Not in Our Name: The ‘One Nation’ March — Today’s Trade Unions and the Left
There was a time when the mainstream trade union movement confined itself to union concerns — a union contract that guaranteed a decent standard of living, and in turn for a negotiated agreement with the corporation, guaranteed labor stability and productivity. Large corporations learned quickly, as did the leadership of General Electric in the 1930s, that signing with the union, even as in their case a Communist-led union, meant the opportunity for both profits and economic growth. The stockholders were more than pleased, and the workers represented by the union achieved their rather minimal aims.
The unions accepted the corporation as the essential institution necessary for economic growth and prosperity, and its leadership understood well that Marxian oriented radicalism threatened their membership’s own freedom and growing higher standard of living. Gerard Swope, the president of General Electric in the 30s and author of a highly publicized plan for a corporatist reorganization of America — the so-called Swope Plan — rejoiced when the Communist-controlled United Electrical Workers/CIO organized his plants and won the work force’s allegiance. “If you can’t get along with these fellows and settle matters,” he told one of GE’s vice-presidents, “there’s something wrong with you.” As for the Communist union he and his staff had to deal with, he remarked that they were “well led; the discipline good.” The CP union chief, Julius Emspak, returned the compliment by calling Swope an “enlightened” employer, who understood that “industry would have to recognize” that union leaders might eventually even have to sit on the corporation’s board of directors.
In turn for labor peace, Swope even supported a thirty-hour work week and a federal minimum wage. His goal was to integrate the work force into the system, and make it a patriotic defender of capitalism; not an antagonist. The current AFL-CIO leadership is far removed from the type of leaders who built the industrial union movement in the 1930s, and whom Swope could easily work with.
They are also removed from the union leaders of the 1950s, such as the social-democrat Walter Reuther. Reuther built the United Automobile Workers into a forceful organization that made auto workers part of the middle-class and led them to become the kind of workers who quickly abandoned revolutionary schemes, as they found that working within our democratic system gave them the ability to realize the American Dream. Reuther also played a major part in purging the Communists from the union leadership in the post-war era, as the Communists’ allegiance to Stalin and the Soviet Union led them to function as a force seeking to align labor with America’s enemies.
I raise all these historical points because they came to mind when I viewed the trade union movement sponsorship this past weekend of the rather pathetic so-called “One Nation” rally. Scores of unions chartered buses and got some of their members to board them for their answer to Glenn Beck’s massive Aug. 28th rally that captivated the nation.
Reuther, were he alive today, would have been horrified to see what the marchers on Washington were saying in labor’s name, as well as the scores of fanatical communist grouplets that dominated the march and that advocated a blatant anti-American and revolutionary agenda.
Writing on FrontPagemag.com, Rich Trzupek accurately observes how “Saturday’s ‘One Nation’ rally in Washington demonstrated just how far out of step the Left is with America.” Having once sought to condemn Tea Partiers as racist and anarchists, now “they’re telling America that Tea Partiers are corporate shills.” MSNBC’s talking head, the repulsive and little watched Ed Schultz, told the small crowd that “this march is about the power to the people. It is about the people standing up to the corporations. The conservative voices of America, they are holding you down. They don’t believe in your freedom. They want the concentration of wealth. They’ve shipped your job overseas.”
A big part of the problem may be public employee unions. What would it take to have them outlawed?
A big part of the problem may be public employee unions.
May be? That’s like saying a big part of the flu might be the virus.
What would take to get them outlawed? Will. So let’s get it done.
…. Public employee unions are a big part of the problem. What would it take to have them outlawed? ….
For sure those are a massive part of the problem:
First, by having so successfully insidiously infiltrated and taken over ownership and/or management of every aspect of every federal office, bureau, agency, department, secretariat and federal fiat court, “Democratic” potty activists control every federal government action and activity and/or lack of action and refusal to engage in activity. Almost a hundred years after the Left’s assault on it began, the entire machinery of the federal government is nowadays but the extension of the vast RICO-racketeering organized criminal enterprises that prefer we call them by their street name: the “Democratic” potty and;
Second, their owners having so absolutely taken possession of that massive bureaucracy, the mobbed-up “public service” unions, by shamming the usual union stand-over and shakedown stuff, have been able to get every sinecured two-bit typist on to $150,000.00 a year – in return for kicking back a substantial chunk of every salary to the “Democratic” potty along with vast amounts of the unions’ loot.
These are only some of those with whom we are at war.
As we become ever more profoundly engaged in this, The Second American War of Independence.
Your commentary is clear and incisive. I fully agree with your call to decertify public sector unions, because they have abused our trust. They can no longer be trusted as Americans, let alone government workers.
Public employee unions are nothing more than a crime syndicate that is controlling the government at many levels. It will be as hard to get rid of them as it has been to oust the Mafia from its control of southern Italy. But the effort will be worth it if we want to get our country and our lives back.
Public unions are relatively new in American history. Mayor Robert Wagner of New York signed an executive order in 1958 that allowed government employees to form unions. The rest of the country eventually followed his lead. It has resulted in an economic disaster.
All unions inadvertently harm poor people. They are compelled to pay more for their goods and services. Moreover, union membership must remain limited to be effective. If every American was a member of a union—-everything would be back to square one!
“If every American was a member of a union—-everything would be back to square one!”.
David, things would be worse than back to square one. There would be strikes, counterstrikes, managers unions, waitresses unions, college student unions, automobile mechanics unions, salespeoples unions, etc. There would be total chaos. The premise that unionism is good for all working people is completely false, but that is what the communist union leaders espouse. And you are right that union membership has to be limited, the few taking from the many, in order to prosper.
Bingo!
At least they should be limited to collective bargaining with no work actions, slowdowns, strikes, etc., allowed against the American People.
The fact that they are paid FAR higher than the equivalent jobs in the private sector is especially damning for the oversight which has occurred by the Congress regardless of party control!
Hate to break it to you, all unions are far left because they are mechanisms for interfering with the free labor markets. Unions concetrate control over allocation of work and wages to bosses, allowing them to extract excess rents from consumers, union members, and while punishing those who would otherwise be employed if it were not for such restrictions on trade. The unions of the Jimmy Hoffa era used tactics at least as violent, fraudulent, anf corrupt as those in place today.
With or without unions, the workers of the 1950s would have done well. The industrial capacity of Europe and Asia had been destroyed during WWII. Americans were the only game in town. Skilled laborers would have enjoyed high wages without the likes of Swope.
Read Milton Friedman, then get back to us.
…. The unions of the Jimmy Hoffa era used tactics at least as violent, fraudulent, and corrupt as those in place today ….
You got that Right!
Anyone who believes in a beneficial or even in a benign union, is either barking mad or is having a lend of himself! And as for the suggestion that unions ever improved anything other than the life-styles of their bosses doesn’t know the difference among Capital, coincidence, correlation and causation.
Just as Mahatma Gandhi’s “achievements” owe way more to the fact he was pulling that crap against the wussy Limeys and not against, say, Joe Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao Tze Tung, so do the unions’ claims to having ever achieved any good founder on the suggestion that if they’re so bloody brilliant why don’t they take their expertise to South east Asia’s brothels, to China’s slave-labor camps and/or to improve the lot of the Indian sub-continent’s several hundred thousand child laborers!
Agree 100%. Labor monopolies by nature force a disconnect between compensation, productivity and market forces which automatically makes the host company less competitive. This can go on for awhile under a protectionist scheme as was the case with the auto industry. However, eventually the consumer grows weary of overpaying for inferior products and the day of reckoning arrives.
Giving credit to unions for creating the middle class was always nonsense. It was free market growth that created wealth and a tight labor market that allowed workers to thrive. Wages and compensation would have increased with or without unions as more companies were competing for potential employees.
Beyond compensation, union work rules and agreements on job security make a company less nimble. This has a detrimental effect on new innovations to increase productivity and quality. It is sheer lunacy to think that a company with a unionized work force with its inherent adversarial relationship with management can compete on the world stage.
Unions are a relic of the 19th century and should be discarded once and for all.
Yes they constantly and annoyingly take credit for delivering the amazingly good life of the American middle class. Their complete ignorance of free world economics is stunning. I actually heard a high ranking official of the AFL/CIO on CNBC claim that the best way out of this recession was to raise wages worldwide. Then, he said, there would be more spending and that would grow businesses, etc. I guess we must just ignore the fact that prices would go up in proportion, sales and jobs would be lost to countries wise enough not to go along and new job creation would become that much more difficult.
Hey but why not try it – and while we are at it lets fire up all of those perpetual motion machines, cold fusion reactors and free lunch emporiums.
Hate to break it to you, all unions are far left because they are mechanisms for interfering with the free labor markets. Unions concetrate control over allocation of work and wages to bosses, allowing them to extract excess rents from consumers, union members, and while punishing those who would otherwise be employed if it were not for such restrictions on trade. The unions of the Jimmy Hoffa era used tactics at least as violent, fraudulent, and corrupt as those in place today.
With or without unions, the workers of the 1950s would have done well. The industrial capacity of Europe and Asia had been destroyed during WWII. Americans were the only game in town. Skilled laborers would have enjoyed high wages without the likes of Swope.
Read Milton Friedman, then get back to us.
A faint echo of the power that they had in the past?
Not hardly. The very fact that a HUGE chunk of that so called stimulus money was misappropriated to pay off labor unions shows that they still have as much power as ever. They are the very foundation of the Democatic Party …, along with fat cat doners on Wall Street whom they don’t want the rank and file to know about, because, as part of a class warfare strategy to divide and conquer, ignorant members of labor unions have been conned into believing that big business per se is their enemy.
It’s all about empowering unscrupulous Democrat politicians.
Remember: By their very natures, Democrats don’t do anything for anybody, unless they have something to gain from it for themselves, and they never do anything for anybody out of the goodness of their hearts.
Dianne, from the time I heard that the stimulus was going to industries such as transportation, construction, railway, and local governments, all heavily unionized, I knew that the “stimulus” was a payback for voting Democrat. Then there was, of course, money for ACORN and others, sort of like the largest earmarks package there ever was for left wing groups. No wonder it hasn’t worked. To think some economists want another, larger stimulus.
Gee, Swopes idea sounds a lot like Fascism. What could go wrong.
I worked in the steel mills in the early seventies and at that time the steel industry functioned like a Cartel. The union contract specified not only wages, but much about how steel would be made in the US. This, in turn, allowed big producers to set prices.
When I went to Union meetings I noticed what you say about the leadership from the 50′s (many were still around): they were interested in the Companies doing well. But there were younger Marxists — some with college education. They were politically oriented. They thought the way to help the workers was through world revolution. If the companies went under, they would blame the system.
I stopped going to meetings. These guys kept going to meetings and took over the Union movement.
When Mussolini first introduced fascism, lots of people lauded the idea as the “third way” between free market capitalism and communism. It was thought to be a good idea.
“As Schultz saw things, it was the corporations that were holding down “the working man of America.” They want to ship American jobs overseas, he argued, and keep all the profit and money for themselves.”
Does it occur to Schultz et al., that “holding down the working man” and “shipping jobs overseas” are going to mean that Americans aren’t going to have the disposable income to buy the goods/services the corporations are selling? It’s not in corporations interest to impoverish American consumers. There’s a reason why Henry Ford had the $5/day program. He wanted his workers to also buy his cars.
But still, I don’t think any corporation pays wages based on enabling their workers to buy product from them. Wage and price levels work themselves out optimally and fairly in a free market. Sometimes there are anomalies and pockets of unfairness – but they are always temporary under free movement of capital and labor resources. However, things get horribly perverted when government over regulates or tries to manage and direct the economy, playing favorites for political expediency.
One legitimate role of government is to allow no corporation, group of corporations or labor organizations to have an illegal or permanent monopoly. Instead they encourage labor monopolies and then protect incumbent corporations with mountains of unnecessary regulations that constrain the formation of competition in that industry.
Except for a few areas, get government the h*%% out of our lives and out of our markets and you will not believe how quickly and how well we will resume our collective march to a better standard of living and a better world.
“As Schultz saw things, it was the corporations that were holding down “the working man of America.” They want to ship American jobs overseas, he argued, and keep all the profit and money for themselves. It did not occur to Schultz, evidently, that protectionist trade policies would only decrease jobs at home, spur a trade war, increase prices, and even more quickly produce a new economic downturn — with a result of even less jobs at home.”
So, what you are telling us Ron, is that there is nothing working Americans can do. We either have to compete with the “world market” in terms of wages, worker safety, and pollution concerns or be doomed. It seems as if there is some other course of action.
“it is rather clear that the Tea Party and conservatives in general do not have much to worry about from their movement.” I respectfully disagree, Mr. Radosh. Their numbers may be small (and remember we have no idea how many agreed but did not show up) but they are in key positions of influence. At this point, their influence may far outweigh their numbers. Their mindset influences new generations, they influence the cultural institutions, their web of suffocating lies and distortions prevail in our daily lives, from the ideas we are allowed to express to how we live. Through the strategies of Antonio Gramsci they are slowly turning this nation upside down and against itself. We may have been treated to the sight of a few clowns the other day, but the real threats, the serious generals of the revolution are buried within the system eating it away until one day those on the mall this past Saturday will seem like the norm. They are but the stink we sense, the decay and death still hidden from view.
October 30 . . . the day numbers stopped mattering to the Tea Party. The day peaceful patriotic Americans become radical tools of the destroy-America cabal. The day Glenn Beck loses his imaginary grip on history. The day Democrats retain control of the Congress. Tell you what, you keep wondering what happened while you wring your hands in self-righteous indignation, and we’ll keep fixing the mess you created.
Happy November!
Conservatives certainly did not create the Great Society welfare system where 50% of African-Americans families are without a male in the household. You can have three generations living in the same house and not a single male. We have children bearing children and getting paid for it.
Conservatives certainly did not impose a $7.25 minimum wage on the country, imposing 50% unemployment rates in African-American teenagers.
And that’s right. The Democrats gave us Social Security but not a viable method to fund it, that’s why it’s going broke, but they don’t have the courage to fix it properly.
There are other “fixes” the Democrats imposed on the country that are just as bad. One relating to the housing bubble and the financial crises. And others and others.
Beware of unintended consequences.
Hmmmm, would that be the same day that you come up with some new, original and clever material of your own, instead of stealing and using lines and the writing style of a well known super troll?
Even your monicker is the name of one of the many sock puppets that was used by that super troll, who is often imitated, but never duplicated, because unlike you and his other inept impersonators, he was funny and clever and he was always coming up with funny, new lines and he was informed on the issues and he made valid points and he was a conservative.
You’re just a lame troll wannabee. Stop trying to be someone you’re not. You just look silly.
Delaware GOP congressional candidate Glen Urquhart: “Next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of church and state, ask them why they’re Nazis.”
An irrelevant quote? A non sequitur? Well, it has as much to do with RR’s blog as the fringe groups he cites have to do with the labor movement.
In re “Wow Really” @ #9
…”You keep wondering what happened while you wring your hands in self-righteous indignation, we’ll keep fixing the mess you created.”
If what has been going on for the last eighteen months is meant as a “fix” then certainly the cure is worse than the disease. We now have a national debt of thirteen trillion dollars and bupkis to show for the much ballyhooed “stimulus.” If this is “fixing” anything then we have certainly become Alice wandering into Wonderland.
The public sector unions are right to be alarmed about the criticism increasingly directed their way. In 1962 President Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988 allowing the unionization of the federal work force. Kennedy’s order swung open the door for the inexorable rise of a unionized public work force in many states and cities. (This taken from a January/2010 article in the WSJ by Daniel Henninger.)
It is human nature to want “more.” Since 1962 the public sector unions have proven insatiable regardless of the economic realities of their respective city, county or state. They have also become the most reliable props of the Democratic Party channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to Dem candidates. The quid pro quo has always been that once elected, Democratic officeholders would reward these unions with ever more pay and benefits. They have also made the day-to-day management of many citiies and counties a near impossibility due to the inclusion of hyper-restrictive language in collecive bargaining agreements that limit the rights of supervisors to manage work or mete out discipline.
The reach of unions in the private sector is more or less limited by the need for private corporations to make profits and remain competitive in order to survive. No such restricitons apply to public sector unions. As long as they hold elected officials under their thumbs as a result of campaign finance, they can dictate what they will make and under what conditions they will work. Unfortunately many jurisdictions are reaching the final limits of what they can afford. However, as seen in California, not even the prospect of bankruptcy and economic ruin will cause the public unions to back off.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835 that “The American public will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s own money.” In effect the public sector unions have used the public’s money to buy off an entire political party. Not only that but SEIU, AFSCME and the other public employee “representatives” have adopted an increasingly thuggish and brutal tone toward any official who opposes their agenda or anyone who criticizes their policies. During hearings of the California legislature on that states (eternal) budget crisis the heads of the different public sector unions addresed the assembled representatives like they were so many dogs.
This situation cries out for reform but we won’t get it from the Obama administration or the sclerotic “leadership” of the nations labor unions. We need actual leadership on this issue. Public employees should be treated fairly but they cannot be allowed to run the whole show.The time has come for massive de-certification of public sector unions and an end to their political power.
There’s a cure for this nonsense: make payment of union membership fees voluntary. The way to do this is pass right-to-work laws in more states.
If you pay dues to a union, you can use the Beck v CWA ruling from 1989(?) to get the union to refund the portion of your dues that they donate to political parties/campaigns. I have been doing this since 1999 when I hired onto my first union job. This information used to be required to be posted on union bulletin boards in the workplace, but I think that law was changed during Clinton’s term. Ask your shop steward about it.
Give it a little more time people, and our children will not be taught or told the stories of the living and working conditions endured by those who scratched their way to a better life a few short generations ago under the thumb of the barons of industry who looked at their workers as “red” ink bleeding away their profits. In due time those who preferred slavery and indentured servitude can rise again in this country as they have been able to do in other countries taking advantage of governments with lax environmental, safety, and labor laws.
Hey why hire two people, when you can get double the work out of one? It’s not the red of communism that you see, it’s the red of payroll that maddens the most profit hungry companies and now that the public has their retirement tied to the stock market, they hear about lay offs or plant closings and rejoice to see their stocks go up, not stopping to think that it is the livelihood of their children they are giving away.
Even the Bible admonishes God’s children to pay fair wages to their workers and to be good to widows and orphans. Geez if God has to say it, what does that mean about the tendancy of humans to be inhumane?
The Unions were never and will never be the problem in this country. Industry and business have always united in associations etc., workers doing the same thing is one of the reasons why this country prospered with men and woman being given a chance to work in dignity and provide a decent life for themselves and their loved ones.
You see the red of “Payroll Costs” and pretend it’s “Communist Red”, or at your most mocking see “Red Necks” who are forced to work with their hands because they ain’t smart or edjumucated enough to work with their minds.
I owe my soul to the company store wasn’t a rally for Communism, it was a truth to the sign of the times and the nature of of the inhumanity of man. Labor uniting was out of necessity and survival, not some unattainable “ism” that most people know is just another man-made power grab to profit the few at the expense of the many.
I watch the stock market climb and I see the unions in decline, and workers in unemployment line, and wonder. Is anything real? or is life now like Las Vegas with plastic chips with pretend value, and everything will be OK unless it’s decided to cash them in all at once and we find out they have no value at all. Maybe President Bush had it only partially correct when he said that Wall Street got drunk and now has a hang-over. I think the truth is that when Wall Street got drunk, it is the regular working man and woman who endures the hang over.
Your post reminds me of Dallas Cowboy fans. Tell them that the Cowboys suck they will say “Oh, ye? Look at all the Superbowls we won”. They are always referring back to the past. Like a typical union supporter, you expect unions to be compensated based on what happened 75, 100, 150 years ago? I can’t take you seriously based on that kind of rationale. Public sector unions are profiting from this recession. Obama’s stimulus bill benefited both public and private sector unions. Public sector unions have increased their work force, while private sector workers are having difficulties finding jobs. They are averaging 25% more in wages than the private workers. The automotive industry unions have in effect been nationalized, meaning future wage increases and benefits will be extraordinarily lucrative. Government unions have become a new elite, protected by the Democratic Party. All because as you point out, 75 years ago “they owed their soul to the company store”? Next time I ask my boss for a raise, I’ll remind him how good my work was 10 years ago and how I suffered because of low wages.
Really? Geez tell that to the people who are being layed off in the “public” sector jobs because of cut backs. You don’t need to remind your boss about what a good worker you were 10 years ago. You’re worth your weight in gold because you look the other way and pretend that the “bad ole days” were really good, and the “bad new days” are really the unions fault. Yep, up is down, down is up, good is evil, evil is good. Looks like you’ll be gettin that raise you never earned.
You remind me of a Dallas Cowboy’s fan that pretends that the NFLPA isn’t a union, it’s an “association!!!” you screech loudly in protest. That’s like a man explaining to his wife that the “stripper pole” he installed in the bedroom is really an “exercise pole”. Yea, right.
Where was Hollyweird at? They didn’t come out of their elite hole, as usual. I guess, that’s the one thing they can do – recognize a pig with lipstick.