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by GRITtv was published on November 24th, 2009
Unemployment is up, Wall Street is reporting record profits, the health care debate is dragging on, and Americans are angry. There's no doubt about the anger, anyway. But it hasn't translated thus far into any increased agitation for labor. Workers are getting squeezed from all sides--more work, less pay, the constant fear of job loss, and employers using the specter of that job loss as a bulwark against complaints. "You're lucky to have a job," indeed.
What happened to organized labor in the US? With the decline of manufacturing jobs and rise of female-dominated service fields, does the old labor union model still hold up, or do we need new ways of organizing and supporting workers? And what happened to solidarity?
Paula Finn, Editor of the
New Labor Forum,
Thomas Frank, author of
What's the Matter with Kansas?
and
The Wrecking Crew
and
Wall Street Journal columnist,
Tom Geoghegan, labor lawyer, recent Congressional candidate, and author of
Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back
joined Laura to talk about labor's problems and suggest some solutions to help all of us, whether we're union members or not.
NOTICE: GRITtv and GRITradio are not affiliated with Ogden Publications, Inc., and are in no way associated with, or authorized or sponsored by, Ogden Publications Inc. or GRIT Magazine.
For information on GRIT magazine, go to
www.grit.com.
Of course they are against card check, because unions were the only democratic institution that emerged for wage-earners in this Republic since the Constitutional powers favored “unearned income” earners and property owners from the very beginning. They say card check is anti-democracy because it is not secret. What is the proper line to counter that argument which must be duplicitous?
It is absolutely true the Unions failed to evolve as organizational models, just like corporations, schools, and government departments. And the same narcissists and self-promoters who rise to the top of corporations, are attracted to power positions in any kind of organization, including Unions. And white men and everybody else fall under their sway and elect them. Use new psych methods to get through that one!
The Democratic Party also failed to protect wage-earners for the last decades. The campaign finance reforms of the 1970s were designed to bring them into the same corporate orbit as the Reps have always been. And that worked. We need major campaign finance reform of these levers of power in order to get balance again between interests of wage-earners, and “unearned income” earners. James Madison made sure the electoral college, the senate, and conservative appointments to the Court protected property owners,who were then slave owners. Both sides have become property owners now, but small property gets wiped out by market deregulation, and big property just concentrates more power.
Big property control the media and the university economics departments, so no wonder Labor has been vilified and neutralized the last 30 years, and it worked.
By AlbyFlugzeug on November 24th, 2009 at 3:41 pm