Union Perspectives

Just not in the U.S.A. Big box stores are told by governments that if they want to operate in their countries the stores have to allow unions to exists or form in their stores. For example, Wal*Mart had to allow its stores in South Africa, China, Brazil, Argentina, and even the England to form unions --- everywhere it seems except in the United States. Why is Wal*Mart spending millions of dollars fighting pro-union legislation, when it could be spending that money on its American workers. Why are other countries taking care of their workers, but our country isn’t? What the hell? It looks like these governments are helping their people. Are their workers more appreciated than our people? Like I’ve said before, the corporations can ship our jobs out of country, but they will then ship their goods back to this country to sell. This is when we need to organize. This is our opportunity to organize the big box stores. Our government could help us by passing the Employee Free Choice Act (...

Unions are weak in the U.S. because of a labor fragmentation in the character of American liberalism. To counter this fragmentation, labor must make what progress it can with the community and not at the expense of the community. There was a time when leftists of all persuasions saw the unions as the vanguard of social reconstruction. And now our unions greatest danger comes from an explosive division within the working population itself. Walter Ruether observed in 1984, “As unionized labor has become but an island of well-being in a sea of resentful low-wage aspirants, income inequality within the working class that has reached levels unseen for more than two generations.” Corporations have found that years of deindustrialization and wage stagnation has generated a huge reservoir of eager replacement workers whose residual commitment to their working class neighbors had long since been extinguished in their desperate scramble to hold onto their houses, cars and dignity. Maybe we n...