I think the best selling point is to use Germany as an example. Build the myth of how Germany is such a powerhouse because its unions actually work: a good union is not an adversary of the owner as much as it keeps the owner from being an adversary of the person working in his company. Thanks to unions, German companies have a stronger feeling of “we’re all in this together” and strikes are much, much rarer there. They are good for workers because then only a representative has to do the negotiations and keep in touch with the owners, leaving the guys on the floor and the foremen and whatnot to get on making great stuff.
Now, I said myth on purpose, because reality is (of course) much more complicated. But for a sales pitch, you need a myth. Use the myth of Germany doing better than unions, and add to it the myth of American can-do attitude being the trick to making better unions.
See, here’s the attitude of anti-union people in a nutshell. “You’re just a drunk loser.” Rightwing classist ignorance. I’m not trying to sell people on unions, I’m pointing out why all the rhetoric against them is BS, and I’m not going to treat people who denigrate unions with even an ounce of respect, not that I had any for you remaining after Charlottesville and your staunch support of Confederate monuments.
Almost like the rightwing is the segment exclusively against unions or something. That’s the main problem with “selling” unions in a nutshell. Even at the single union plant I worked at there were dingbats strutting around with MAGA hats; I had to take down white supremacist business cards from the post board from time to time. As long as we have people who fall for the fascist rhetoric of Strong Independent Ubermensch, unions will make no headway. There has to be a sea change in the public attitude towards society as a whole, a move away from the fascist ideology of libertarianism and a move back towards collective thought.
Union membership didn’t flounder because it’s members were lazy, but because they have the same flaws as most every other organization at the time; being racist and sexist. It has taken the union movement a long time to come around to this, but today some of the most influential unions happens to be the nurses unions, which historically has been more female-gendered as a profession.
Come you ranks of labor, come you union core And see if you remember the struggles of before When you were standing helpless on the outside of the door And you started building links On the chain, on the chain And you started building links On the chain
When the police on the horses were waiting on demand Riding through the strike with the pistols in their hands Swinging at the skulls of many a union man As you built one more link On the chain, on the chain As you built one more link On the chain
Then the army of the fascists tried to put you on the run But the army of the union, they did what could be done Oh, the power of the factory was greater than the gun As you built one more link On the chain, on the chain As you built one more link On the chain
And then in 1954, decisions finally made Oh, the black man was a rising fast, racing from the shade And your union took no stand and your union was betrayed As you lost yourself a link On the chain, on the chain As you lost yourself a link On the chain
And then there came the boycotts and then the freedom rides And forgetting what you stood for, you tried to block the tide Oh, the automation bosses were laughing on the side As they watched you lose your link On the chain, on the chain As they watched you lose your link On the chain
You know when they block your trucks boys by laying on the road All that they are doing is all that you have showed That you gotta strike, you gotta fight to get what you are owed When you’re building all your links On the chain, on the chain When you’re building all your links On the chain
And the man who tries to tell you that they’ll take your job away He’s the same man who was scabbing hard just the other day And your union’s not a union till he’s thrown out of the way And he’s choking on your links Of the chain, of the chain And he’s choking on your links Of the chain
For now the times are telling you the times are rolling on And you’re fighting for the same thing, the jobs that will be gone Now it’s only fair to ask your boys, which side are you on? As you’re building all your links On the chain, on the chain As you’re building all your links On the chain
Also the Wobblies, with over a century of anti-racism and anti-sexism
One of the IWW’s most important contributions to the labor movement and broader push towards social justice was that, when founded, it was the only American union to welcome all workers, including women, immigrants, African Americans and Asians, into the same organization. Many of its early members were immigrants, and some, such as Carlo Tresca, Joe Hill and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, rose to prominence in the leadership. Finns formed a sizeable portion of the immigrant IWW membership. “Conceivably, the number of Finns belonging to the I.W.W. was somewhere between five and ten thousand.”[19] The Finnish-language newspaper of the IWW, Industrialisti, published in Duluth, Minnesota, a center of the mining industry, was the union’s only daily paper. At its peak, it ran 10,000 copies per issue. Another Finnish-language Wobbly publication was the monthly Tie Vapauteen (“Road to Freedom”). Also of note was the Finnish IWW educational institute, the Work People’s College in Duluth, and the Finnish Labour Temple in Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada, which served as the IWW Canadian administration for several years. One example of the union’s commitment to equality was Local 8, a longshoremen’s branch in Philadelphia, one of the largest ports in the nation in the WWI era. Led by Ben Fletcher, an African American, Local 8 had more than 5,000 members, the majority of whom were African American, along with more than a thousand immigrants (primarily Lithuanians and Poles), Irish Americans, and numerous white ethnics.
They were probably too scary for most people to join after McCarthyism though. Always beware of divide and conquer, it is never for the benefit of most people.
Am I missing something? This time of year is not good for me, so I believe I could be.
I mentioned McCarthyism because joining a left wing union well known for having anarchist and communist members after a very high profile and government backed campaign of coercion and blacklisting against those groups is a very good way of ending your job prospects, especially if you are already having problems with sexism and/or racism.
Apologies, wassimply translating what Mcarthyism is for the younger generation. It’s a bunch of people demanding a yes or no answer. If you answer yes you’re guilty we’re right to be horribly hypocritical shits. If you answer no you’re obviously lying so we get to be even more horrible by ostricisng you from any and all opprotunities in society just from the fact we have you in that chair.’
I know the question as “have you stopped beating your partner?”. If you have never beaten them then there is no correct way of answering that with a yes/no answer, so everyone who is asked is guilty of something.
On the subject of automation: industrialists and singulatarians (including some BBS denizens) always claim that automation doesn’t put people out of work, instead it frees human beings from repetitive, dead end jobs so that they can do more meaningful, creative work. :eyeroll:
On the subject of drunken employees: with the possible exception of cop unions, I do not believe there has ever been a union that has successfully negotiated a right to being intoxicated during working hours. Any shop (such as the local Chrysler plant when I was a kid) that permits this behavior is not suffering from any problem inflicted by unionization, it’s suffering from profoundly incompetent management, and will eventually go out of business due to that incompetence (although Lee Iaccoca and several taxpayer-funded bailouts kept the local Chrysler plant going for a long time, that factory no longer exists - because it built crap products).
Bringing these two points together: Unions don’t act to keep drunks on the production line - that’s a counterfactual myth. Hiring and firing responsibility rests entirely on management, who have the ability to fire anyone who is intoxicated at work in every state in the USA - not just in “right to work” states. Unions do try to force management to live up to their claims that automation won’t cost jobs, by negotiating to retain headcounts; but that has nothing to do with retaining bad workers.
I like @fnordius’s suggestion of using Germany as an example of successful unionization, at least when dealing with white collar Yankee types. Even Americans who disdain all “furriners” usually have a respect for German engineering and product quality - it’s rare to find someone who believes an American-made car is built better than a German car of the same price range.
In my experience you usually won’t have to “sell” unions to blue-collar Southerners, instead you have to sell them on allowing people of all colors, creeds and ethnicities into their unions.
On the matter of automation, it’s been something that Hacker News commentors have admitted on the whole won’t lead to more jobs. It’s why some of the more vocal members of Y Combinator have been promoting universal basic income since it’s the only way capitalism survives without collapsing into feudalistic tendencies. The problem I see with UBI is the fact who gets to decide what you spend your basic income on? Paul Ryan? Now that’s scary.
I think it’s mostly a messaging problem. People today assume if you work hard you got a fair chance at succeeding. I’ve heard this nonsense even from a friend of mine who was a single mom that went to college. She still thinks if you just do the “hustle” you’ll get by. I’ve tried to explain to her that her sample size of one isn’t enough to extrapolate on. She doesn’t care, she just thinks because people don’t put in as much labor into things as her are just lazy and deserve their misfortunes. That’s the narrative we have to break. It doesn’t matter how hard you “hustle” when Bezos and company got the economy under their thumb. It’s something that needs to be repeated over and over with evidence smashed in between the rhetoric to make the pain of that reality unbearable. Once the myth of the plucky individualist against the mean old world is utterly ruined then I think unions and mutual aid will become a thing again but not before that point is made.
I think I get your point, and I do respect it. An individual needs more than just “pluck” (or grit or courage or determination) to prosper - typically you also need luck (although inherited wealth and privilege can substitute for either one) and in the Real World™ collective action is stronger than individual action. No argument!
Nonetheless it seems to me that being openly dismissive of “the myth of the plucky individualist” makes the job of convincing an American worker to change their view of unions a lot harder. Trying to be individually capable and determined does have many payoffs, even though by itself it’s not enough for conventional success, so it seems to me that this mindset is something to work around, rather than something to take head on.
Am I making any sense? I’m a lousy writer. I’m completely agreeing with you about what needs changing, but I think @singletona082 intended the thread to be primarily about developing effective strategy (rather than about presenting a cleanly structured, rational argument) so I’m disagreeing with you about what memes need to be countered first in order to make the biggest impact.
Unfortunately, as I said before, although I personally am reasonably good at spreading truth to individual humans, I’m pretty bad at convincing groups or crowds to change their minds.
I think you make sense. I’m mostly just tired of hearing the myth. I’ve worked pretty hard (not as hard as some people I know but harder than most in the places I’ve worked) but only gotten screwed over. And all because I trusted the boss at my work to keep their word. Only when I trusted other workers at a place did anything close to fairness happen. When you got the back of a fellow worker and vice versa it’s a hard sight more heartening than constantly being slapped by lying, cheating bosses despite all your hard work. So I can’t imagine anyone else not having at least one experience like I did where their hard work wasn’t even acknowledge or respected but rather punished/exploited by their bosses.
When I was around 20 years old, I lost a job because the boss’s son stole a couple of hundred bucks from the company and I caught him red-handed. Boss’s son got a lecture, I got a pink slip…
Strong Independent Ubermensch don’t need no comrades! Individualist ideologies are completely at odds with the expressed functionality of unions, yes, you got it.
Come you ranks of labor, come you union core