It should be self-evident... (4.00 / 6)

  ...that healthy workers who make good money and re-circulate their high wages into consumer goods and services are "good for the economy". You can't sell if people can't buy.

  These people who say unions are good for workers, but say unions "hurt the economy"... exactly WHAT is their definition of what constitutes the "economy"?

  It might be inflammatory to say that Americans are stupid, but it's pretty obvious there are A LOT of stupid Americans.  

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

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by: Master Jack @ Mon Sep 07, 2009 at 13:27:18 PM UTC

Big Capital's propaganda trumps "self-evident." (4.00 / 3)

Who owns the media? Who owns BOTH major parties?

When the people are bombarded with anti-labor messages, especially from the leadership of the party that conventional wisdom designates falsely as pro-labor;

When the left has been purged from union leadership for 80 years, with the DP of Wilson, FDR, Truman, Johnson, Carter and ALL the neoliberal D leadership that followed leading the charge;

When Big Labor's exec compensation expanded while they sold out the rank-and-file's wages and benefits;

When Big Labor's execs consistently support neoliberal (anti-worker) candidates and their Party;

When pro-labor political positions are routinely marginalized or vilified -- by the leadership of the Party designated falsely as pro-labor, and their mouthpieces in the media -- as unSerious, ultraleft, unRealistic, not feasible, etc...

Then the general public's attitude toward unions is easier to understand.

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by: nasrudin @ Mon Sep 07, 2009 at 14:30:00 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The myth of (4.00 / 5)

unions hurting people has been spun on a regular basis since Reagan.  My nephews, who came of age in the 80s, neither of whom ever worked for a union, love to spin tales of how unions won't allow anyone to change a light bulb.  

My father was a cop from the 1940s to the 1970s.  Poor pay; working conditions mediocre.  FOP raised money for fallen cops. My father was pretty apolitical because while our town was a union town, it was sitting in the middle of a mostly republican county where wealth and power resided.  The poor immigrants were concentrated in my town and the next one which surrounded the steel mills, paper mills, textile mills.  Surrounding us was the lush and rich areas of the main line of Philly where the mill owners lived.  

My mother worked in one of the textile mills that employed mostly women, mostly immigrant women who had little or no education. While my mother toiled in what I considered a non-union sweat shop for years, most of my uncles worked in the steel mill or the tire mill.  They all did well. My mother's measly income supported my father's poor cop pay.  My first year of teaching I was making twice as much as mother and more than my father did after 20 years on the force.   And teachers were not making good salaries then.

Eventually someone tried to unionize the textile workers. I remember my mother going to meetings, having one meeting at our house and telling my sister and I not to tell people her work friends were coming over.  I did not understand it then. I do now.  I remember once getting to pick my mom up from work after I turned 16 and could drive.  Before that, my mother mostly took the bus to work unless my dad could take her, depending on his shift.  She always had told us to wait in the car for her.  But I was curious so one time I was early and decided I wanted to see what she did.  It left a lasting impression.  It was in the late summer, it was hot outside and when I walked into the factory, a wall of even worse heat hit me. I saw machines and sweaty women and a "floor man" yelling at them.  My mother saw me and she got to me fast.  "I told you to not come in here."  She was angry and upset with me.   I don't think she wanted me to see her working conditions, and the way women were demeaned and denigrated for a pittance.   And before a union could ever be formed, the mill closed and moved to the south.

In many ways that framed my view of labor.   I remember seeing the movie "Norma Rae" and crying.  My mother had died before that, an early death in her fifties. I don't know that young people have a clue as to how unions changed the quality of life for people like my family; first and second generation families who had come to America for a better life, who were willing to work hard so their children could get an education.   I find it sad that so many thirty something kids have come to see unions in the negative light that the media has spun since Reagan.

When I was a little girl, Labor Day was a big deal. Parades honoring working people.  Now, not so much.

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by: Jjc2008 @ Mon Sep 07, 2009 at 14:36:08 PM UTC

labor day! (0.00 / 0)

As we celebrate the enormous difference unions have made in the U.S. we can also plainly see the difference the decline of union influence has brought. The advance and decline of lifestyle of the general populas matches almost exactly the rate of union membership. Whial it is true unions did create the market, and therefor nearly all millionars, it is also true unions are directly responsable for most people favoring legislation ever passed in the U.S. and every state. By directly bringing the issue (through democrats) or strong support of people friendly legislation brought by civic minded others, organized labor is the most successfull interest group fighting for social justice. The hostile press the left in general has now been faced with was first brought and refined against unions, decades ago. It was the press that painted the whight knight black, with ink! So whial the wealthy have a self interest in attacking labor, the majority of the opposition is just miseducated (propagandized) into opposing their own self interests. These are the only two reasons to oppose unions: greed and ignorance!

Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob..... FDR

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by: reggiewhitefish @ Mon Sep 07, 2009 at 17:32:09 PM UTC

I too came from a Union family (4.00 / 1)

But mine was a blue collar family so the meaning of being a member was very traditional for me.  My parents were very intelligent but not educated.  Their main goal in life was to put their kids through college.  They did.

To my childhood family the Union was life or death.  Without it my family would not have had a living wage.  My father made sure I understood that long before I entered high school.  

I grew up, became a pharmacist, pharmacy owner, and a real estate agent.  I never joined a Union after leaving college.  But for all these years, I have and do believe in them.  They are the difference between common Americans being serfs or free individuals enjoying a modest life.

But I do have one bone to pick.  Not with the unions, but with SOME union workers.   Union workers, especially older ones, are among the stongest opponents of a national health care bill.  They don't want to take any chance that they will lose any of their "hard earned" health benefits.  They seem to have no problem with the hardship of the millions who don't share in their luxuries.    

I guess selfishness is not limited to union workers, but it is troubling that so many of them would be so against helping the common people.

"Oh. My. God. .... We're doomed." -- Paul Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...">http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...">http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...

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by: WorkingClassDemocrat @ Tue Sep 08, 2009 at 03:29:02 AM UTC