11 Comments

1. Our workplace is announcing that election day will be a paid day off, and anyone who voted early in person will have that time compensated too.

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   • …that’s certainly encouraging

     …seems like the sort of thing that really ought to be the norm but short of making it a recognized holiday I’m guessing it may remain the enviable exception

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2. Happy Labor/Labour Day everyone! 
    
   Signed,
    
   A very young OK Boomer/old Gen Xer (depends who you ask) who grew up in a union household.
    
   I read an article earlier today that said that in 1954, an era of unprecedented prosperity and upward mobility, 1/3 of the entire US workforce was unionized. Today, about 7% of the private sector workforce is unionized. I think that’s mostly the building trades, the entertainment industry, and legacy contracts in industries associated with the auto industry, those whose jobs have not moved to “right to work” states, if they stayed domestically at all. Half of the unionized American workforce today works in the public sector. These are the ways the numbers were presented so it’s a little fuzzy.
    
   It’s interesting to note that the 1/3 of the 1954 workforce was private sector, I would assume. FDR, for example, champions of labor otherwise, abhorred the idea of federal workers unionizing. It wasn’t until the very late 1950s that states allowed public employees to enter into collective bargaining agreements, and not until 1962 that Kennedy allowed this at the federal level. New York State didn’t allow it until 1967.  
    
   This started tipping the balance. As the private sector started deunionizing the public sector became a fertile hunting ground. I had a friend who worked for a city government in a white-collar desk job role. She was a member of the United Auto Workers, though the city is very far from Detroit.
    
   I’m very bored, just thought I’d contribute some trivia as we say goodbye to Bummer Summer 2020. Let us never experience another one.

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   • …the fate of the unions has always been a puzzle to me…easy as it is to find examples (often but not always fictional) of them being co-opted into a different kind of corruptly counter-productive deal the basic premise has always seemed sound to.me

     …certainly over in the UK where it’s labour with a U they have largely been cast in the part of obstacle-to-business rather than a logical party to negotiation…perhaps more so the further time has wandered from the era of general strikes

     …effective unions are certainly a boon to their members but it seems hard to keep them in that lane & not have them fall to in-fighting that doesn’t appear to serve their members very well

     …wouldn’t say no to the concept of paying one’s dues coming back around to being a fair exchange, though

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     • Another thing killed by rightwingers.  The corporate overlords told them to demonize unions as killing America.  Right to work laws are really right to get shitty pay laws.  I will say I was part of the IAM working for an airline and our branch was pretty corrupt.  I’m pretty sure they even manipulated votes to help management.  Every new contract we had to vote on we took a pay cut and then management got bonuses.  Now where I live many of my friends work for Boeing & have watched them destroy the unions.  They used to have pensions and great medical but that has stopped as they threaten them they will just move everything to South Carolina if they don’t take less benefits.  

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     • …I suppose I try to maintain a bit of variation with the clips that land at the end of these…but if I didn’t that would surely be one of the more overplayed options

       …it is, as they say, evergreen…& I for one don’t seem to get tired of hearing it, so thanks for that

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   • Grocery stores are often still Unionized, in Non-“Right-to-Work” states.
     UFCW Local 663 here😉💖
     And one of the reasons i intend to teach st a PUBLIC school, when i eventually get my Teaching License, is because I don’t wanna work in a school that doesn’t have the protection of a Union.
     Because I’m going to be a Special Ed teacher, I want the back up, of being Unionized.
     But by going with a public & Unionized school I ALSO know that the school (at least in *my* state!) KNOWS it has to provide and actually fund it’s Special Ed department… something which TOO damn many private schools are able to get away with *not* doing.🤬🤬🤬

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3. **  UTU Local 60 **
   Long live labor!

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   • Dad was IBEW, I can’t remember which local. Seven kids, a small house in the suburbs, a new AMERICAN CAR GODDAMIT every three or four years. We never once went on a vacation when I was growing up but we didn’t have to, there were so many kids in the neighborhood, and they didn’t go on vacations either. Town had an excellent school system (I got into a top-ranked university) with all kinds of amenities free to all-comers, unthinkable nowadays when every art, music, sport program requires massive financial private input from parents. 
      
     The past really is a different country. 

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4. And because of your mention of Belleau Wood, the song which took…. a LOT of liberties, timeline-wise😉, but which was *my* first exposure to the name of that sacred place;
   

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