Unions A Must For Middle Class
CNN PRODUCER NOTE EWillies1961 is a self-employed software developer in Kingwood, Texas. He says all employees not considered management — including engineers, garbage collectors, lawyers, and doctors — should organize in unions. “We have two ways of making money in this country. One is capital, which is profit from somebody else’s labor or product. The other is from the labor and product you provide. Currently the folks that sit on their butts moving money and manipulating capital get the lion’s share of America’s wealth and income. The worker get the crumbs they deem ok to let fall to the ground.’ Go here to learn more about Morgan Spurlock’s Inside Man show.
– dsashin, CNN iReport producer
CNN Inside Man Morgan Spurlock presented one of the most objective and unbiased reports I have seen to date on unions. The report correctly state that the American middle class prospered with the advent of the union. Conversely the American middle class has been in decline, tracking the decline of unionized workers.
Sadly, many Americans are so indoctrinated that they have allowed the Plutocracy to change the narrative. Business have taken bad deeds by a few union leaders and extrapolated it to the movement proper.
In the CNN piece, an old man and his wife actually bought into the notion that if WalMart employees want benefits and better wages they should go elsewhere. He wants cheap prices. Is asking him to pay forty six cents more per visit for a humane cause too much? Instead we subsidize WalMart and other companies that pay poor wages by providing their employees with food stamps and healthcare paid for by all taxpayers.
Because the titans of capitalism are solely interested in the maximization of profits on capital, non-union workers simply become a commodity that is continually pilfered for labor as their marginal pay decreases for profit maximization for shareholders and company executives.
The above dynamic can only change if all workers are unionized nationally to demand their share of the economy. Capital cannot earn profits without labor. As such those managing capital cannot exist or profit without the American worker. Those that manage capital provide neither service or product. The worker does that. The American worker must leverage their power to take their share of the economy. It is not a gift or giveaway. Without the worker there is no capital.
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How many are willing to see the abject fear and violent hatred of the word “communism,” without really knowing anything about the development of the theories of communism, why and what, and their practices as responsible for our current financial status?
Operating as “state socialism” in the USSR and China. Neither classic socialism nor communism, ignorance of communism, or socialism has produced a major adjunct in our present state of poverty for many in the 99%. In the US, social security, anything that HELPS people is denied because of the fear of socialism and communism. There is no consideration that democracy–helping its people–is the aim of communism and socialism, as well. The direct demise of workers organizing to support and protect themselves against the power of corporate-government dominance led directly to the the demise of unions in the US? American workers and their descendants killed their own goose. They had massive help from the power structure, that, again, includes the very structures, governance, that are supposed to protect and assist ordinary citizens. What is wrong with this situation–with us?
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People unfamiliar with the history of workers and their treatment throuty industrilization, at least, have no basis on whcih to evaluate the union movement in the 20th ventury. Yet, most ot the Americans who hate unions are themsleves the result of the advantages of unionized workers in the mid 30th ventury. As always, ignorance produces hurting oneself most of all. Inorace is not bliss. It is dangerous.
The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights protects us (in theory) from involuntary participation in unions. The idea that non-participation is not acceptable because it doesn’t solidify the power of worker’s monopolies is yet another soft-fascism thrust upon us from the same “pro-workers” ilk that founded the totalitarian societies of the 20th Century. It’s just more Anti-Capitalism pushing us into rejecting the economic (and personal) freedom that can be argued is the REAL reason for sustainable prosperity.
I agree that cooperatives are an option as well. Where we have the corporate model, unions, the workers banding together to bargain is the answer. Cooperatives are great but will take some reeducation to get traction. Converting the energy infrastructure to a cooperative will not be easy. This applies to various other industries as well.