It could take years for the federal regulator Osha to set new heat rules as excessive temperatures are killing Americans at work
It could take years for the federal regulator Osha to set new heat rules as excessive temperatures are killing Americans at work
Look, I know where I’m at here and know this is falling on deaf ears (see my previous comment about unions being unequivocally good from the left’s perspective). And I do have to deal with it, since I’m in a coerced membership state. My union is one of the largest in the country and has been the subject of much impropriety including collusion with one of the companies it represents employees of (not allegations of, convictions of). It’s not going anywhere because a few members are motivated enough to tell them to kick rocks and not worry about the repercussions. Your edit let’s me know you do not belong to a union or have any idea how a local works in the real world. I’ll not change your mind and you’ll not change mine. Union Yes!, closed shop no.
I was a member of the AFL-CIO for 4 years. They’re weak as fuck in my state because of the right-to-work laws.
Rank-and-File committees, made up of members of the union to push the union towards militancy, are the only way we can force do-nothing unions into action. All right-to-work does in the real world is weaken unions, that’s all we have seen in every state it has been implemented.
I take back my accusation you’d not been a member, it was unproductive snark anyway.
Is it because of right to work though, or are you somewhere that is traditionally hostile to unions (I.e. the southern U.S.)? The resurgence and effectiveness of unions in this country is going to depend on winning hearts and minds. Forced membership may work to shore up numbers, but motivated, engaged members is where a union’s strength lies. There will always be propaganda against anything that counters the monied interests. When that money controls nearly every aspect of society the only way to secure a lasting win for the working class is to convince workers to fight for their overwhelming share. You’re not going to do it with conscripts, the inertia of the status quo is just too great. Part of that status quo is unionism as it is currently practiced. The administration of the unions themselves are just as interested in maintaining it. Sure they’d like to increase their influence, but you’ll see no militancy from them regardless of the membership’s exhortations. You may rightly accuse me of defeatism, but so long as I have to suffer the world as it is, I want at least the say my dollar affords me.
Midwest. People aren’t hostile to unions, they just don’t see the point because nothing ever gets better and the union contracts are weak.
And I also speak from experience when I say weak sellout unions are better than no unions. Right-to-work has been shown to lower union membership, lower wages, reduce the number of union victories, and ultimately reduce the number of workplaces represented by unions entirely. We can see before-and-after, we can compare across state lines, we can even look at cities on two sides of a right-to-work border and directly compare. The results are clear: right-to-work is bad for workers.
You can have the last word.
Well, weak unions are the result of apathetic membership (as are flailing imperialist republics). I might posit that after some attrition, the remaining core of true believers might be more effective by drawing a more focused, sympathetic to the cause crowd, especially if they can maintain exclusive representative status. I’ve been nearly 3 decades affiliated with one union or another. Some of it energetically, much of it apathetically, all of it mandatory. I concede RTW is bad for unions as things are, I’m less convinced some singular union deserves a monopoly on my fealty and tribute, irrespective of how it’s administrated or how well they deliver. I realize that doesn’t jive with the “one team” ethos of socialism. Hopefully we find common ground elsewhere. Anyway, I could go on forever, this is something I’m well reconciled with in my own worldview, and that comes from a place of eternal gratitude for those who literally shed blood for how good I have it today. I’ve taken this way past even tangentially related to the post, for that I apologize. Kudos to us for not devolving into ad hominem and bad faith, maybe there’s hope for this Internet thing yet.
deleted by creator