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I am always surprised how even friends and people who I think of as progressives and liberals completely buy into the idea that unions have outlived their usefulness, are presently corrupt and self-serving, and their shrinking influence is just fine. Forget about the blue collar workers I know, who have been MAGA before MAGA existed. How did progressives lose them? I suspect it has been that the Democrats elected to the presidency since Reagan’s open union busting have been relatively conservative and haven’t given a crap about labor.

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You could’ve at least given us the link to the box scores. How else are we supposed to know what happened in the games yesterday?

Enjoy the day off! Pretty sure we gave you 4 more paid holidays this year…

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Love the labor day rant! Enjoy the time off; you've certainly earned it.

(One brief thing, though: "the past half century of baseball history is *inextricably* tied up with organized labor.")

- your friendly neighborhood pedant

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I'm often a bit slow on the up take. Somehow the implications of Craig being a meddling kid vis-a-vis his local school board were lost on me...mentally, I just stopped at "good, they got a mask mandate for 3 weeks at least, hopefully they'll extend that again in a few weeks".

In reality, what Craig did probably saves some people's lives...because every policy, action, or decision that slows or reduces the spread of COVID saves someone's life. We don't know who or how many, but that doesn't make it any less so.

Craig Calcaterra. Life Saver. Who knew?

Kudos.

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I never thought about how baseball ignores Labor Day, until now.

The most baffling thing about the MLB is that, even when they beat a union, they still screw up labor relations. While MLBPA largely has had the upper hand against MLB, MLB destroyed the umpires union years ago. And yet, somehow, they are unable to fire Angel Hernandez, or Joe West, or CB Bucknor, or the other handful of terrible umpires who have no business being on a major league field.

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founding

One of the greatest songs for a busker to perform. It also pairs well with "The World Turned Upside Down". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZtMlmxUTHo

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The unspoken symbolism of holidays speaks quite a bit.

Along with the Martin Luther King holiday, Labor Day is the most ignored official federal holiday at the state and local level. There's also Columbus Day, which was never much more than an excuse for mattress sales even before it became a genuine embarrassment. Veteran's Day generates news coverage of World War II veterans in wheel chairs (not much longer for the Last Good War, say the actuarial tables). We'll have to see what happens with Juneteenth, but don't hold your breath on getting the day off.

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The Unions have a good bit of self-examination to do as well. I’m not anti-union, but throughout my life and career I’ve seen the bad side, and it’s not inconsiderable.

Have you ever worked in a union shop? I have. Imagine my surprise when I reached for a broom to clean up a mess I had made, only to get my ass chewed because sweeping was not part of my job description. Neither was moving an item from an adjacent work bench to mine. Getting that bit of work done required me to seek out the correct person, a ten minute task in itself, and waiting for that person to finally get up enough fucking ambition to walk back to my work station and move the item literally three feet.

I’m not making this shit up. This kind of childish bullshit happens ALL THE TIME.

I just had a run-in recently where one of the folks who works for me was in a customer data center (computer room) and got his ass reamed by some union jackwad because he wasn’t allowed to plug in a network cable to run diagnostics on the gear that is his job to support. This wasn’t out of some desire for security or up-time. No this was just because the union had wrangled the system just so in order to make things as difficult as possible in the name of job security. Not that they wanted the job of my tech—far from it.

Another eye-opening union experience was in my first job out of college where the local union tried to force the company I worked for to unionize. They tried hard too. Their tactics were so…childish…it’s the only word I can come up with. This was in the days before everyone had email and long before social media so our interaction with the local was mostly in face-to-face meetings and via snail mail.

The campaign that was launched against the owners of the company—owners who, I may add, were very well liked and respected by those who worked there—was straight out some nasty book of tactics I imagine fuckers like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney keep next to their bedside table.

Personal attacks launched against people who deserved none of it. So nasty and infantile that they made fun of the elderly status of the grandmother of the family, and made juvenile jokes about the last name of the principal founder of the company.

Remember, these communications were targeted to convince us workers that the union would be working in our best interest, as they openly bullied people, picked on an old lady, and made fun of people because of their last name.

As I recall, out of 120 or so people who worked there at the time, only two voted for the union. Two.

Hearing two of the union heads muttering that there were “a lot of paychecks to be mined” went a long way towards showing me exactly what the union was truly interested in.

Many folks in my family have similar union stories to tell. The union protection of workers at all cost based on nothing more than seniority. People who should have been fired for cause, or for creating hostile environments, especially towards women, were protected for no other reason than they were up to date on their union dues.

So yeah, count me as a progressive who questions how valuable unions are in there current configuration. I don’t doubt the utility of organizing labor to enhance the rights of workers, and understand fully the necessary changes that were brought about in the early days of collective bargaining.

But these days? Yeah, walk into a construction site or metal fabrication shop and take a poll of how many of those folks really care about workers rights as they drive away with Trump stickers on their bumpers.

Talk to a nurse or teacher about the value they actually derive from their unions, vs the marketing of the effort. You’ll find way more stories of the union getting in the way more than of the union helping.

That’s not to say there’s no value. I’ve seen good things come of it as well, but all too often it feels to me like the union is just one belligerent parent yelling at the other belligerent parent, while the kids are stuck with the results of the mess.

It’s not just Tricky Dick and Ronnie “The Unionbuster” Reagan as Frank Sobotka railed against. No, the unions have done themselves very little favors because they have largely forgotten why they exist in the first place. They see the workers as ATM’s and they often create a system that harms workers and helps maintain a status quo—the exact opposite of why we needed unions to begin with.

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I never heard the term PTO till I started my new job. It was always vacation time. Making it PTO instead feels like someone wants you to feel like you aren't actually on vacation.

I seem to be the only here today to talk about baseball. (Very pro-union, mind you, but not really in a political mood.) The Mets really seem to be playing decently again. Hard not to think that they are just another mediocre team in a mediocre division, and had their schedule not foisted two weeks of the two best teams on them, maybe they would be a couple of games closer to the top. Though I really think the difference is simply no deGrom. Our favorite fireballer had a WAR of 5.0 Which suggests to me that had he stayed healthy, the Mets might have won five more games. Which would put them in first. The difference between having an ace and not having an ace is just that important sometimes. Which is why the Dodgers traded for Scherzer.

A happy new year to all of them's who observe Rosh Hashanah in any fashion. Here is hoping against much hope that the new Jewish year manages to be better than the last one. Or the one before that. (I doubt I will be the only people in the synagogue who wonders if God is even listening.)

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founding

In a previous life, in the late 90s, I started an office job for a county. A few years before they division has unionized, it was a three way race between AFSCME, Teamsters and nothing. So not only was it contentious around the question to unionize, but what union it should be. My job had been a "permatemp" job that along with hundreds of others, the county had been sued to make full time and therefore wasn't part of the bargaining unit.

On my first day I was "warned" that the shop steward was going to try to get my job included and that it was my choice of what to do. It was strongly implied in that conversation that I should avoid the guy. And no, it wasn't my direct boss that warned me, it was a coworker.

Anyway, the steward seemed confused when he came into my cube, said his name, but before he could state his business, I, a mid twenties white male fresh out of college, reached out my hand and said "Give me the card, i will sign it."

He had not brought a card with him expecting to have to sell it over a few weeks.

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There Is Power In A Union

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As a proud union member and staffer, thanks for this one Craig. Up with the workers!

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