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Friday Afternoon Diversion: Earth With Rings
Mariotti's Photo Scuffle?
They came to Chicago excited to celebrate 50 years of wedded bliss, but they're leaving divorced. The Service Employees International Union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE HERE (UNITE is the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and HERE is the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union) announced that they'd boycott the annual AFL-CIO conference. The conference begins today in Chicago, and labor officials say the SEIU and the teamsters will announce at a press conference today that they will leave the AFL-CIO. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations merged in 1955.
AFL-CIO president John Sweeney says the boycott is "a fig leaf for a power struggle". The Change to Win Coalition (a group all four boycotting unions are members of) Chair Anna Burger says they want to revive labor America (today only 12.5 percent of workers are union members) and John Sweeney ain't gettin' it done.
Say what you will about unions, but this is a big-ass, historic deal. Especially for the stumbling Democrats who've always counted on unions to get out the vote.
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Thanks for covering this event -- normally, my blog of choice is Gapers Block. (www.gapersblock.com)
I agree with Bakken that this is historical and I was glad to be in Chicago to witness some of the action first hand.
Here is an appropriate quote:
“We want more school houses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more constant work and less crime; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful and childhood more happy and bright. These in brief are the primary demands made by the Trade Unions in the name of labor. These are the demands made by labor upon modern society and in their consideration is involved the fate of civilization.” (1893)
Samuel Gompers.
It is more than 100 years later and we're still fighting the good fight.
If this makes my union dues go down, I'm all for it.
Your union dues are killing you, Joel????
This won't affect the political situation of unions much. These people aren't talking about getting rid of unions. They are talking about getting rid of the AFL-CIO and replacing it with a union governing body that has a bigger interest in recruiting new members, rather than lobbying to get laws changed.
Just over $600 a year, well over an entire weekly paycheck for me. So yeah, for what I feel I'm getting from this union I was forced to join, I feel they're just this side of unreasonable.
I've got to agree more or less. I too was forced to join a union when I took a position at a certain employer here in Chicago. My dues were more like $1000 per year and being that I could do the same job in the surburbs for the same pay/benefits WITHOUT having to join the union, I was left wondering what the point was. Basically working in the surburbs got you a 1K premium. Now I'm not saying unions acrossed the board are pointless but it does seem they're usefulness is slight to precarious most of the time. The idea certainly seems great and makes wonderful sense. But too many hands in the cookie jar, etc. Plus given globalization and free trade, the margins are that much slimmer, leaving less to gain by unionizing.
I've found that the majority of people who get the most misty-eyed about "the labor movement" have never actually been in a union, or even worked a blue collar job for that matter.
I worked as a cashier while in college and had to pay union dues to the most pointless union ever. While I agree in principle for the need for unions and am certainly an advocate of organized labor. I agree with Joel, the currently reality is quite a bit different, and there is a bit of what I call 'children of white collar workers romanticism' of labor that seems to go on amongst a lot of people who call themselves liberal (and I'm speaking as a liberal ... but a liberal whose father built roofs and whose brother-in-law's family works in the steel mills and has seen the BS first hand).
Very similar situation here...my father was forced to strike at the warehouse he worked at when I was growing up because of what he (and most of his co-workers) believed was a really petty dispute over agreement language between management and the union's leaders (and the source of which, like the AFL-CIO/SEIU split, seemed to be mere personality conflict). He needed to get food on the table, but cross that line and you're a scab and that's a whole new set of difficulties. So the belt ended up getting really tight at our house for a while, but in the end the big dogs on both sides were assuaged about the contractual language. Great.
Obviously, unions have a place and we have them to thank for a lot of what we take for granted in the workplace. But the system could use a thorugh house-cleaning.
I could do the same job in the surburbs for the same pay/benefits WITHOUT having to join the union, I was left wondering what the point was.
You missed the point. The REASON the job in the suburbs paid the same was BECAUSE the owner in the suburbs didn't want a union in there, so he paid the same amount that the union pays.
So, yeah, the people working that job in the suburbs SHOULD be paying union dues and YOU should be pissed off that they aren't. They are riding your coat tails and the coat tails of all the union members before who fought for the union and the pay raises.
Very similar situation here...my father was forced to strike at the warehouse he worked at when I was growing up because of what he (and most of his co-workers) believed was a really petty dispute over agreement language between management and the union's leaders (and the source of which, like the AFL-CIO/SEIU split, seemed to be mere personality conflict). He needed to get food on the table, but cross that line and you're a scab and that's a whole new set of difficulties. So the belt ended up getting really tight at our house for a while, but in the end the big dogs on both sides were assuaged about the contractual language. Great.
I've never been in a union where you didn't vote to go on strike, so if your father and most of his co-workers were against the strike, they had a chance to vote against it. I get the feeling maybe your father was against the strike (maybe with good reason), but most of his co-workers were not. Otherwise, who voted for the strike?
The current AFL-CIO/SEIU split is not some minor deal. It's about the direction the unions are going. As I said above, the AFL-CIO has been concerned with labor legislation and lobbying, while the SEIU thinks that recruitment of new union members should be the goal. That's a big difference in philosophy.
I wonder how much money you would get paid, or those workers in the suburbs would get paid, if they weren't any unions.
/7 cents an hour?
Yes, I would be getting paid 7 cents an hour. And yes, I have clearly called for the dissolution of unions here and said that they're all worthless and always have been. That's exactly what's been said here.
As for my father, most of his fellow union members that he worked with were lemmings who listened to what the higher-ups in their union told them, at the expense of their personal interests. Hence the ill-advised vote to strike.
I'm this close to enacting my financial core rights...there is absolutely no reason my union dues should be this high.