal employees. With mail service virtually paralzyed in New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia, President Nixon declared a state of national emergency and assigned military units to New York City post offices. The stand-off culminated two weeks later. 29 July 1970 United Farm Workers forced California grape growers to sign an agreement after a five-year strike. 3 August 1981 Federal air traffic controllers began a nationwide strike after their union rejected the government's final offer for a new contract. Most of the 13,000 striking controllers defied the back-to-work order, and were dismissed by President Reagan on 5 August. October 1982 A boycott was initiated by the Industrial Association of Machinists against Brown & Sharpe, a machine, precision, measuring and cutting tool manufacturer, headquartered in Rhode Island. The boycott was called after the firm refused to bargain in good faith (withdrawing previously negotiated clauses in the contract), and forced the union into an unwanted and bitter strike during which police sprayed pepper gas on some 800 IAM pickets at the company's North Kingston plant in early 1982. Three weeks later, a machinist narrowly escaped serious injury when a shot fired into the picket line hit his belt buckle. The National Labor Relations Board subsequently charged Brown & Sharpe with regressive bargaining, and of entering into negotiations with the express purpose of not reaching an agreement with the union. 6 October 1986 1,700 female flight attendants won an 18-year lawsuit (which included $37 million in damages) against United Arilines, which had fired them for getting married. 24 October 1987 The 35-member executive council of the AFL-CIO decided unanimously to readmit the 1.6-million member Teamsters Union to its ranks. The scandal-ridden union had been expelled from the federation in 1957. President Jackie Presser was awaiting trial at the time, and the U.S. Justice Department was considering removal of the union's leadership because of possible links to organized crime. 17 September 1989 Ninety-eight miners and a minister occupied the the Pittston Coal Company's Moss 3 preparation plant in Carbo, Virginia, beginning a year-long strike against Pittston Coal. While a month-long Soviet coal strike dominated U.S. news broadcasts, the year-long Pittston strike garnered almost no mainstream press coverage whatsoever.
"I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology...It's importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda...Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated." Bertrand Russel, Eugenicist and Logician
Ping to my post above.
"I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology...It's importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda...Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated." Bertrand Russel, Eugenicist and Logician
Yes. Or even worse - private armies were used to kill workers that decided not to work, or strike. Point of fact is the Ludlow massacre about a hundred miles from here, Colorado Springs, where the Colorado Militia, totally owned by the Rockefeller clan from New York, evidently ordered a machine gunning of the usual suspects of men women and children for the sin of deciding that the wages and entanglements of the mining camp the Rockfeller's were not worth their labor. About one hundred were murdered.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" The sumg well fed Cal Thomas should be made to work in a Ludlow mine for a decade along with his family - then he can parrot his swill about the Freedom the citizens have. A collossial ass - right up there with Ben Stien.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
It seems to me, when I think about, that there has been a definite anti-union bias in the media since some time in the 1960's. Yes, the Ludlow Massacre, along with others, was at the behest of the founders of the monied empire we now call the "New World Order". What people don't get, because of the bias that has been implanted, is that Unions, and to no small degree Socialism, was a direct result of abusive management which treated their workers as chattels. I grew up, in part, in a company town. You did not cross the company, and the Cops paid homage to The Company. The Cops were actually pretty decent EXCEPT that they were OWNED by The Company and did what The Company ordered. I had a debate with one of my Free-Marketeer Economics Professors and actually won him over to my point of view i.e., that there may some evils involved in Unionism but that the alternative to no unions is slave labor. Unions only form and succeed when management has been abusive over a long period of time and Unions are the reaction to the abusive behavior not the abusive behavior a result of the unions.
"I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology...It's importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda...Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated." Bertrand Russel, Eugenicist and Logician
OI... Thanks for that. The child labor act did not become law until 1941, to the disgrace of this country. Yet here on this forum we have people that seem not to understand what was involved. One brave denizen here on the forum used another name to tell me 25 cents was all I was worth. Very brave person that was not there, did not live it. I have no animosity.
A very few cultures have delt with this ancient issue sucessfully, IMVHO. One of the basic drivers of most humans is fear of lack of food - you can see it in the greed of an infant suckling a breast. It is understandable, fear of starving tomorrow is an honest concern. However time and time we can see societies with plenty sack most of the goods for the powerful and leave the rest in a marginal situation, yet it is the majority of the population, nearly by definition,, that is able to produce the food and wealth that is captured by the wealthy.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" Ill pay fifty cents in a silver Ben. And you are welcome to come over to enjoy the new fire pit we built in the backyard. Beer's on me as I own a Liquor store.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" You are most welcome.
"I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology...It's importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda...Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated." Bertrand Russel, Eugenicist and Logician
You misunderstand Liberty. Liberty is the freedom to do as you wish so long as you are not interfering with someone else's freedom or property. It isn't anarchy, but rather an arrangement where if you want to paint your house purple, you're welcome to do it, but if you pollute your neighbor's land, you are held liable for it. Limited Government is supposedly what we have now. How is that working out?
Yes, and they won. But most unions nowadays are white-collar Government workers. Tell me what protections a Network Engineer requires, please, and I will tell you how those Unions these days screw over their members. But like most "causes" - once the battle is won, they don't comprehend "maintenance mode" and push things beyond where they need to go and actually make things WORSE. The Civil Rights movement is a perfect example of this. From equal rights to special rights.
I think you fail to realize just how deep our rabbit hole of a political charade really goes. Neither camp has brought us out of the desert, and that's for a good reason. As long as the Barry Goldwaters and the John F. Kennedys can get standing ovations for their vacant but sweet-sounding ideologies, we'll never be really free.
Yes they won to some extent, but I hope you noticed the endless number of workers that were shot to death for daring to protest conditions. I read the list OI posted and did not see one owner or management dying. There is something significant there.
Nowhere is that being diminished or discounted or even ignored. The question is this - that was 100 years ago. What is the use of Unions today? Do we have management shooting workers today? If the answer is no, then the question still remains -- what are unions "protecting" their people from TODAY? The best that I can find is that Unions protect workers from prosecution for the workers' OWN malfeasance, the workers' OWN criminal activity, and the workers' OWN incompetence. If you want to live a century in the past, feel free, but that has little to no bearing on what goes on TODAY.
IMO the professional politician is the main reason.
What private-sector unions? We've already agreed that they're mostly non-existent in corporate America today. They've been busted, driven out, dismantled. Now where they had remained (auto industry) those industries themselves have been hollowed out. With free trade, free flow of international capital, and open immigration unions are definitely impotent. That situation has arisen because of Americans answering the phony call for free enterprise. An America-first form of free enterprise might have worked, but the capitalists said that wasn't good enough. They wanted the world. Now they have it, and we have nothing.
They get their funds from corporate and foreign interests. Ordinary citizens can't afford those things. Now I recognize that unions had the money to fund lobbyists, but where are they today? GM and Chrysler are out of business, for all intents and purposes. I don't blame unions for that. I blame bad management, NAFTA, and the bloody flow of capital outside of our country over the past 40 years.
Except in certain "showcase" industries like the Auto Industry where the Federal Government through the NLRB keeps them alive. You're correct in your analysis that free trade, free flow of capital, NAFTA, and open immigration has demolished companies and thus unions. That is why GOVERNMENT WORKERS are now the majority of union members. Thus my question I haven't gotten a good answer for on this thread. "What good are the Unions for white collar Government workers?" I get a bunch of crap in response saying "Oh you don't know history" - really? Still the same, the question remains that nobody wants to deal with. Avoidance of the question tells me that posters on this thread are living in the past and don't comprehend that times have changed, nor do they want to. Every company that can has gone away from defined benefit plans. The automakers were stuck with it due to Federal interference. Now with bankruptcies, those are going to go away as well. If the Unions really were protecting their workers, they would have taken the pensions onto themselves as opposed to saddling the companies with them. A company can take losses and wind up downsizing and in trouble. If the Unions had half a brain, they would have managed the pension funds themselves. Of course, that assumes the Unions are honest. Historically, they haven't been. Ask Jimmy Hoffa about that.
Do you really believe that?
Let's take that a step further. What has been honest about 20th/21st century American politics and social policy? Given all the lies, all the distortions, why wouldn't people join unions as the best way to attempt to obtain their piece of the pie? Nothing has worked out as planned, not just unions. Singling them out is a favorite Republican pastime, and of course the Republican party has historically earned millions in corporate donations on that basis. I'd like to remind you that it has long been a Republican, "conservative" plank to open up free trade, permit migrant workers onto our agribusiness farms, and make the free international flow of capital possible. That along with union busting has been very good for the Republican party until recently. Nobody cares anymore. Jobs for anyone are too scarce. GOP conservatives and anti-union conservatives (who aren't really patriotic and aren't really pro-worker) have had their way. America's industries are toast. Capital is more mobile than ever before. It seems to fly right out of the pockets of the American people now, faster than ever. And now the Democrats are helping, since they're all working for the same people anyway.
Let me give you an example that illustrates my point. I was running an IT shop with a unionized IT force (education) and one person did an outstanding job on a project. First, I tried to promote that person - the Union said NO Tell me how the Union is protecting this person. I would really like to know.
Tell us how Unions can prevent this and you will make a point for them. I'll tell you the truth in this matter - they can't prevent it.
None of us can. Where did you have the impression that I was pro-union? I'm an America firster. All I'm saying is that unionizing is inevitable given the history of international capitalism.
Unionizing is inevitable only under certain conditions. You will note that Honda and Toyota don't have Union shops. Why is that?
It's not true.
That's Venezuela which is in complete chaos currently. Are you saying the United States can actually be compared to Venezuela? Granted, it is possible to claim we have Barack Chavez in office, but so far, we don't have a Dictatorship.
You said Toyota wasn't unionized, but it is. You're definitely missing my point, so I won't belabor it any longer. The same factions that were anti-union (think Reagan/Goldwater) were the ones who worked opposite to the left to put us where we are today. It's time to move on, with what little we have remaining of a country.
Toyota is not unionized in the United States. Sorry, since the thread here is about California and Unions, I made a bad assumption we were limiting discussion to the USA. I didn't know that third-world countries and California government unions were equivalent, but perhaps I should re-evaluate that assessment. You have made a compelling argument that the Union thugs in California (some of whom I know well) are the equivalent of third-world Dictators.
What are you going to do about it? Nothing you've talked about up until now hasn't been said a million times. Reagan and Bush failed to deliver your fabled conservative American renewal. The record is skipping and repeating. We're going nowhere with the old left/right schism. Rave on, brother.
I'm doing the one thing that nobody else wants to do. I am helping the system fall apart and fail. Out of the ashes may come something workable. What are YOU doing? Also, kindly note that you're stuck on the left/right thing. Not once have I even referenced it. Why is that?
All I can do is look for different perspectives to offer. I figure we need a new outlook if we want to improve things that have been happening for a long time, for the same reasons.
Comments (116 - 137) not displayed.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestOur national religion is military worship, BTW.
#76. To: Deasy, tom007 (#74)
Either of you gentlemen ever had this subscribed to the "Honorable Justice Holmes"?????
#77. To: Cynicom (#76)
#78. To: Cynicom (#76)
Current scholarship shows that Carrie Buck's sterilization relied on a false diagnosis premised on the now discredited science of eugenics. It is likely that Carrie's mother, Emma Buck, was committed to a state institution because she was considered sexually promiscuous, that the same diagnosis was made about Carrie when she became an unwed mother at the age of 17 due to being raped, and that her daughter Vivian was diagnosed as “not quite normal” at the age of six months largely in support of the legal effort to sterilize Carrie.
#79. To: Cynicom (#75)
You have to somehow make Americans understand that they are...programmed...
#80. To: tom007 (#79)
#81. To: Cynicom, farmfriend, Tom007, lodwick, all (#25)
It was for self protection that Unions came about.
#82. To: Original_Intent (#81)
Government Troops were used to massacre striking workers.
#83. To: Cynicom (#82)
In 1932, Henry Ford cut workers pay in half, sped up the assembly line and refused all requests for safety features.
#84. To: Cynicom, farmfriend, Tom007, lodwick, all (#82)
#85. To: IndieTX (#83)
#86. To: Original_Intent (#81)
Government Troops were used to massacre striking workers.
#87. To: All (#86)
(Edited)
#88. To: redpanther (#84)
(Edited)
Ben Stein is a colossal ass ping! Ping to thread
#89. To: tom007, Cynicom, FarmFriend, lodwick, christine (#86)
#90. To: Original_Intent (#84)
3 June 1918 A Federal child labor law, enacted two years earlier, was declared unconstitutional. A new law was enacted 24 February 1919, but this one too was declared unconstitutional on 15 May 1922.
#91. To: Original_Intent (#89)
that there may some evils involved in Unionism but that the alternative to no unions is slave labor. Unions only form and succeed when management has been abusive over a long period of time and Unions are the reaction to the abusive behavior not the abusive behavior a result of the unions.
#92. To: Cynicom (#90)
One brave denizen here on the forum used another name to tell me 25 cents was all I was worth
#93. To: Cynicom (#90)
#94. To: Deasy (#60)
#95. To: Original_Intent (#81)
All of the unionism of the late 1800's and on into the 1900's was for self protection.
#96. To: mirage (#94)
#97. To: mirage, Original Intent (#95)
Yes, and they won. But most unions nowadays are white-collar Government workers.
#98. To: Cynicom (#97)
Yes they won to some extent, but I hope you noticed the endless number of workers that were shot to death for daring to protest conditions.
#99. To: Deasy (#96)
Neither camp has brought us out of the desert, and that's for a good reason.
#100. To: mirage (#98)
What is the use of Unions today?
#101. To: mirage (#99)
IMO the professional politician is the main reason.
#102. To: Deasy (#100)
With free trade, free flow of international capital, and open immigration unions are definitely impotent.
#103. To: mirage (#98)
If you want to live a century in the past, feel free, but that has little to no bearing on what goes on TODAY.
#104. To: mirage (#102)
Of course, that assumes the Unions are honest. Historically, they haven't been. Ask Jimmy Hoffa about that.
Every company that can has gone away from defined benefit plans. The automakers were stuck with it due to Federal interference. Now with bankruptcies, those are going to go away as well.
You're not telling us anything new. We know that America's industrial might has been hollowed out. We know that its most successful businesses have been laid low. We know that hard work isn't enough. Thus my question I haven't gotten a good answer for on this thread. "What good are the Unions for white collar Government workers?"
They too will come to find that there is no such thing as commitment. They too will learn that when a country goes broke, even unions can't help them. But they hoped, and they joined. If they want to be union, let them. If you want to know why they're union, ask them, not us. I can't see anything in the constitution that bars them from joining unions. You're correct in your analysis that free trade, free flow of capital, NAFTA, and open immigration has demolished companies and thus unions. That is why GOVERNMENT WORKERS are now the majority of union members.
That makes sense to me. Everything else can be off-shored, underbid, outsourced, Blackwatered, and so forth. You're not persuading anyone that unions are obsolete in that regard.
#105. To: Cynicom (#103)
Do you really believe that?
Then I tried to give them a bonus. The Union said NO
#106. To: Deasy (#104)
Everything else can be off-shored, underbid, outsourced, Blackwatered, and so forth. You're not persuading anyone that unions are obsolete in that regard.
#107. To: mirage (#106)
#108. To: Deasy (#107)
Where did you have the impression that I was pro-union?
All I'm saying is that unionizing is inevitable given the history of international capitalism.
#109. To: mirage (#108)
Toyota union leader shot dead in Venezuela
Tue May 5, 2009 6:30pm EDT
www.reuters.com/article/r...ce5/idUSTRE5446TA20090505
#110. To: Deasy (#109)
It's not true.
#111. To: mirage (#110)
#112. To: Deasy (#111)
#113. To: mirage (#112)
#114. To: Deasy (#113)
(Edited)
What are you going to do about it?
#115. To: mirage (#114)
What are YOU doing?
.
.
.