Last week I took in a lecture at the University on what unions no longer do. The engaging speaker was a sociologist whose work focussed on income equality. He noted how unions helped wage equalization among minorities, women and immigrants, and sadly, with the decline of the unions there is a decline of this effect.
In the Q&A, there was lamenting at the decline in unions, fear at the assault on government unions, and anxiety for the $15 min wage issue. I was disheartened, no concrete plan to revitalize the union movement. The speaker averred we should forget about industrial unions since those jobs are never coming back.
Although wage equalization (to the degree it effects justice) is a good thing, the core benefit of unions is anti-fascism. To completely ignore that aspect was well, I guess, why unions are in decline. If you have no idea why you exist, you are unlikely to persist.
If you follow the history of the unions, they grew as the state and industry began to meld, the very definition of fascism, the state and industry as one. As industry and the state began to destroy the person, the family, etc, workers fought back.
Government worker unions are house unions, so any discussion regarding them ends there.
But as to reviving the good of unions, it is only if and when they recover their core rationale of anti-fascism that they will revive, and contrary to the assertion of the good professor, manufacturing will return as well. Fascism engenders false economies, and anti-fascism will rebalance the economy.
Instead, from the commanding heights of labor, we get calls for single-payer health care and minimum wage. We do not need a fascist minimum wage economy. We need a renaissance in the labor movement.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
In the Q&A, there was lamenting at the decline in unions, fear at the assault on government unions, and anxiety for the $15 min wage issue. I was disheartened, no concrete plan to revitalize the union movement. The speaker averred we should forget about industrial unions since those jobs are never coming back.
Although wage equalization (to the degree it effects justice) is a good thing, the core benefit of unions is anti-fascism. To completely ignore that aspect was well, I guess, why unions are in decline. If you have no idea why you exist, you are unlikely to persist.
If you follow the history of the unions, they grew as the state and industry began to meld, the very definition of fascism, the state and industry as one. As industry and the state began to destroy the person, the family, etc, workers fought back.
Government worker unions are house unions, so any discussion regarding them ends there.
But as to reviving the good of unions, it is only if and when they recover their core rationale of anti-fascism that they will revive, and contrary to the assertion of the good professor, manufacturing will return as well. Fascism engenders false economies, and anti-fascism will rebalance the economy.
Instead, from the commanding heights of labor, we get calls for single-payer health care and minimum wage. We do not need a fascist minimum wage economy. We need a renaissance in the labor movement.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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