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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: 1370
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
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#1. To: farmfriend (#0)
Soho Mantra from a Zio Christa.
For Thine Own sake, Lust After Ronco Products!
Cal was not around when ...Henry Ford...had men shot for wanting a piece of the dream. By the way Cal, Ford like the Rockefellers et al, left BILLIONS behind to try and engineer a better society.
Why the hell is it always the unions fault and never management?
Because the unions are run by a collection of communists and street thugs aka mafia
Lady... If you think for a moment, you would answer your own question. You know full well that Unions are populated with such people as myself, lowest class, uneducated, dregs of society. Ford, Rockefellers and the other greedy elite class did indeed leave hundreds of billions of dollars behind, with the intent to alter, improve and or eliminate the unwanted masses. All of them had great interest in eugenics, with themselves of course deciding on who were inferior and superior.
rob... For once you got it right...RUN... You neglected to say that unions are POPULATED BY THE UNWASHED MASSES.
"Eugenics became recognized as a legitimate science, in America, in the early 1920s. It made major moves, though, during the 1930s. The movement offered answers as to who was responsible for the social and economic state of the country. The finger of blame was directed at paupers, the "feebleminded," "degenerates" and the "mentally diseased."
The '59 Impala surpassed it with much bigger fins.
Ever try and get a teacher or a cop fired? The unions defend the indefensible.
Without unions, good or bad, there would never have been a middle class in America. True, unions protect the malingerers as well as the hard working employee. What is the alternative??? We would go back to child labor, and many of the elite of this country are well know for having made their fortunes from the backs of children.
I've know unions and their members all my life. I've been in and out as a member and then as white collar worker. From my experience, they're a necessary evil, at least up North. The cost of living in NYC is such that the $40-$50 an hour buys a member a middle class life. I certainly can understand how someone looking at that wage from a less costly part of the nation can point fingers, but salary is relative to cost of living. OTOH, the politics of unions I find disgusting, and oddly, it doesn't reflect that of the membership IMO. Anyway, thanks for the article and subsequent interesting comments.
You will notice that it is only the companies that have unions that are getting tax payer bailouts last time I checked Wal-Mart is looking to hire 20,000 with no union...for now!
Unions do not protect labor and I see nothing wrong with a young person working if they want to. I really resent the government telling my child he can't work without a permit from his school. It is none of the school's business or the government's for that matter. As for allowing a middle class in expensive NY I don't see it. If labor didn't blackmail businesses they would be forced to move to less expensive areas or costs in NY would come down. Mean while I can't afford a car because some jerks makes $50 bucks an hour screwing in screws on a production line. Do you really think dock workers deserve $80,000 to $100,000 a year? That's what they get in Sacramento no less. Why? Is their labor really worth that? No, the unions can shut down shipping though. Maybe the docks should be able to hire cheaper and willing labor? Sorry, you can't be libertarian and support unions. I have the right to work any job I'm able to and I also have the right not to join a union. The unions don't see it that way though. Coercive organizations. I CAN'T STAND UNIONS!
Most of us agree. However, the odds are great that without Unions, you would have never been middle class or higher. As for child labor, one has to review its ugly past to understand why we have rigid child labor laws now.
I'm not middle class or higher and my understanding is that child labor was not what it is made out to be. Propaganda put out by the unions. Getting rid of unions would not take us back to that either. Unions drive up cost and drive industry to third worlds. BTW, most unions are for government workers now. Why is that?
The political influence is a downside. The upside is that you can't work enough hours at WalMart to earn a decent living.
Nothing to do with the Military Industrial Corporate Banking complex, which Cal is a card carring member of, and the endless wars, and fantastically expensive wars they have propagated has anything to do with it huh Cal?
"Satan / Cheney in "08" "child labor was not what it is made out to be. Propaganda put out by the unions." My parents were very much involved in child labor, being born before 1900. I was in on the tail end of such as late as the 1930s as farmers were allowed to hire children for dangerous jobs at little pay. The history of child labor and socialism can be studied with one man, Robert Owen, back in the early 1800s. There were no unions then, no propaganda, Owen was a very wealthy man, all from the sweat and blood of very small children. He describes such in his own words. Owens conscience finally bothered him to such an extent that he is credited with being the Father of socialism. People wrongfully try to separate capitalism and socialism as being separate distinct entities, they are not. Capitalism begot socialism and now they are one and the same.
People need to be reminded of that tom.
Unions today suck. They served their purpose back in the day. Kids today should be able to work, and learn what it's like to perform a service and get paid for it, whatever is the prevailing wage for that job. It will not kill them, and it may show to them the value of learning more valuable skills. This is my own life-experience.
And the fact that all the so called socialist governments in recent past actually were fascist dictatorships of various forms. It took Russia about three years from their revolution in 1917, claiming as one of the foundations of the new community they were forming to be self determination before the Russians were expanding into East Europe. Anyone who thinks that Russia or the East European bloc states were socialists is just incorrect. Yes that is what they called themselves, like the USG calling itself a "participatory democracy".
"Satan / Cheney in "08" Thank god management and government is free of that mind set.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" Like child molesters and embezzlers. They have long outlived most of their usefulness. True, they are needed in some professions like mining and blasting where there is serious chance of injury, but most union members are Government employees these days. So tell me, with the vast majority (read: 90%+) of union members being Government employees, are they truly still needed to protect the IRS agent who just stole your house, the cop who planted a bag of weed on your child, and the teacher who was caught sleeping with your son?
Caustic sarcasm is loved.
Having once been a Union member and employed by the government, I have a little knowledge on that subject. In the olde days we had no union, needed none and then after 1960 there abouts, things changed, the government was setting all the rules and we had no recourse. It was for self protection that Unions came about.
Freedom of assembly and association.
Federal government is a huge cancer and no doctor would work on the cancer without wearing rubber gloves.
Except the freedom to find a different job if you didn't like the one you had.
In the pre-WWI days, sure, they were needed. These are not the pre-WWI days anymore. Times have changed but unions have not. Tell me, how many Government Accountants need self-protection? 90%+ of Union members today are Government Employees. How many of them need self-protection and from what?
When monopolies control access to labor, the people struggle to find a way to deal with the situation. I prefer not to work union, but I understand why people have gone that way, and stayed. It becomes a family tradition. Abuse of the workers is what brought out the need. The right has only served to protect the monopolies with its union busting. Break up the multinational conglomerates, and the need for unions would probably subside. What passes for the American left or the right: it doesn't matter. The traditional language used to describe political factions and viewpoints all lead back to the same thing: great masses of power and wealth accumulated where it doesn't belong, and moving away from the citizens quickly.
You do realize that Unions are monopolies.
Good point. But I will say that one bad deed begets another.
Unions started in the pre-WWI era. Are you really arguing that everything is the same now that it was One Hundred Years ago?
Worse, because the dollar is even less reliable than it was then.
So why are you arguing to keep things 100 years in the past and saying "Its probably a good idea" ?
Absolutely true. Abusive labor practices generated labor unions. And yes the unions abused the system.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" No one can "keep" a union except the workers. It's really up to them. If they think it helps them, they'll probably do it. It may hurt them in the long run, but that's how it goes. I'll point out that unions took root after the industrial revolution had turned to militarization, and when we had committed to empire. Around the same time, the Fabians nationalized our public lands and curtailed homesteading. We talk about the symptoms. They just don't matter as much as the root causes do.
That is a profound and accurate observation.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" True... With that view, you surprise me. It is not a knowledgeable, self disciplined, well thought out position to abide. Public servants are just that, working at the will and whim of politicians and their minions. Long ago it was called the "spoils system", a system kept afloat by widespread corruption that used public money as their own private piggy bank. The people demanded change and a promise was made to civil servants, work for so many years and certain age, and you will receive a pension, in return we demand loyalty, we set your wages and working criteria. That left open the opportunity for mischief, in that one could work to near pension time and end up with nothing. Thus Unions.
Mark If America is destroyed, it may be by Americans who salute the flag, sing the national anthem, march in patriotic parades, cheer Fourth of July speakers - normally good Americans who fail to comprehend what is required to keep our country strong and free - Americans who have been lulled into a false security (April 1968).---Ezra Taft Benson, US Secretary of Agriculture 1953-1961 under Eisenhower
thanks for the insult.
We've seen the concept of "working for a living" (you know, for sustenance and prosperity throughout one's life) turned to dust. I've heard so-called "conservatives" lambasting workers who demand a decent retirement pension. If we respect the value of life and property, then we must be willing to compensate people for the portion of their lives they give up in work. To do otherwise is theft. And that's what we see now creeping upward from the poorer classes (who are often the ones to experience it) to the middle class.
That is incorrect given the NLRB and how Union Bosses operate through intimidation. Federal Law protects and enhances Unions. You should look into it some time. In many States, workers have no choice but to join a union and then have little say in what happens to the union dues that they are then forced to pay. For example, the 'benefits' that unions negotiate are typically of a one-size-fits-all type. Like Health Insurance. Where I am, the local teachers' union did a marvelous job of it. You pay $1000 per month or more regardless of how many people you place on the policy. Single people pay $1000. Families of 20 pay $1000. Oh, and did I mention its a closed shop so you have no choice in the matter but to sign on for the whole kit and kaboodle?
You can always look for a job somewhere else, or start your own company.
Funny thing, that. I actually tried that once. The price tag was over $50k before we actually did anything - and that was in Government fees, regulatory compliance matters, and such. Still think that throwing a lot of people "in the way" is a good idea?
So we're back to the original problem, aren't we? You can't fix the problem by addressing the symptoms. Unions are a symptom.
"so called" conservatives? Why is a company required to give you a retirement system? Isn't that your own responsibility? Isn't that what 401Ks are for? Now if a company adds money into a retirement system as part of your wage package fine but to see this as something you are "owed" is ridiculous. Worse if we are talking about government. If a company can't get decent workers at the wage they are offering they will raise the pay. To force this with a union is wrong and to then close it to workers who don't want to join the unions compounds the wrong.
History is replete with volumes written about serfdom and slavery. Something most of us care not to envision.
I didn't offer any details as to how workers should be supported after retirement. It doesn't really matter how it works to me. What's obvious is that more and more people are going into retirement in poverty, and more and more organizations are actively searching for ways they can avoid the problem. It's really just a symptom of a larger issue. We don't hear any real solutions from the left or the right about it, because they have a vested interest in keeping people divided and their attention off the real sources of our problems.
That will be me.
Yet that is what government unions make of me, a slave. I can not put money away for my own retirement because I have to pay for your union coerced retirement. On top of that I'm supposed to believe that the unions were good by protecting you. Sorry, ain't gonna happen.
You and millions of other Americans who were promised the "American dream" if they only worked hard.
Unions are not a symptom. Unions pressure Government to put into place ridiculous rules that restrict competition. They CAUSE problems. Going back, the real solution is to whack Government back to practically nothing, but, over time, it would simply grow back again because pressure groups like Unions would simply re-invent the same crap we have today. Thus, you have to deal with the problems as they arise while chopping back Government. My hope is that the current collapse in tax revenues will cause Government to shrink.
I disagree, and I think this position is part of the phony left/right divide. The left inculcates its adherents that unions are their only recourse to hated capitalists who are out to deprive them of the value of their labor. The right inculcates its adherents into believing that companies have a right to defend themselves against organized labor. Meanwhile, America's industries are collapsing. You all can act out on the stage, pointing fingers at each other, but I'm looking for the man behind the curtain.
You won't find one. There is no single 'man' to track down with all of this. What you will find is a basic fact of human nature; people want others to obey them. Its that simple and it is historical. The SYMPTOM of the problem is the result of this. The CAUSE is people getting together, acting like a biker gang, and shaking others down - legally, of course. The CURE is Liberty. Unions are just gangs of organized thugs.
Until the advent of ...UNIONS...there was but a tiny middle class, very tiny. I can only say I did not enjoy working for 25 cents a day as a child. Oh Yes, I was eight years old and could quit if I did'nt like the pay and working conditions. Indeed. Capitalism and socialism are one and the same, the ruling elite own and operate both to their advantage.
Yeahs, but were you really worth anything more than that Reason the middle-class was so small was very few pepole fit into it.
on a mission from todd.
Summers, during the depression, my dad worked at a family friend's CO ranch for a dollar a day plus his room and board. And thought himself very fortunate to have the job.
And what, all because of "unbridled exuberance?"
I see a more complex variation of this analogy. Some powerful people who own and control the press, can afford to lobby congress, steer the direction of public education, and even influence foreign trade and diplomacy, create the illusion that shakedowns are going to help the ordinary people. They got their wealth by analyzing how our system works and gaming it for a century and a half. Where the shakedown bureaucracies are established, more power is transferred to the powerful people, who manage to steer the shakedown machine toward their affiliated banks when the shakedown machines run out of money. Given a choice between strictly limited government and what we have today, I will take limited government. But I fully understand that the cycle will repeat itself given conditions of "pure liberty." Pure liberty can easily be gamed. What's more, partisan politics can easily distract people from that fact on both sides. The left wants one type of freedom and the right wants another. Meanwhile, we're not really free. We won't be until we learn to think in new ways.
Buggy whips were useful in their day as well.
Farm... Your analogies seem to not hold water.
The managed trade, open borders crowd uses those analogies.
I am NOT a managed trade open borders person. I have a very long reputation for being otherwise. I'm insulted that you would think I was. Instead of arguing the points you have both resorted to insults. Thanks, appreciate it.
I didn't mean to insult you. I'm just reporting what I've seen. Free trade and open borders advocates have used the buggy whip analogy for as long as I can remember.
A letter making the request to State Fund from union local President Yvonne Walker contrasts with an e-mail she sent to members in April. At that time, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Peter Busch had just ruled from the bench that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger illegally furloughed the 500 State Fund members of the state legal professionals union, CASE. "(State Fund's) so-called independence for decisions about furlough signals a dangerous tone and could do long term damage to the civil service protections enjoyed by (State Fund) employees," Walker said in the April e-mail to members. SEIU did not participate in the CASE lawsuit against State Fund. Now Walker wants fund President Jan Frank to restore full hours and pay to the 5,000 or so SEIU-covered employees at the fund based on the CASE lawsuit, which, she says, didn't include SEIU workers because of "a legal technicality." "Local 1000 attorneys are preparing to file an action against State Fund and the Governor to compel State Fund to comply with the court's judgment should State Fund fail to take immediate action to apply the judgment to employees represented by SEIU Local 1000. I hope that State Fund will take action rendering these steps unnecessary and thereby avoid the time and expense of additional litigation on this subject." You can read Walker's letter to Frank by clicking here. It seems unlikely that SEIU folks at State Fund will get furlough relief with just a letter. CASE members won their lawsuit, but still had to wait weeks for a formal judgment from Busch before the Controller's Office would recalculate their payroll. And now, with that out of the way, the fund's "legal team is reviewing the order and working with DPA the Controller's Office" to apply the ruling, said State Fund spokeswoman Jennifer Vargen. A couple of other issues: We've asked the Controller's Office to confirm that yesterday's judgment means that those CASE employees directly impacted by the ruling will get full pay for June. (Click here for a primer on figuring out the state's payroll change submission deadlines.) From what we can tell, it shouldn't be a problem, but we're checking just to be sure. And how will the fund will make up the lost hours and pay to CASE members? Stay tuned. The lawyers are figuring it out. UPDATE 5:17 P.M.: State Controller's Office spokesman Jacob Roper sent an e-mail reply to our question about whether CASE-covered workers at SEIU will see their checks restored to full pay this month: By Ryan Lillis The vote was 66 percent against, 34 percent in favor, according to the union. Sacramento officials asked that firefighters forgo a 5 percent raise due to them next month in order to slash $5 million from a citywide $50 million deficit for the 2009/10 fiscal year. If an agreement is not reached before the city council meeting on June 16, the city will have to decide whether to cut the fire budget or transfer those cuts onto other departments. Non-public safety departments already face millions in cuts and more than 100 layoffs. The last day for firefighters and other city workers laid off would be June 19. Earlier today, fire union officials charged the city with trying to intimidate members by sending out layoff notices to 68 employees this week, two days before voting on the tentative agreement began. Those pink slips were sent to 50 firefighters whose jobs were in jeopardy, as well as 18 high-ranking fire officials who face demotion. City officials said earlier this week those layoff notices would be rescinded if the fire union agreed to salary concessions. The notices were sent out this week to give at-risk employees three weeks' notice that their jobs could be slashed. June 19 represents the last day of the final pay period of the current fiscal year. Still, union officials questioned the timing of the notices. "There's a great amount of mistrust and now confusion since those pink slips were already issued," union spokeswoman Robin Swanson said. "They're trying to create intimidation. This is a plan that has definitely backfired." I'm just thinking about the economy after these people start spending a lot less money. It's another bubble.
Featuring the original photo captions by Lewis W. Hine. Faces of Lost Youth Left - Furman Owens, 12 years old. Can't read. Doesn't know his A,B,C's. Said, "Yes I want to learn but can't when I work all the time." Been in the mills 4 years, 3 years in the Olympia Mill. Columbia, S.C. Mid - Adolescent girls from Bibb Mfg. Co. in Macon, Georgia. Right - Doffer boys. Macon, Georgia. The Mill Left - A general view of spinning room, Cornell Mill. Fall River, Mass. Mid - A moments glimpse of the outer world. Said she was 11 years old. Been working over a year. Rhodes Mfg. Co. Lincolnton, N.C. Right - Some boys and girls were so small they had to climb up on to the spinning frame to mend broken threads and to put back the empty bobbins. Bibb Mill No. 1. Macon, Ga. Left - One of the spinners in Whitnel Cotton Mill. She was 51 inches high. Has been in the mill one year. Sometimes works at night. Runs 4 sides - 48 cents a day. When asked how old she was, she hesitated, then said, "I don't remember," then added confidentially, "I'm not old enough to work, but do just the same." Out of 50 employees, there were ten children about her size. Whitnel, N.C. Mid - The overseer said apologetically, "She just happened in." She was working steadily. The mills seem full of youngsters who "just happened in" or "are helping sister." Newberry, S.C. Right - Jo Bodeon, a back-roper in the mule room at Chace Cotton Mill. Burlington, Vt. Newsies Left - A small newsie downtown on a Saturday afternoon. St. Louis, Mo. Mid - A group of newsies selling on Capitol steps. Tony, age 8, Dan, 9, Joseph, 10, and John, age 11. Washington, D.C. Right - Tony Casale, age 11, been selling 4 years. Sells sometimes until 10 p.m. His paper told me the boy had shown him the marks on his arm where his father had bitten him for not selling more papers. He (the boy) said, "Drunken men say bad words to us." Hartford, Conn. Left - Out after midnight selling extras. There were many young boys selling very late. Youngest boy in the group is 9 years old. Harry, age 11, Eugene and the rest were a little older. Washington, D.C. Mid - Michael McNelis, age 8, a newsboy [with photographer Hine]. This boy has just recovered from his second attack of pneumonia. Was found selling papers in a big rain storm. Philadelphia, Pa. Right - Francis Lance, 5 years old, 41 inches high. He jumps on and off moving trolley cars at the risk of his life. St. Louis, Mo. Miners Left - At the close of day. Waiting for the cage to go up. The cage is entirely open on two sides and not very well protected on the other two, and is usually crowded like this. The small boy in front is Jo Puma. S. Pittston, Pa. Mid - View of the Ewen Breaker of the Pa. Coal Co. The dust was so dense at times as to obscure the view. This dust penetrated the utmost recesses of the boys' lungs. A kind of slave-driver sometimes stands over the boys, prodding or kicking them into obedience. S. Pittston, Pa. Right - Harley Bruce, a young coupling-boy at Indian Mine. He appears to be 12 or 14 years old and says he has been working there about a year. It is hard work and dangerous. Near Jellico, Tenn. Left - Breaker boys, Hughestown Borough Pa. Coal Co. One of these is James Leonard, another is Stanley Rasmus. Pittston, Pa. Mid - A young driver in the Brown mine. Has been driving one year. Works 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily. Brown W. Va. Right - Breaker boys. Smallest is Angelo Ross. Pittston, Pa. The Factory Left - View of the Scotland Mills, showing boys who work in mill. Laurinburg, N.C. Mid - 9 p.m. in an Indiana Glass Works. Right - Some of the young knitters in London Hosiery Mills. London, Tenn. Left - Young cigar makers in Engelhardt & Co. Three boys looked under 14. Labor leaders told me in busy times many small boys and girls were employed. Youngsters all smoke. Tampa, Fla. Mid - Boys in the packing room at the Brown Mfg. Co. Evansville, Ind. Right - Willie, a Polish boy, taking his noon rest in a doffer box at the Quidwick Co. Mill. Anthony, R.I. Left - Day scene. Wheaton Glass Works. Boy is Howard Lee. His mother showed me the family record in Bible which gave his birth as July 15, 1894. 15 years old now, but has been in glass works two years and some nights. Millville, N.J. Mid - A boy making melon baskets in a basket factory. Evansville, Ind. Right - Rob Kidd, one of the young workers in a glass factory. Alexandria, Va. Seafood Workers Left - Oyster shuckers working in a canning factory. All but the very smallest babies work. Began work at 3:30 a.m. and expected to work until 5 p.m. The little girl in the center was working. Her mother said she is "a real help to me." Dunbar, La. Mid - Shrimp pickers, including little 8 year old Max on the right. Biloxi, Miss. Right - Johnnie, a nine year old oyster shucker. Man with pipe behind him is a padrone who has brought these people from Baltimore for four years. He is the boss of the shucking shed. Dunbar, La. Left - Manuel the young shrimp picker, age 5, and a mountain of child labor oyster shells behind him. He worked last year. Understands not a word of English. Biloxi, Miss. Mid - Cutting fish in a sardine cannery. Large sharp knives are used with a cutting and sometimes chopping motion. The slippery floors and benches and careless bumping into each other increase the liability of accidents. "The salt water gits into the cuts and they ache," said one boy. Eastport, Me. Right - Hiram Pulk, age 9, working in a canning company. "I ain't very fast only about 5 boxes a day. They pay about 5 cents a box," he said. Eastport, Me. Fruit Pickers Left - A berry field on Rock Creek. Whites and blacks, old and young, work here from 4:30 a.m. to sunset some days. A long hot day. Rock Creek, Md. Mid - Camille Carmo, age 7, and Justine, age 9. The older girl picks about 4 pails a day. Rochester, Mass. Right - Norris Luvitt. Been picking 3 years in berry fields near Baltimore. Little Salesmen Left - After 9 p.m., 7 year old Tommie Nooman demonstrating the advantages of the Ideal Necktie Form in a store window on Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C. His father said, "He is the youngest demonstrator in America. Has been doing it for several years from San Francisco, to New York. We stay a month or six weeks in a place. He works at it off and on." Remarks from the by-standers were not having the best effect on Tommie. Mid - Joseph Severio, peanut vender, age 11 [seen with photographer Hine]. Been pushing a cart 2 years. Out after midnight on May 21, 1910. Ordinarily works 6 hours per day. Works of his own volution. All earnings go to his father. Wilmington, Del. Right - A young candy seller in Boston, Mass. A Variety of Jobs Left - A Bowery bootblack in New York. Mid - Bowling Alley boys. Many of them work setting pins until past midnight. New Haven, Conn. Right - George Christopher, Postal Telegraph, age 14. Been at it over 3 years. Does not work nights. Nashville, Tenn. Left - A boy carrying hats in New York City. Mid - Young boys working for Hickok Lumber Co. Burlington, Vt. Right - Three young boys with shovels standing in doorway of a Fort Worth & Denver train car. Struggling Families Left - Mrs. Battaglia with Tessie, age 12, and Tony, age 7. Mrs. Battaglia works in a garment shop except on Saturdays, when the children sew with her at home. Get 2 or 3 cents a pair finishing men's pants. Said they earn $1 to $1.50 on Saturday. Father disabled and can earn very little. New York City. Mid - A Jewish family and neighbors working until late at night sewing garters. This happens several nights a week when there is plenty of work. The youngest work until 9 p.m. The others until 11 p.m. or later. On the left is Mary, age 7, and 10 year old Sam, and next to the mother is a 12 year old boy. On the right are Sarah, age 7, next is her 11 year old sister, 13 year old brother. Father is out of work and also helps make garters. New York City. Right - Picking nuts in dirty basement. The dirtiest imaginable children were pawing over the nuts eating lunch on the table. Mother had a cold and blew her nose frequently (without washing her hands) and the dirty handkerchiefs reposed comfortably on table close to the nuts and nut meats. The father picks now. New York City. Pastimes and Vices Left - Teaching the young rider how to start. A common scene in pool rooms. St. Louis, Mo. Mid - Messengers absorbed in their usual game of poker in the "Den of the terrible nine" (the waiting room for Western Union Messengers, Hartford, Conn.). They play for money. Some lose a whole month's wages in a day and then are afraid to go home. The boy on the right has been a messenger for 4 years. Began at 12 years of age. He works all night now. During an evening's conversation he told me stories about his experiences with prostitutes to whom he carries messages frequently. Hartford, Conn. Right - A.D.T. messenger boys. They all smoke. Birmingham, Ala. Left - A group of newsies playing craps in the jail alley at 10 p.m. Albany, N.Y. Mid - 11:00 a.m. Newsies at Skeeter's Branch. They were all smoking. St. Louis, MO. Right - Richard Pierce, age 14, a Western Union Telegraph Co. messenger. Nine months in service, works from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Smokes and visits houses of prostitution. Wilmington, Del. Group Portraits Left - Getting working papers in New York City. Mid - Children on the night shift going to work at 6 p.m. on a cold, dark December day. They do not come out again until 6 a.m. When they went home the next morning they were all drenched by a heavy, cold rain and had few or no wraps. Two of the smaller girls with three other sisters work on the night shift and support a big, lazy father who complains he is not well enough to work. He loafs around the country store. The oldest three of these sisters have been in the mill for 7 years, and the two youngest, two years. The latter earns 84 cents a night. Whitnel, N.C. Right - Some of the workers in the Farrand Packing Co. Baltimore, Md. Left - At 5 p.m., boys going home from Monougal Glass Works. One boy remarked, "De place is lousey wid kids." Fairmont, W. Va. Mid - A few of the young workers in the Beaumont Mill. Spartenburg, S.C. Right - Fish cutters at a Canning Co in Maine. Ages range from 7 to 12. They live near the factory. The 7 year old boy in front, Byron Hamilton, has a badly cut finger but helps his brother regularly. Behind him is his brother George, age 11, who cut his finger half off while working. Ralph, on the left, displays his knife and also a badly cut finger. They and many youngsters said they were always cutting themselves. George earns a $1 some days usually 75 cents. Some of the others say they earn a $1 when they work all day. At times they start at 7 a.m. and work all day until midnight. Copyright © 1998 The History Place™ All Rights Reserved
American history has always had a sordid side to it and it seems some people wish to ignore what they never experienced, nor know anything about.
These very stories were used to justify the Federal Reserve. People grew up believing it was protecting them. And then for many, there were no jobs in the Great Depression. And of course the hunger and cold struck children very hard then. When the masters of the universe are making their plans, they forget to build in a failsafe for the children.
At least the country had jobs back then.
American children were put to work because their parents were unable to make a living wage, and the industrialization of America demanded jobs. Jobs that brought the unwanted from Europe's "teaming" shores here, because of even worse conditions there. Child labor represented minuscule amounts of income, and of course no benefits or retirement planning.
We have a nation myth that we have been taught, along with a national religion. To some extent that may be a good thing, but the notion that we are blessed by God, the one and greatest gives eye wash for our rulers to commit crimes and dodge accountability. Not such a good thing. And Cal Thomas is a well fed defender of the status quo. Our national religion is military worship, BTW.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" Individualism trumps militarism.
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.
I concur, which is why I go neither left nor right, but settled on increasing Liberty.
We need to .remember what group or interest is now in charge of this country
and have always been in control. It has never been...UNIONS...nor their
members. Union members have always paid the price of protest, in their own
blood and death, government has always been the enforcer for capitalism.
Yes, and that's why I had one arrested and thrown in jail one day. Want the details of the thug shakedown artists?
Not really. I deplore unions as much or more than you, having been forced into one. However, I do realize without them we would never have had a large middle class. That being said, it has always been the big business and the government that have done the shooting and killing, compare that with union shakedowns and there is still a huge disparity. It took a hundred years for society to demand that child labor be done away with, in my mind we are better for it. It took over a hundred years for the same government that shot and killed unionists to finally get around to enforcing safety regulations. Everyone said the sky would fall, but it did'nt. So what did industry do? Moved to third world countries, little pay, no safety regulations and on and on. Capitalism does not have a clean background.
The union I had to have put away was the stageworkers' union. Some friends and I were playing coffee shops and they decided they would give us a choice. Either we pay them off or they bust up all of our gear. My drummer was a cop. You can figure out how that all ended for the union thugs. The problem is ANYONE who does a shakedown, not just Government. It isn't right for the Government to do a shakedown and it still isn't right for a bunch of union thugs to do a shakedown. Wrong is wrong and the ends do NOT justify the means. I still have family in the Ed Biz. NONE of them think the unions are worth a damn and for good reason. At the public universities here, you aren't allowed to bonus the IT people who are unionized, nor are you allowed to promote them. The unions control all of that. So again, I ask "What good are they these days, particularly in white collar occupations like Government employees who make up 90% of unionized workers?" I am mindful there was a point in time when they were needed and were useful here in the USA, but that day, with the exception of a few hazardous occupations, are long long gone.
However, I do realize without them we would never have had a large middle class. The conditions under which workers labored before unions were grim. My problem with organized labor is the fact that the most modern FORD PLANT in the world was built in Brazil because it was politically untenable to even pitch such modern automation in the US. Of course the arrogant manufacturers didn't seem to be concerned that modern production methods could not only lower the end per-unit costs to the struggling public whose shrinking paychecks (or buying power even if their wages seem to be higher) but when they did build they went to a country where the govt will hose any pro-union "troublemakers", and no re-training of UAW members will be necessary. FORD proved that they can modernize but they also signaled some ugly sentiments, specifically, Pork The Customer Who wants to buy American and PORK The American Worker! Although millions are in sympathy with American labor, many simply cannot afford to pass up WALMART's prices and guerilla marketing for instance. And when the Japanese offered great cars for thousands less few Americans were well off enough to pay extra. I've often criticized organized labor because they fought for higher wages instead of using their influence to protect the value of the dollar for all. Their attitude seemed to be "We got ours so you get yours!" (like politicians who could raise their own salaries and also had no quarrel with the inflationary Monopoly Munny from the FED) Those of us who got no sympathy from the UAW (or politicians) or the FED did what we could to stretch our shrinking paychecks, and that involved saying, "screw the unions" and buying Japanese, and either availing ourselves of tax loopholes and taking massive deductions or, dropping out of the wormy system altogether. In fact if a politician ever again tries to shame Americans for not "paying their fair share" we should be quick to remind them that if adjusted for inflation our wages would result in very little tax "owed". And, we couldn't vote (or extort with the threat of violence) ourselves raises not only to maintain living standards, but to offset higher taxes to the private FED banksters with the license to steal. No, I'm sorry to say that Cal Thomas is simply pointing to a symptom and he'd never have the courage to mention the real problem in polite conservative Christian company. I'm sure that if I pressed the issue he'd repeat the well rehearsed mantra that criticizing central banksters is too close to "anti-Schzyemitizm" for comfort. ____________________ Judeo-Christian reasoning: Many Banksters (religious and secular) worship Israel. All of those banksters worship fractional reserve banking. ERGO, criticizing fractional reserve banking is criticizing Israel and is therefore not-so-cleverly-disguised-closet-anti-ewe-gno-what. ____________________ I joined the Musician's Union in 1970 (I was moving to Vegas) and The Boilermakers in 1988. I showed my (Musicians) union card in New York, Toronto, Las Vegas and some FLA gigs, but not in Hollywood CA or most other states I played. And the only thing the Musicians' Union ever did I joined the Boilermakers to work in a shop on specialized and proprietary automatic welding processes because a fellow musician was working there and he convinced me it was a good job. (He was wrong. The shop sucked, the wages were low unless I was in the field fixing some usually simple electrical problem and I had fewer rights under that contract than I did under state and federal labor laws) In short the only unions that had any muscle here were the UAW (at GM and CHRYSLER plants and both will be closed soon) and years ago when my in-laws tried to talk me into applying I correctly predicted that those plants would be closed before I could retire. The day I left the Boilermakers I told my co-workers that our shop was so inefficient that it would be a parking lot in five years, and it took only three. The company now trucks the equipment all the way from their non union division in Mississippi if they get a contract to build any oil or water tanks or a nuke plant "up Nawth".)
hound... On the plus side for capital, I remember IBM during the depression did NOT lay anyone off. No one got rich but they ate regularly. IBM at the time was not a wealthy company. Henry Ford on the other hand was the richest man in the world and had men shot and killed because they protested slashing their wages in half and refusing to address worker safety concerns. The overwhelming majority of us here and elsewhere are of the underclass, the unwashed masses, we have never been and will never be of the elite that own and operate this country and our government. Unions are not made up of concerned millionaires, thus when the new day comes and the masses need to rise up exert their will and anger it will once more be the union members that will do it. No one else is organized.
If you want to see muscle, take a look at California and how the public employee unions run the place. Right now, those unions are driving California into the ground. In a state that has 12% state income tax and 10% state sales tax, they want $44B in tax increases to feed them. That's a full third of California's budget, assuming they had all of it to spend this year. Tax collection is down 50%+ in California, yet the public employee unions wish to hike taxes on everyone there because they have to be fed. They are overfed in California. Its sad to say, but -- the REAL unions fought the battle and won. Their successors are pale shadows of REAL unions. REAL unions like IBEW take care of their people, train them, and make sure they have jobs. Its truly sad to see what is going on nowadays.
Cyn - you're living 80+ years in the past. We have to deal with the present. The Unions of the past were needed, supported by the public, and performed a worthwhile service. What do they do today that makes them worthy of their predecessors?
That's one of the reasons we left CA in 1985. The Franchise Tax Board were more aggressive than the IRS, with their billboards promising amnesty to those whose knees buckled, and implying something awful was awaiting those who didn't blink. 10 years ago the IBEW (Local 313-Delaware) came through my job sites every day handing out literature and trying to organize us. After 9/11 they had sent all of the travelers home and they had two hundred of their own members on the bench. They never recovered and construction is still at a crawl since that terrible day. In short all of the trades are hurting, and this trade union simply cannot guarantee jobs for its members. DE used to have all kinds of work building panels for electrical and chemical processes (for Hercules and Dupont) as well as lots of commercial/industrial and even residential work. But with MBNA selling out and Dupont shrinking and banking in general in crisis the classifieds that used to be thick with jobs have one or two in some fields and none in some others. Hell, there were two jobs that went into the paper every summer because they were the worst. One was a company that makes roofing materials and the other was a steel mill. Even their electricians decided not to quit and go job hunting since 9/11 and that means they have to suffer through the awful summer heat around hot tar/rubber vats and electric smelters.
You'll note I'm blasting the Government unions and the Union Thugs like the Stageworkers' Union. IBEW I have great respect for. Despite the downturn, they are still trying to find honest work for their folks. CTA, on the other hand, I have zero respect for, but I'm closely tied to the Ed Biz and I know all the dirty tricks that go on behind the scenes and that administrative overhead in most districts approximates the number of teachers they have.
We have to deal with the present. Lets bring it up to the present. As a Federal employee I was forced into a Union for self preservation, DURING THE PRESIDENCY OF JOHN KENNEDY/LYNDON JOHNSON. They were two of the most socialist presidents this country has ever seen, if you recall they were the "labor" presidents??????? Many of my coworkers thought they could bring this country to a halt. They were all young turks, they were going to show the world the power they had. Talk as I and the older workers did, it made no difference. Ronald Reagan showed them the door and I and the older hands cheered all the way. I retired just prior to this shameful labor act by the workers. Most of my coworkers and friends were former WW2 and Korean pilots,controllers etc etc etc. Because I had friends in management in Washington, several came to me with hat in hand looking for their jobs back. I helped NONE. Living in the past??? Perhaps to some. Even the controllers walkout did have a restraining effect on the government as an employer.
You're still living 30 years in the past with the Reagan Air Traffic controllers' strike. Let's bring it up to today. Defend that. It is exactly the behavior you are defending currently. Obviously you support higher taxes so the Government Unions in California can make out like bandits. Move there and pay it.
OK, The controllers now have a new union and they are laden with young turks, once again. The union and their employer, the government, are at each others throats every day. Anything changed in the last fifty years????? Nope.
The labor laws have changed significantly. Affirmative Action is now entrenched in hiring and promotion practices. Governments are running out of money whereas 50 years ago, still riding high off of the "last man standing" status from WWII, they were flush. Companies are going bankrupt due to foreign competition and being unable to compete on price themselves. 100 million immigrants and their offspring now compete for jobs in the US with Americans whose ancestors had been here for generations. We have computers and telecommunications technology that permit one to utilize knowledge workers from anywhere on the planet including Antarctica. Nothing has changed indeed.
We wuz talkin bout Unions and employers. I have witnessed nearly 80 years of this country sliding into chaos, and I even recall when we were relatively free. Course that is worthless ancient history.
The labor laws have changed significantly. Affirmative Action is now entrenched in hiring and promotion practices. Governments are running out of money whereas 50 years ago, still riding high off of the "last man standing" status from WWII, they were flush. Companies are going bankrupt due to foreign competition and being unable to compete on price themselves. 100 million immigrants and their offspring now compete for jobs in the US with Americans whose ancestors had been here for generations. We have computers and telecommunications technology that permit one to utilize knowledge workers from anywhere on the planet including Antarctica. Nothing has changed indeed. And nothing fundamental has changed. Technology is not social organization and it is neutral as regards moral and ethical sensibilities. Labor and Management relations are, or should be, governed by those fundamental moral and ethical precepts which we dub right and wrong, ethical and unethical, fair and unfair. While the terms are sometimes amorphous we can, and thinking men have pondered these for thousands of years, arrive at some basic principles. No man is an island living in splendid isolation from his fellows. Therefore we have such things as manners, mutual respect, and organization so as to protect the rights of the individual while promoting the general welfare. Unions and Labor organizations arose because a relatively small group of individuals decided that their own welfare and wealth, regardless of the means derived, were senior to rights and welfare of all others. At its basic level it is an insane computation, because, again, one does not live in isolation and society is a mutual dependency of individuals striving, working, and living amongst the greater sea of all humanity. Disregarding this has resulted in all manner of ills - slavery, pollution, degeneracy, and ultimately misery. There is a balancing point and it is that fundamental postulate stated by Jeremy Bentham: “It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.” This is not the greatest good for only the individual nor the greatest good alone for that vague generality "the masses" but the greatest good across the spectrum of existence - encompassing self, society, the world in which we live, animal and plant kind, on into the realm of spiritual existence. When any group or individual seeks to place its own welfare above and beyond consideration of others it is to that degree unbalanced, and even insane. The survival of a society and a culture is dependent upon the interrelationships of individuals and their respect for the realm in which they dwell. Disregarding this and placing only the needs and wants of ones self, or even just ones family, results in solutions which in the end are more destructive than they are creative. So, what we see in our current society is a small group of oligarchs who place only their own welfare and that of their fellow conspirators into consideration. This has, and is continuing along its course, resulted in a planet that is a seething hell of war, disease, famine, incipient environmental catastrophe, and misery for the greatest number. Labor, and Unions, were, and can be again, a counter force to this blindered arrogance of petty men and women who have no sane thought regarding the greater good of all. To them we the people are mere ants, pawns to be used, misused, and disposed of as they, in their grand psychotic mastery, see fit. I do not wish to live in such a society.
"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
Therein lies the bone of contention that has existed for nearly 200 years. The elite never have enough, billions are not enough. To increase their wealth, that wealth must be squeezed from the masses. Wealth works its way...upward...into the hands of the few. So, what we see in our current society is a small group of oligarchs who place only their own welfare and that of their fellow conspirators into consideration. This has, and is continuing along its course, resulted in a planet that is a seething hell of war, disease, famine, incipient environmental catastrophe, and misery for the greatest number. One has only to look at the third world countries to see the filth and squalor that the people endure so that the few may live in splendor. That started here but was ended by Unions willing to stand up for all mankind.
ah, but where to go to escape it? it sure doesn't appear that it's going to change or get any better.
The smooth criminal transition from Bush/Cheney to Obama
ah, but where to go to escape it? it sure doesn't appear that it's going to change or get any better. Unchecked the current course will result in naught but degradation and misery for all. I do see some hopeful elements. There are groups within our society that are beginning coalesce for mutual protection. However, at this point the psychotics are running the madhouse. Only when enough people wake up to careening course toward oblivion will we be able to slow and eventually reverse that insane course. I think that we will, although it is not yet apparent how. Step 1. is simply people being willing to accept and take responsibility for their, and our, destiny. Step 2. Awareness that a problem exists. Step 3. Identifying the source of the problem. Step 4. Action. How long this evolution will take I do not know, but I think it may come together much more quickly than many suppose.
"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
Yet presently, that is precisely what they are. Blindly arrogant petty men and women who have no sane thought regarding the greater good of all. I respectfully submit California as an example thereof.
Unions ARE employers and therefore are subject to labor law. Still, if you cannot defend the actions of the California Government Unions fleecing the taxpayers....at the very least you can admit they are behaving poorly.
#2. To: farmfriend (#0)
Unions,
#3. To: Cynicom (#2)
#4. To: Lady X (#3)
#5. To: Lady X (#3)
Why the hell is it always the unions fault and never management?
#6. To: robnoel (#4)
#7. To: Lady X (#3)
#8. To: farmfriend (#0)
the 1958 Impala, are unsurpassed
I've already said too much.
#9. To: Lady X (#3)
Why the hell is it always the unions fault and never management?
#10. To: mirage (#9)
#11. To: farmfriend, all (#0)
#12. To: Jethro Tull (#11)
#13. To: Cynicom, Jethro Tull, Original_Intent, lodwick, IndieTX, critter, turtle, christine (#10)
What is the alternative??? We would go back to child labor,
A little known fact.... The first testicular guard "Jock strap & Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
#14. To: farmfriend (#13)
I CAN'T STAND UNIONS!
#15. To: Cynicom (#14)
(Edited)
you would have never been middle class or higher. As for child labor, one has to review its ugly past to understand why we have rigid child labor laws now.
A little known fact.... The first testicular guard "Jock strap & Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
#16. To: robnoel (#12)
#17. To: farmfriend (#0)
Unions, overregulation drove American Dream into a ditch
#18. To: farmfriend (#15)
I'm not middle class or higher and my understanding is that child labor was not what it is made out to be. Propaganda put out by the unions. Getting rid of unions would not take us back to that either. Unions drive up cost and drive industry to third worlds.
#19. To: tom007 (#17)
Nothing to do with the Military Industrial Corporate Banking complex, which Cal is a card carring member of, and the endless wars, and fantastically expensive wars they have propagated has anything to do with it huh Cal?
#20. To: farmfriend, all (#15)
#21. To: Cynicom (#19)
People need to be reminded of that tom.
#22. To: robnoel (#4)
Because the unions are run by a collection of communists and street thugs aka mafia
#23. To: Cynicom (#10)
True, unions protect the malingerers as well as the hard working employee.
#24. To: tom007 (#22)
Thank god management and government is free of that mind set.
#25. To: mirage (#23)
So tell me, with the vast majority (read: 90%+) of union members being Government employees, are they truly still needed to protect the IRS agent who just stole your house, the cop who planted a bag of weed on your child, and the teacher who was caught sleeping with your son?
#26. To: Cynicom (#25)
#27. To: Deasy (#26)
#28. To: Cynicom, mirage (#25)
things changed, the government was setting all the rules and we had no recourse.
A little known fact.... The first testicular guard "Jock strap & Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
#29. To: Cynicom (#25)
It was for self protection that Unions came about.
#30. To: farmfriend, mirage, tom007, wbales, bluegrass (#28)
#31. To: Deasy (#30)
The right has only served to protect the monopolies with its union busting.
#32. To: mirage (#31)
#33. To: Deasy (#32)
Good point. But I will say that one bad deed begets another.
#34. To: mirage (#33)
#35. To: Deasy (#34)
Worse, because the dollar is even less reliable than it was then.
#36. To: Cynicom (#25)
It was for self protection that Unions came about.
#37. To: mirage (#35)
#38. To: Deasy (#30)
What passes for the American left or the right: it doesn't matter. The traditional language used to describe political factions and viewpoints all lead back to the same thing: great masses of power and wealth accumulated where it doesn't belong, and moving away from the citizens quickly.
#39. To: farmfriend (#28)
Except the freedom to find a different job if you didn't like the one you had.
#40. To: farmfriend (#0)
#41. To: Cynicom (#39)
It is not a knowledgeable, self disciplined, well thought out position to abide.
A little known fact.... The first testicular guard "Jock strap & Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
#42. To: Cynicom, farmfriend (#39)
#43. To: Deasy (#37)
No one can "keep" a union except the workers.
#44. To: mirage, farmfriend, Cynicom (#43)
Oh, and did I mention its a closed shop so you have no choice in the matter but to sign on for the whole kit and kaboodle?
#45. To: Deasy (#44)
You can always look for a job somewhere else, or start your own company.
#46. To: mirage (#45)
The price tag was over $50k before we actually did anything - and that was in Government fees, regulatory compliance matters, and such.
#47. To: Deasy, Cynicom (#42)
I've heard so-called "conservatives" lambasting workers who demand a decent retirement pension.
A little known fact.... The first testicular guard "Jock strap & Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
#48. To: farmfriend (#47)
#49. To: farmfriend (#47)
Why is a company required to give you a retirement system?
#50. To: Deasy (#49)
What's obvious is that more and more people are going into retirement in poverty,
A little known fact.... The first testicular guard "Jock strap & Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
#51. To: Cynicom (#48)
History is replete with volumes written about serfdom and slavery. Something most of us care not to envision.
A little known fact.... The first testicular guard "Jock strap & Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
#52. To: farmfriend (#50)
#53. To: Deasy (#46)
You can't fix the problem by addressing the symptoms. Unions are a symptom.
#54. To: mirage (#53)
Unions are not a symptom.
#55. To: Deasy (#54)
You all can act out on the stage, pointing fingers at each other, but I'm looking for the man behind the curtain.
#56. To: farmfriend (#51)
Yet that is what government unions make of me, a slave.
#57. To: Cynicom (#56)
I can only say I did not enjoy working for 25 cents a day as a child. Oh Yes, I was eight years old and could quit if I did'nt like the pay and working conditions. Indeed.
#58. To: Cynicom. fellow slaves (#56)
#59. To: lodwick (#58)
#60. To: mirage (#55)
The CAUSE is people getting together, acting like a biker gang, and shaking others down - legally, of course.
The CURE is Liberty.
Liberty without protection for the interests of the people, will only lead to the same place we are today. The old saying that a democratic society will only remain free until the people discover that they can vote benefits for themselves is incomplete. The main threat in any free society is corporatism. It's a dilemma because no matter who is in power, wealth transfer becomes a part of the process, all in the name of democratic values.
#61. To: Cynicom (#56)
Until the advent of ...UNIONS...there was but a tiny middle class, very tiny.
A little known fact.... The first testicular guard "Jock strap & Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
#62. To: farmfriend (#61)
#63. To: Cynicom, farmfriend (#62)
#64. To: Deasy, Cynicom, lodwick, IndieTX, Original_Intent, christine, critter, turtle (#63)
The managed trade, open borders crowd uses those analogies.
A little known fact.... The first testicular guard "Jock strap & Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
#65. To: farmfriend (#64)
#66. To: Deasy, Cynicom, lodwick, IndieTX, Original_Intent, christine, critter, turtle (#64)
UPDATED: SEIU Local 1000: Don't furlough our State Fund members
SEIU Local 1000 wants its represented workers at State Compensation Insurance Fund immediately excluded from twice-monthly furloughs.
Sacramento firefighters reject salary concessions
rlillis@sacbee.com
Published: Friday, Jun. 5, 2009 - 3:16 pm Members of the city's fire union have rejected their tentative agreement on salary concessions, setting the stage for 50 firefighters to be laid off.
A little known fact.... The first testicular guard "Jock strap & Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
#67. To: farmfriend (#66)
#68. To: farmfriend, mirage, Cynicom (#66)
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/
#69. To: Deasy (#68)
#70. To: Cynicom, christine, lodwick (#69)
#71. To: Cynicom (#69)
#72. To: lodwick (#71)
#73. To: Cynicom (#69)
(Edited)
American history has always had a sordid side to it and it seems some people wish to ignore what they never experienced, nor know anything about.
#74. To: tom007 (#73)
Our national religion is military worship, BTW.
#75. To: tom007 (#73)
Our 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?
#116. To: Deasy (#115)
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.
#117. To: Deasy, mirage (#115)
#118. To: Cynicom (#117)
Union members have always paid the price of protest, in their own blood and death, government has always been the enforcer for capitalism.
#119. To: mirage (#118)
Want the details of the thug shakedown artists?
#120. To: Cynicom (#119)
That being said, it has always been the big business and the government that have done the shooting and killing, compare that with union shakedowns and there is still a huge disparity.
#121. To: Cynicom, mirage (#119)
I deplore unions as much or more than you, having been forced into one.
for us was to tell our women singers that they couldn't play percussion other than their tambourines in New York City!
#122. To: HOUNDDAWG (#121)
#123. To: HOUNDDAWG (#121)
#124. To: Cynicom (#122)
#125. To: mirage (#123)
#126. To: HOUNDDAWG (#125)
#127. To: mirage (#124)
Cyn - you're living 80+ years in the past.
#128. To: Cynicom (#127)
(Edited)
Lets bring it up to the present.
California: For example, there are pledge forms being passed around to lawmakers by a major labor union that might have attracted takers in budget battles past. The union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, wants the legislators to sign statements of support for up to $44 billion in new or higher taxes on the wealthy, oil companies, tobacco and other industries, products and people.
#129. To: mirage (#128)
You're still living 30 years in the past with the Reagan Air Traffic controllers' strike.
#130. To: Cynicom (#129)
Anything changed in the last fifty years????? Nope.
#131. To: mirage (#130)
Nothing has changed indeed.
#132. To: mirage, cynicom, farmfriend, lodwick, christine, TwentyTwelve, Wudidiz, James Deffenbach, Kamla, all (#130)
Anything changed in the last fifty years????? Nope.
#133. To: Original_Intent (#132)
Unions and Labor organizations arose because a relatively small group of individuals decided that their own welfare and wealth, regardless of the means derived, were senior to rights and welfare of all others.
#134. To: Original_Intent (#132)
I do not wish to live in such a society.
#135. To: christine (#134)
I do not wish to live in such a society.
#136. To: Original_Intent (#132)
Labor, and Unions, were, and can be again, a counter force to this blindered arrogance of petty men and women who have no sane thought regarding the greater good of all.
#137. To: Cynicom (#131)
We wuz talkin bout Unions and employers.
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