College of Political Knowledge
I think we have all about exhausted the story in Wisconsin….the situation and the reporting is becoming redundant…….there is not more we can saw about the issue…only that the people seem to be on the side of unions and the GOP is fighting it tooth and nail…..
I will let it go after I give a bit of history for those that are not aware of what the labor movement has done in the past……back in the early days of the 20th century there was a massive labor movement and yes there were some Leftists involved in it…….but without the fight for fairness in labor we would not have the situation we have today….we would NOT have the 8 hour work day or the 5 day work week or overtime or minimum wage or benefits or a safe work place or a ban on child labor and the list goes on and on….let me ask…what would you working life be like if NOT for the fight of unions of the past? We soon forget the hardship and sacrifices that our people had to deal with in their work environment….but we should thank unions for the life we have today…..
But wait….history seems to be trying to repeat itself starting in Wisconsin and now moves on to Ohio…..
Another showdown on an Ohio bill to restrict the bargaining rights of public workers could come as early as Wednesday with a vote by a Republican-majority legislative committee whose chairman says he has the support to send the measure to the Senate.Worker rights and collective bargaining have sparked debate in statehouses across the country, most notably in Wisconsin, where a scheduled vote on a similar bill prompted Democratic lawmakers to flee the state.
In many ways, it’s the 1930s again. Just as then, workers and their political allies and other supporters are demonstrating, picketing, marching, striking and otherwise forcefully demanding the basic civil right of collective bargaining – the unfettered right for workers’ representatives to negotiate with employers on setting their wages, hours and working conditions.
Eventually, workers and their millions of supporters won the 1930s struggle. Congress, acting closely with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, granted the legal right of collective bargaining to most workers. Farm workers, domestics and a few other groups were excluded from the law, but all others finally had that vital right.
The 1930s struggle arose primarily because of the economic pressures of the Great Depression that led to massive protests, just as today’s struggle can be traced to the pressures of the Great Recession that also have led to massive protests.
There are key differences between then and now, however. In the thirties, the struggle was to win union rights for workers in the face of strong opposition from large financial interests, powerful conservative politicians and other anti-labor forces. Today, the struggle is to keep union rights from being taken away from workers by today’s anti-union forces. Their main targets are public employees and the pensions and other benefits they won in past bargaining with their government employers. (Thanx to Buzzflash and Dick Meister)
Once again workers are having to fight for their right to work……it really comes down to the cash that unions and their members are willing to give to politicians that is the real story….it has little to do with the workers themselves just the influence that they can wield…….it is about elections NOT jobs!
I don’t, I’m afraid, agree that most of those things are all that good FOR THE WORKERS themselves – all that unions should seek to do is to stop seious abuses of power and to look for proper remuneration for proper work. That may once have been what they were about, I don’t know because even I am not that old. However, these days, the unions’ leadership (which drives EVERYTHING unions do) is all about THEIR power – just like every other politician and most other types of organised crime!
When are we ALL going to start talking about REAL people, REAL rights, REAL welfare and REAL politics, politicians, statesmen and a REAL economy?
ALL that the political systems we all have at present throw up in almost all spheres of influence is nothing short of regurgitated sewage with NO common sense or respect for reality, or even for the people!
This why the American union movement early settled on the system they have now…..a well paid hierarchy…I agree with you…but it was the workers and the activists that did all the work and deserve ALL the benefits…..the heads of unions make way too much money and have an agenda that suits them seldom the worker…
Exactly – and that’s how it ALWAYS is – deserving something seldom makes it the least bit more likely anyone will get it!
True…I deserve a tall red head with great boobs…..sorry, it is Sunday and I am over the week end
Yeah, well – I didn’t get the blonde I deserved, or her companion the brunette…
Life can be so unfair, huh?
Yeah, but then what idiot thought life ever could or would be fair?
Or is it just Karma biting us in the ass?
…and where in heavens name do you get the idea that workers have a RIGHT to work? There ARE no bloody RIGHTS of any sort for anyone in this world. You have the right to go without if you have f*ck all – that’s IT!
All this rubbish about “rights” is simply artificial (and largely bureaucratic) bullshit designed to get most people to take their eye of the ball and miss the fact that our politicians are, on the whole, TOTAL CRAP at what we REALLY want – a decent (above all stable) economy and a fair crack at a good life should we want to do what it takes to go for it!
Quin here is alittle history of the Am. labor movement…..do not know if it was the same in the UK….
http://lobotero.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/professors-political-classroom/
http://lobotero.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/labor-movement-the-early-years/
Just trying to help explain my feelings on the labor thingy…..
Yes, thanks. However, I knew most of that. But that’s the point I keep making – just because there is a Labour party, it doesn’t mean it actually RERESENTS laour – it simply pretends to – just as the unions do. The whole damn thing is a bloody sham!
I don’t agree that ANYONE has the right to anything except perhaps to be left alone if they are doing no one else any harm, but even that doesn’t happen. I DO however, think that a caring society should assist its weaker members and certainly should make sure that its older members can live with dignity – that’s all just common decency – but a right? No!
The principal reason I think like that is that rights ALWAYS lead to a massive bureaucracy that tries to impose thoughts, ideas, and beliefs on all of us that many of us don’t agree with or hold with – and THERE’S the snag – you can’t change that old favourite, human nature. Workers “rights” fall into that category.
Furthermore, under a capitalist system, industry is NOT there for the benefit of the workers – they are in many ways a necessary evil. Yet that too is the point – they are NECESSARY for that business and therefore a thriving economy will benefit them like NO union ever will. However, unions DO protect the incompetent and the just plain lazy and THAT never in the long run does any of the REST of us (indeed the rest of the country) any good at all – because we, directly or indirectly, pay for and work harder to make up for their indolence and incompetence!
I DO understand (I think) how you feel and how those like you came to feel that way, but I just think it’s all an outdated way of running things and a successful economy that, by the simple fact of its existence, requires large numbers of workers where companies have to compete for the best of them is FAR and away the best deal for the workers that ALSO suits the long term interests of the country.
LIke we keep saying…a change is needed…..but I do NOT believe anyone has the NUTS to be part of that change……other than a couple of old guys…like us…..
I am not sure that a booming economy would actually help the workers that much……business is there to make money and the less they pay to more they can make…that is why I say we could use unions but NOT the types we have fleecing the workers these days……and I agree about the lazy and incompetent……there is an answer I just need to find it….or someone should……
Of COURSE business is there solely to make profits and so it should be – that’s its function! However, a sufficiantly booming INDUSTRIAL economy ALWAYS benefits the workers, if it creates a labour shortage – basic supply and demand!
In theory I will agree…..but economic theory seldom proves works out….because there are too many variables and they keep changing, government intervention and such….
I’ll agree with that – but why do you think that the economic principles YOU support work any better? THEY too simply do not work in practice – to an even greater degree IMO – not least because you cannot enforce all the plethora of rules required to apply it, it simply isn’t possible and just creates a huge, inefficient, costly and unworkable bureaucracy that WE then all have to pay for!
I cannot say for sure….for most of it has NOT been tried with any seriousness….but it is worth a shot….I mean a lot of stuff start out as a test…some fail and some consume us completely….
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You are welcome….visit often…..