Short-termism led the Democratic Party to let unions die, and now they've lost their base

The current administration has set its sights on various regulations affecting business. I wonder what their stance is on this one. :unamused:

Yup.

OTOH, “let’s ignore class issues and focus on creating a multiracial plutocracy” doesn’t cut it, either.

https://twitter.com/freeyourmindkid/status/957701916703842305

https://twitter.com/freeyourmindkid/status/957705275884130311

https://twitter.com/iamleoglaze/status/957707386441031682

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Race, class and gender; the Axis of Oppression. You can’t fix just part of it; gotta do it all.

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https://twitter.com/blacksocialists/status/954423067102588928

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It helps to remember what unions started as, before they became bureaucratic institutions: illegal gatherings of workers conspiring to coordinate their activity in order to extort their employers. The concept of a union took off because this extortion was both possible and profitable for industrial workers.

It’s not really possible or profitable for most people today to extort the owners the same way that early industrial workers did. But anywhere we see poor people conspiring to get one over on capitalists, there is a hint of the future of “unions”.

Couldn’t possibly be

  • Mafia infestation of unions
  • general hollowing out of American manufacturing in the 70s & 80s
  • perception that the UAW and some others were massively overpaid compared to many others and yet still struck for higher wages even when the auto makers were screwed (their own fault but thats separate)
  • and so on…

Nope, nope. None of those things have anything to do with it.

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We’re talking about assembly line jobs here.

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-two-tier-union-contracts-became-labors-undoing/

That’s Karl Hoeltge’s attitude. The 22-year-old earns $15.78 an hour on the assembly line of a General Motors factory near St. Louis, under a union contract that will cap his pay at $19.28 an hour five to six years from now. That is, if he hasn’t left by then to pursue his dream, which is to commercialize one or two of the children’s toys he designs in his off hours. Karl’s father, Gary, has worked for years on the same assembly line, and the son says he might be more reconciled to a career at the plant if he could work up to the $28 an hour his father earns. But, he says, “I’ll never catch up to my father’s pay—not if the union allows the present setup to continue.”

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White folks leave neighborhoods, black folks move in = white flight = racism.

Black folks leave neighborhoods, white folks move in = gentrification = racism.

Only non-racist plan must be to stay right where you are.

The Tories keep trying to move Early May bank holiday to make marches harder to attend.

The more nationalist leaning politicians want it moved to St George’s Day, because Wales is entirely cool about celebrating the patron saint of England (Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own bank holidays).

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It couldn’t possibly be that unions, like many other bureaucratic institutions are both positive and problematic… nope. It’s either all good or all bad.

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And assembly line jobs used to not be the end of the line for workers. I mean, it’s almost like things aren’t like they used to be 50 years ago.

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How about city planning that accounts for a history of structural racism and works to ensure that people across classes retain access to city resources?

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Most such tend to be positive at their outset, but as turf protection and rice bowl maintenance set in over time, ossification invariably ensues. Private, public, it’s pretty much the same.

The Mafia infested unions were left standing because the communist/syndalicalist unions were murdered by the state.

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Nah, all unions at all times in history are exactly the same. Except police unions, those are okay. /s

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