A few days ago I had written "Mr. Reagan, Tear Down This Wall (Of Economic Blackmail)" about the illegal MTA Strike in New York. Then the union members rejected the very generous compromise offer from the MTA. Now the same rejecters are basically begging for that same rejected offer to be made to them again. Pathetic. But, their stupid and illegal strike may have struck one more nail in the coffin of unions as we know them.
News items in recent days mentioned that labor unions are looking at ways to save their falling fortunes. In my humble opinion, the days of Unions protecting truly exploited blue collar workers are long gone. We are ALL equally exploited.
Top executives get millions in paychecks (while companies are either being downsized, losing money and/or cooking the books!) while blue and now even white collar jobs go abroad.
Traditional "us against them managers" Labor Unions are not the right model for these times. We should probably outsource/offshore Unions.
All Americans, whether blue or white collar, need to hold our elected leaders accountable for making it easy for companies to make money off us but enrich only a few execs and other countries' workforces. We need some simple rules, really.
No offshoring to countries that do not meet certain standards of democracy and work conditions for their labor that competes with ours. AND, No US government contracts for companies that fire Americans to hire people abroad, or that hide their profits in Bahamas, Grand Cayman and other tax shelters. What do you think?
2 comments:
We could return corporations to the status they had before the civil war: subject to public review and dissolution at any time.
I also like the idea of "one big union," wherein everyone is organized and if any group of leaders tries something stupid everyone goes on strike. Heh. It happened in Seattle in the early part of the 20th century.
In any case, old style manufacturing unions are a thing of the past. Now unions need to concentrate their energy on service industries.
Wow, Chase, you can read things that are not written there. Do you also see dead people? Do you see 100,000+ Iraqis and 2400 more dead Americans then, that Bush has killed to make Haliburton rich, while big business outsources our jobs?
Imran
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