I think the malaise in our society has everything to do with huge inequity.
Unions allow people that feel insignificant and unworthy because of this huge inequity to have a good self sense in a world that otherwise ignores them.
Workers have become so marginalized as their CEOs benefit from the workers contribution.
I suspect if w’d had a more prolific unionized spectrum for workers ,
Trump wouldn’t have been so successful in asserting his “victimhood” with his supporters actual victimhood .
So much would have been different.
Poverty has become endemic in cities and counties whose industry
has fled to Mexico or China , but away from our Country.
The perception that people who live in cities are wealthy intellectuals is an attempt to lie about and separate rural and urban communities.
In the last few years I’ve become aware of the intense poverty of city dwellers in my Upstate NY city.
The suburbs are quite wealthy or at least well off.
In our county , there
was Covid money for citizens. You would think that money that wasn’t utilized
by those citizens might assist with other issues in that population.
But our County Executive decided to use that money to build an Aquarium for millions.
Because the very poor would much rather see sea creatures than eat.
Another lie and refusal to accept reality and have compassion for struggling families.
This is the attitude that is so excessively represented in politics.
Its not good for anyone. If these city dwellers had Union representation. I daresay things would improve drastically.
These are the same people who are marginalized voters.
True victims of the same system that pushes them out of participation in elections, because they are African Americans or Asian or Hispanic or just poor.
The ‘WOKE ‘ are our best resource in this struggle,
And in the real world Joe Biden blocks a railway workers strike, offering them a contract with no paid sick days and calling it a "good deal." Union leadership sides with Democrats because that's where the money is, union members know it's a scam. I don't hear Biden using the bully pulpit to champion the cause of Starbucks ro Amazon workers, while poor Bernie Sanders is out there every day with a megaphone offering them support. Barack Obama did not say ONE WORD about the massive protests in Wisconsin when Scott Walker was implementing right to work. Not one. So you can be "for" organized labor and make a few motions to support it without really being for it. https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-signs-bill-to-block-us-railroad-strike-/6860131.html
"Telling our lives is important for those who come after as, for those who will see our experience as part of their own historical struggle."
--Linda Hogan, CHICKASAW
How important it is for us to support one another. How important it is for us to know our culture and to share our experiences with one another. How powerful it is to be authentic. How important it is to hold no secrets. I am as sick as my secrets.
Grandfather, allow me today to be willing to share with my brother and sister. Let my eyes see You in their eyes. Let me not judge them but only love them. Grandfather, help me, for I am Your humble servant.
If you're hired at Target, Walmart, Starbucks, Amazon, etc. one of the first requirements of orientation is watching an anti-union video. These corporations spend millions fighting organizing efforts all over the country. The game is rigged in their favor. Our economic inequality is even greater now than it was during the time of the robber barrons. These are not simple problems and although union members may think it's a scam, their choices are as limited as their paychecks. If we want a middle class again, (and that means not just poor people who like to think they're middle class) we're going to have to fight like hell to make that happen.
This is personally painful. I got to spend undergrad and grad years researching and writing about labor: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Marie Equi, Bisbee, Arizona, the IWW, an endless list. Over the course of learning about the lives of thousands, they became family. It is personal. Yet, as a federal employee I got only the occasional eye roll with even the slightest mention of the benefit of Unions. That was even more painful.
Since the emergence of RR and the mantra of "He who dies with the most toys wins", and "Greed is good", getting labor back to a place of power is gonna be one slow walk.
The french Physiocrats were on the right path three centuries ago. they just did not go far enough in their analysis of the Economy. All economies are composed of three components:
1) Raw Materials
2)Labor
3)Markets
Raw materials eg. metal ores, petroleum, land, etc. (The Club of Rome listed 19 in their seminal report The Limits To Growth decades ago. More can now be added, like rare earth metals, lithium , cellulose fiber, land, potable-non-salty-unpolluted water, and much more). All of these raw materials are of no use to us until they are converted into a humanly-useable form.
It is Labor which performs this conversion. Labor converts the raw materials into things we humans need and use, from baby food to automobiles and computers and cell phones, you name it, labor makes it. Nothing in this planet has any value until labor converts it into something we can use.
The finished products are then distributed among the society's population according to some institutionalized arrangement. We call it Markets, or Marketing in our Capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production.
All economies in all societies must do at least these minimal things involving Raw Materials, Labor, and Markets (or "distribution") if the society is to continue surviving into the future in some recognizable form.
The function of government is to organize the exclusive right to use power in some more or less legitimate fashion. Power is the ability to get people to do something. To force people, even against their own will, to do what the holder of power wants them to do. Mao Tse Tung was correct when he said "Power comes through the barrel of a gun."
Power and influence are similar in that they both get people to do something. But influence gets people to do something by getting them to agree to do it. Think of persuasion or propaganda. Control over resources or products and services is also a source of power because those who own and control access to products and services can control the population; as long as government backs them up with raw power.
The function of the military in an empire is to insure that the owners of the economic system have unfettered access to Raw Materials, Labor, and Markets all over the known world.
None of this is possible without LABOR. Labor is primary in all economic systems throughout history and everywhere, in every society.
There are two sources of power, then, in modern society Government and Business. It is obvious why Business hates and fears government. Especially if it is hard for Business to control Governments which are democratically controlled by citizens. There's more. But this is all for now, I think.
Biden is not the most pro Union president ever in the United States of America. FDR would mop up the floor with him. What else could Biden mention that would be a lie. After listening to Trump for years lying and lying and lying, American should know you cannot trust a liar. But their own parents in their Church lie to them since birth. Unions are necessary when you do not have a maximum wage that is tied to the minimum wage, like a maximum wage about 10 times the minimum wage, you would not need unions. Instead with unlimited greed the rich want to own everything and everyone and then some. Nature, science and the truth be damned! Begging from the robber barons or brown nosing whatever you want to call it, will do no good because they actually like having common people grovel at their feet, of all races and genders.
Among the best pieces of the year, this provides insight using certain examples, and should be taken more broadly as showing how the capital / investment / economics side of things directly affects public policy and everything in politics.
This is why it's worth looking into the topic of ESG Investing.
Politically, the financial interests were successful over decades at taking what's good for "Wall Street" and subjecting labor and retirement systems to its control.
We now have the ESG initiatives on the table which (although largely corrupted by industry players until now) could be improved and could be used to drive greater public awareness and participation in matters of social impact, labor relations, etc of companies. This is why all ESG initiatives are despised by republicans. It's worth knowing more about how the younger people are polled on this and how much it's already part of the investment and reporting systems globally.
Among the basic things to understand about this is that there's currently no system to adequately track data that does not involve some kind of control and manipulation by companies themselves, and some kind of consistent way of defining and tracking certain things - especially environmental impacts and issues - so in the first place we need to create a system of data reporting capturing information important for environmental, social, labor rights and similar purposes.
Also, information on political donations by companies and investment managers could be brought forth in a more accurate and prevalent way, highlighting which companies or investment funds are supporting bad actors and creating poor esg ratings making it bad for business.
There are two sides of sec rulemaking, one for companies and one for investments:
slavery and colonization of Native Americans land also contributed to the creation of the evil wealth (profits) of American companies (cotton, rice, lumber,railroads and liquor... to name a few. Indirectly banks, loan companies and insurance outfits...
Thom's union article is totally awesome. I wish I could take it to union organizers, which I think I will. Right out my door is a union, so I will download this article. If Thom actually reads this, I first want to say how incredible this article is, which we need authors like Thom, and we need me to distribute this article, which I will do today right now. But then I want to tell Thom, the new electronics as stated by Matrix Deciphered, which Thom does not need to get involved in, because Thom is already good enough, and is doing a service to our country, but I am enmeshed in what Renee Pittman decries as an obscenity which is really the penal system going after us with amazing electronics. At least Thom will know, but like I say he is already doing yeoman's work for the good cause of workers. I ought to know this is an awesome article about GM because I have 22 years with them. Sincerely Harriet Elliott
It's a common fallacy that paying workers less creates higher profits. A number of years ago BMW opened a plant in SC; duplicating the production line in one of their German plants. The loaded mean hourly labor cost was $60 in the German plant vs. $13 in the South Carolina plant.
Well the German plant was more profitable; as the 1st sentence pre-figured. Yet the labor cost differential strains credulity. The difference is in attitudes. In Germany any plant with 500(?) employees must be unionized and union members must be well-represented in plant management and production planning. They after all are the ones that know the kinks in the production line. And they know their contributions are valued, their jobs secure, their vacations and sick leave never in doubt. The worker in S. Carolina is probably working a 2nd job; fears taking a sick day; and her feedback concerning working conditions or manufacturing process scorned. They come to work exhausted and are bossed by line managers who children went to college and live at home burdened with debt. Their wage betokens the scorn. (Does anyone really care if the torque wrench is out of spec; if the new batch of widgets is out of tolerance . . .)
I recall praise of Bidenomics a few weeks past: "I cut one Trillion dollars from the debt". About half of that was reneging on promised student loan relief. - "Nothing significant was cut."
Were it very simply true that a corporation is but organized money then I'd concur that that power can be balanced by organized labor. That was the dialectic that largely applied from the 30's through the 60's. Yet Thom, though you speak powerfully of the problems created by '76 Valeo, '78 Bank of Boston, 2010 Citizens United, 2017 McDonnell; you fail to see the totality of the fascist transformation that those unchallenged rulings guaranteed. These ruling guaranteed that merger of State and corporate power that Mussolini called fascism - but with a twist: The corporations hold the power. Each corporate sector pushes legislation to pad their profits. There is no plan but profit. Eventually interests in different economic sectors come into conflict. In my mind the most chilling example is in the Manchin/Biden Debt Ceiling debacle. Courtstripping was used in Sect 324 for Manchin's pipeline to accelerate profits from climate collapse. This is complemented by an effective attack, Sect. 322, on the absolutely essential transition to solar. The US has about 1TW of installed solar. Plans for another 2TW have been proposed. Sect 322 dictate a schedule of studies to determine 'if' powerlines are needed to distribute that power. That 2, 3, or more year delay changes the investment potential for large solar farms.
This is why the Dark Money, the big money was on Biden in 2020. In 2024 that will be more emphatically true as the Don & Ron are the clowns that would be Fuhrer. The corps. did not fund law school chairs, Federalist Society, ALEC. . . just to let some slimeball seize power
Just the possibility of the union has been useful for workers to try to get their fair share. Without that threat looming over their heads, employers would not cough-up the benefits and pay what they do. Period. End of discussion.
The other HUGE contribution unions have made is to workplace safety. Without it, society would be footing the bill for a lot of injured people, spouses, and orphans. We still are, but there would be so much more expense and heartache connected to workplace injury and deaths.
As much as we hate the strikes, haggling, and politics concerning unions, America would be so much farther behind without some democracy for the people doing the real work. It's obvious the loss of unions resulted in horrible income disparity, and it has resonated with the youth in this country. They know loyalty only goes one way if you let it. They are just getting started with this issue and with voting. That must scare the crap out of conservatives.
That "lefty" Taylor Swift just made the news for giving her crew from her billion dollar tour some big fat bonuses. If only all employers were like her!
I've seen and experienced this inside a union and outside in management. This Report is so true, Thom.
continuing reply to DO fm PA: no health insurance of any kind, certainly no 401(k), paying for their own continuing Ed, licensure, ET AL...ALL ‼️ ...? unions know it is a scam ? This is scam reportable to the CFPB? FTC? scamguard.org? maybe trust pilot? ahhh: OPEN SECRETS! There u go//best hurry to report these POLS (sic vcragain).
.... what is POL intended to describe anyway?
...i attempted x two to respond to your vitriolic rampage against Hartmann's cabral (sic)--fortunately both were accidentally deleted, and I tired of replying to such a recalcitrant mind fix.
Republicans Continue Their Shocking "Class Warfare" Against Workers
Why I support unions. Amen!
I think the malaise in our society has everything to do with huge inequity.
Unions allow people that feel insignificant and unworthy because of this huge inequity to have a good self sense in a world that otherwise ignores them.
Workers have become so marginalized as their CEOs benefit from the workers contribution.
I suspect if w’d had a more prolific unionized spectrum for workers ,
Trump wouldn’t have been so successful in asserting his “victimhood” with his supporters actual victimhood .
So much would have been different.
Poverty has become endemic in cities and counties whose industry
has fled to Mexico or China , but away from our Country.
The perception that people who live in cities are wealthy intellectuals is an attempt to lie about and separate rural and urban communities.
In the last few years I’ve become aware of the intense poverty of city dwellers in my Upstate NY city.
The suburbs are quite wealthy or at least well off.
In our county , there
was Covid money for citizens. You would think that money that wasn’t utilized
by those citizens might assist with other issues in that population.
But our County Executive decided to use that money to build an Aquarium for millions.
Because the very poor would much rather see sea creatures than eat.
Another lie and refusal to accept reality and have compassion for struggling families.
This is the attitude that is so excessively represented in politics.
Its not good for anyone. If these city dwellers had Union representation. I daresay things would improve drastically.
These are the same people who are marginalized voters.
True victims of the same system that pushes them out of participation in elections, because they are African Americans or Asian or Hispanic or just poor.
The ‘WOKE ‘ are our best resource in this struggle,
Because they are awake to reality.
WOKE support Union Representation.
And in the real world Joe Biden blocks a railway workers strike, offering them a contract with no paid sick days and calling it a "good deal." Union leadership sides with Democrats because that's where the money is, union members know it's a scam. I don't hear Biden using the bully pulpit to champion the cause of Starbucks ro Amazon workers, while poor Bernie Sanders is out there every day with a megaphone offering them support. Barack Obama did not say ONE WORD about the massive protests in Wisconsin when Scott Walker was implementing right to work. Not one. So you can be "for" organized labor and make a few motions to support it without really being for it. https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-signs-bill-to-block-us-railroad-strike-/6860131.html
Native American
"Telling our lives is important for those who come after as, for those who will see our experience as part of their own historical struggle."
--Linda Hogan, CHICKASAW
How important it is for us to support one another. How important it is for us to know our culture and to share our experiences with one another. How powerful it is to be authentic. How important it is to hold no secrets. I am as sick as my secrets.
Grandfather, allow me today to be willing to share with my brother and sister. Let my eyes see You in their eyes. Let me not judge them but only love them. Grandfather, help me, for I am Your humble servant.
If you're hired at Target, Walmart, Starbucks, Amazon, etc. one of the first requirements of orientation is watching an anti-union video. These corporations spend millions fighting organizing efforts all over the country. The game is rigged in their favor. Our economic inequality is even greater now than it was during the time of the robber barrons. These are not simple problems and although union members may think it's a scam, their choices are as limited as their paychecks. If we want a middle class again, (and that means not just poor people who like to think they're middle class) we're going to have to fight like hell to make that happen.
This is personally painful. I got to spend undergrad and grad years researching and writing about labor: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Marie Equi, Bisbee, Arizona, the IWW, an endless list. Over the course of learning about the lives of thousands, they became family. It is personal. Yet, as a federal employee I got only the occasional eye roll with even the slightest mention of the benefit of Unions. That was even more painful.
Since the emergence of RR and the mantra of "He who dies with the most toys wins", and "Greed is good", getting labor back to a place of power is gonna be one slow walk.
The french Physiocrats were on the right path three centuries ago. they just did not go far enough in their analysis of the Economy. All economies are composed of three components:
1) Raw Materials
2)Labor
3)Markets
Raw materials eg. metal ores, petroleum, land, etc. (The Club of Rome listed 19 in their seminal report The Limits To Growth decades ago. More can now be added, like rare earth metals, lithium , cellulose fiber, land, potable-non-salty-unpolluted water, and much more). All of these raw materials are of no use to us until they are converted into a humanly-useable form.
It is Labor which performs this conversion. Labor converts the raw materials into things we humans need and use, from baby food to automobiles and computers and cell phones, you name it, labor makes it. Nothing in this planet has any value until labor converts it into something we can use.
The finished products are then distributed among the society's population according to some institutionalized arrangement. We call it Markets, or Marketing in our Capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production.
All economies in all societies must do at least these minimal things involving Raw Materials, Labor, and Markets (or "distribution") if the society is to continue surviving into the future in some recognizable form.
The function of government is to organize the exclusive right to use power in some more or less legitimate fashion. Power is the ability to get people to do something. To force people, even against their own will, to do what the holder of power wants them to do. Mao Tse Tung was correct when he said "Power comes through the barrel of a gun."
Power and influence are similar in that they both get people to do something. But influence gets people to do something by getting them to agree to do it. Think of persuasion or propaganda. Control over resources or products and services is also a source of power because those who own and control access to products and services can control the population; as long as government backs them up with raw power.
The function of the military in an empire is to insure that the owners of the economic system have unfettered access to Raw Materials, Labor, and Markets all over the known world.
None of this is possible without LABOR. Labor is primary in all economic systems throughout history and everywhere, in every society.
There are two sources of power, then, in modern society Government and Business. It is obvious why Business hates and fears government. Especially if it is hard for Business to control Governments which are democratically controlled by citizens. There's more. But this is all for now, I think.
Biden is not the most pro Union president ever in the United States of America. FDR would mop up the floor with him. What else could Biden mention that would be a lie. After listening to Trump for years lying and lying and lying, American should know you cannot trust a liar. But their own parents in their Church lie to them since birth. Unions are necessary when you do not have a maximum wage that is tied to the minimum wage, like a maximum wage about 10 times the minimum wage, you would not need unions. Instead with unlimited greed the rich want to own everything and everyone and then some. Nature, science and the truth be damned! Begging from the robber barons or brown nosing whatever you want to call it, will do no good because they actually like having common people grovel at their feet, of all races and genders.
UNION YES! GO JOE!
Right on, Thom!
Among the best pieces of the year, this provides insight using certain examples, and should be taken more broadly as showing how the capital / investment / economics side of things directly affects public policy and everything in politics.
This is why it's worth looking into the topic of ESG Investing.
Politically, the financial interests were successful over decades at taking what's good for "Wall Street" and subjecting labor and retirement systems to its control.
We now have the ESG initiatives on the table which (although largely corrupted by industry players until now) could be improved and could be used to drive greater public awareness and participation in matters of social impact, labor relations, etc of companies. This is why all ESG initiatives are despised by republicans. It's worth knowing more about how the younger people are polled on this and how much it's already part of the investment and reporting systems globally.
Among the basic things to understand about this is that there's currently no system to adequately track data that does not involve some kind of control and manipulation by companies themselves, and some kind of consistent way of defining and tracking certain things - especially environmental impacts and issues - so in the first place we need to create a system of data reporting capturing information important for environmental, social, labor rights and similar purposes.
Also, information on political donations by companies and investment managers could be brought forth in a more accurate and prevalent way, highlighting which companies or investment funds are supporting bad actors and creating poor esg ratings making it bad for business.
There are two sides of sec rulemaking, one for companies and one for investments:
https://www.sec.gov/files/ia-6034-fact-sheet.pdf
https://www.sec.gov/securities-topics/climate-esg
... in your conscious mind you really put ADAM, PELOSI, the Justins,
Harris, ' love and the constitution 's'
Maryland HOUSE REP , Maryland governor --oh so many more-- in your barrel of money grabbers ?
Really really ? Or are you adding OPM benefits?
slavery and colonization of Native Americans land also contributed to the creation of the evil wealth (profits) of American companies (cotton, rice, lumber,railroads and liquor... to name a few. Indirectly banks, loan companies and insurance outfits...
Thom's union article is totally awesome. I wish I could take it to union organizers, which I think I will. Right out my door is a union, so I will download this article. If Thom actually reads this, I first want to say how incredible this article is, which we need authors like Thom, and we need me to distribute this article, which I will do today right now. But then I want to tell Thom, the new electronics as stated by Matrix Deciphered, which Thom does not need to get involved in, because Thom is already good enough, and is doing a service to our country, but I am enmeshed in what Renee Pittman decries as an obscenity which is really the penal system going after us with amazing electronics. At least Thom will know, but like I say he is already doing yeoman's work for the good cause of workers. I ought to know this is an awesome article about GM because I have 22 years with them. Sincerely Harriet Elliott
It's a common fallacy that paying workers less creates higher profits. A number of years ago BMW opened a plant in SC; duplicating the production line in one of their German plants. The loaded mean hourly labor cost was $60 in the German plant vs. $13 in the South Carolina plant.
Well the German plant was more profitable; as the 1st sentence pre-figured. Yet the labor cost differential strains credulity. The difference is in attitudes. In Germany any plant with 500(?) employees must be unionized and union members must be well-represented in plant management and production planning. They after all are the ones that know the kinks in the production line. And they know their contributions are valued, their jobs secure, their vacations and sick leave never in doubt. The worker in S. Carolina is probably working a 2nd job; fears taking a sick day; and her feedback concerning working conditions or manufacturing process scorned. They come to work exhausted and are bossed by line managers who children went to college and live at home burdened with debt. Their wage betokens the scorn. (Does anyone really care if the torque wrench is out of spec; if the new batch of widgets is out of tolerance . . .)
I recall praise of Bidenomics a few weeks past: "I cut one Trillion dollars from the debt". About half of that was reneging on promised student loan relief. - "Nothing significant was cut."
Were it very simply true that a corporation is but organized money then I'd concur that that power can be balanced by organized labor. That was the dialectic that largely applied from the 30's through the 60's. Yet Thom, though you speak powerfully of the problems created by '76 Valeo, '78 Bank of Boston, 2010 Citizens United, 2017 McDonnell; you fail to see the totality of the fascist transformation that those unchallenged rulings guaranteed. These ruling guaranteed that merger of State and corporate power that Mussolini called fascism - but with a twist: The corporations hold the power. Each corporate sector pushes legislation to pad their profits. There is no plan but profit. Eventually interests in different economic sectors come into conflict. In my mind the most chilling example is in the Manchin/Biden Debt Ceiling debacle. Courtstripping was used in Sect 324 for Manchin's pipeline to accelerate profits from climate collapse. This is complemented by an effective attack, Sect. 322, on the absolutely essential transition to solar. The US has about 1TW of installed solar. Plans for another 2TW have been proposed. Sect 322 dictate a schedule of studies to determine 'if' powerlines are needed to distribute that power. That 2, 3, or more year delay changes the investment potential for large solar farms.
This is why the Dark Money, the big money was on Biden in 2020. In 2024 that will be more emphatically true as the Don & Ron are the clowns that would be Fuhrer. The corps. did not fund law school chairs, Federalist Society, ALEC. . . just to let some slimeball seize power
Just the possibility of the union has been useful for workers to try to get their fair share. Without that threat looming over their heads, employers would not cough-up the benefits and pay what they do. Period. End of discussion.
The other HUGE contribution unions have made is to workplace safety. Without it, society would be footing the bill for a lot of injured people, spouses, and orphans. We still are, but there would be so much more expense and heartache connected to workplace injury and deaths.
As much as we hate the strikes, haggling, and politics concerning unions, America would be so much farther behind without some democracy for the people doing the real work. It's obvious the loss of unions resulted in horrible income disparity, and it has resonated with the youth in this country. They know loyalty only goes one way if you let it. They are just getting started with this issue and with voting. That must scare the crap out of conservatives.
That "lefty" Taylor Swift just made the news for giving her crew from her billion dollar tour some big fat bonuses. If only all employers were like her!
I've seen and experienced this inside a union and outside in management. This Report is so true, Thom.
continuing reply to DO fm PA: no health insurance of any kind, certainly no 401(k), paying for their own continuing Ed, licensure, ET AL...ALL ‼️ ...? unions know it is a scam ? This is scam reportable to the CFPB? FTC? scamguard.org? maybe trust pilot? ahhh: OPEN SECRETS! There u go//best hurry to report these POLS (sic vcragain).
.... what is POL intended to describe anyway?
...i attempted x two to respond to your vitriolic rampage against Hartmann's cabral (sic)--fortunately both were accidentally deleted, and I tired of replying to such a recalcitrant mind fix.