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.
I used to let "comments" go ... as when people say, "I mean unions *were* good, but ..."
I take no shite now. When the coded language starts I jump in.
I usually start with, "Nope, no, no way, that's not right ..."
People aren't looking for a fight, they are just looking for the nod and agreement AND they have NO knowledge of the history of unions, so they usually just back off.
Conservatives are liberals in an economic sense. These words are only loaded and meaningless when used disingenuously - which usually done to obscure the full-scale looting of the working class at the hands of global capital.
Pops used to vote Democrat due to union support and is now a full blown Trumper (and I'll never get over him being a Jewish Trumper). Being milquetoast towards unions has very likely cost the Democrats elections, especially in the rust belt.
In their defense, that was a lot of innings to ask the bullpen to hold down the fort after the starter only lasted 3. Particularly so after a doubleheader yesterday. Really good teams might have enough quality relievers that they have enough for 6 innings. But most teams are eventually going to have to go with someone crappy and hope for the best.
Or it's a comment on how MLB continues to whore itself to corporate interests such that folks in attendance are more accurately referred to as clients.
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.
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.
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.
I tell people that by joining a union, you basically hire someone to argue for better wages and working conditions on your behalf - so you don't have to.
You may not like it, I sure don’t. But those are the direct experiences I’ve had. The point of my post was that not that unions serve no role, but that they also need to take responsibility as well, because there are issues there.
The role of a progressive is to challenge the status quo, and in many cases unions are the status quo. I’m not saying unions don’t provide a benefit, nor am I saying they should be thrown out with the bath water. Surely though, there are things that need to change with how unions are deployed these days.
A key piece on being progressive is not merely the desire to move society forward, but a mechanism for doing such. Unions, despite whatever faults they may have, are the only institutional force with any power left that working people can tap into.
A common rhetorical trap that well meaning liberals fall into is “othering” unions. Unions are not a third party. They are composed of their members and while there can be roadblocks (as there are in any necessarily hierarchical organization) it is ultimately the members who determine the fate of a union.
To address some of your specific experiences, the person fussing at you for mopping up was protecting your job and your coworkers’ job. Your contract and job description defines the work you each do and it’s imperative that those distinctions are protected or that you’re paid a work out of class bonus for work out of class that you do. The well-meaning desire to erode these in the name of efficiency are why people in my generation do the jobs of three people and get paid for half of one.
Sounds like you experienced a botched union drive that failed, so the system worked as intended in that instance. The goal of unions is to increase democracy within the workplace and in your case, the union lost.
I would point more toward the wholesale abandonment of the working class by the Democratic Party rather than unions in your example with the trades.
I have full confidence that union teachers and nurses probably enjoy things like class size/nurse-patient ratios, bilingual pay, shift differentials, yearly step advances, continuing education bonuses and reimbursement, etc. Not to mention the work their unions no doubt do to combat the continuing disinvestment in public education and public health on the policy front. And that’s without mentioning how unions have held the line on covid safety for those two specific professions.
A union’s job it to fight for its members whether they’re the best worker in the shop or the worst - and most often the person defining which is which is the boss.
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.)
I wish we could get a handle on if deGrom really will come back this year (assuming they're in it) and, if so, when. If they've really found something and can keep the offense going, he could be the difference. Then again, I could see them lingering, being 2 out with 2 to go, bringing deGrom back to make that Saturday start against Atlanta, and having him Glavine all over it.
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.
Can't imagine the calcaterra-flavored Life Savers are big sellers at the drug store's candy aisle.
there were no games in toronto this weekend
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.
I used to let "comments" go ... as when people say, "I mean unions *were* good, but ..."
I take no shite now. When the coded language starts I jump in.
I usually start with, "Nope, no, no way, that's not right ..."
People aren't looking for a fight, they are just looking for the nod and agreement AND they have NO knowledge of the history of unions, so they usually just back off.
At that masked bar-b-que today, jump in!!
Is globalization conservative? Proponents would say it has raised the standards of living and increased the wealth of developing countries.
Trump has been stylistically nationalist and populist -- hence the trade tariffs and his opposition to a pacific trade deal.
I think terms like conservative or liberal are loaded and meaningless in every day discourse.
Conservatives are liberals in an economic sense. These words are only loaded and meaningless when used disingenuously - which usually done to obscure the full-scale looting of the working class at the hands of global capital.
Pops used to vote Democrat due to union support and is now a full blown Trumper (and I'll never get over him being a Jewish Trumper). Being milquetoast towards unions has very likely cost the Democrats elections, especially in the rust belt.
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…
I, for one, cannot think of any other way to get that information.
you guys. call someone up who watched the game last nite!! duh.
Ah, he just saved us the depressing description of another Washington Nationals bullpen implosion.
In their defense, that was a lot of innings to ask the bullpen to hold down the fort after the starter only lasted 3. Particularly so after a doubleheader yesterday. Really good teams might have enough quality relievers that they have enough for 6 innings. But most teams are eventually going to have to go with someone crappy and hope for the best.
This A's fan is grateful he didn't
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
Also, "even if we don’t have fans in the stands" appears to be a leftover from last year's posting of this piece.
That’s just an Easter egg for the regulars. I expect the Oracle Park comment to be left in there next year.
Eh, it happens.
Either that or it was a reference to the Marlins :-)
Or it's a comment on how MLB continues to whore itself to corporate interests such that folks in attendance are more accurately referred to as clients.
although it doesn't really sound like he took the weekend "off"
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.
You’re under the impression that MLB thinks those umps are terrible. They don’t. There is a good chance one of those listed will be on LCS or WS crew.
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
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.
Here in SF, Indigenous People's Day is talked about a lot by schools and local leaders every october 12th or so
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.
I'm far from an expert on this, but I think the main benefit unions provide workers is better pay. Most of everything else is window dressing.
A union's top concern is membership totals.
Issues like workplace safety are covered by OSHA, which was founded by -- wait for it -- Richard Nixon.
FYI -- I've taken OSHA 10 and 30, multiple times.
A national effort to address workplace safety occured during the progressive era -- early 1900s. I learned that in my US history classes.
I tell people that by joining a union, you basically hire someone to argue for better wages and working conditions on your behalf - so you don't have to.
Yes -- but does "better" mean easier or safer?
If conditions at your workplace are hazardous, you can file a complaint with OSHA, confidentially.
The pandemic provides a unique hazard, so obviously normal conditions don't apply.
as I've told my kids 5M times: "everything b4 the 'but' is bullshite"
so nice 2nd sentence.
You may not like it, I sure don’t. But those are the direct experiences I’ve had. The point of my post was that not that unions serve no role, but that they also need to take responsibility as well, because there are issues there.
Gonna go ahead and count you as not a progressive.
The role of a progressive is to challenge the status quo, and in many cases unions are the status quo. I’m not saying unions don’t provide a benefit, nor am I saying they should be thrown out with the bath water. Surely though, there are things that need to change with how unions are deployed these days.
A key piece on being progressive is not merely the desire to move society forward, but a mechanism for doing such. Unions, despite whatever faults they may have, are the only institutional force with any power left that working people can tap into.
A common rhetorical trap that well meaning liberals fall into is “othering” unions. Unions are not a third party. They are composed of their members and while there can be roadblocks (as there are in any necessarily hierarchical organization) it is ultimately the members who determine the fate of a union.
To address some of your specific experiences, the person fussing at you for mopping up was protecting your job and your coworkers’ job. Your contract and job description defines the work you each do and it’s imperative that those distinctions are protected or that you’re paid a work out of class bonus for work out of class that you do. The well-meaning desire to erode these in the name of efficiency are why people in my generation do the jobs of three people and get paid for half of one.
Sounds like you experienced a botched union drive that failed, so the system worked as intended in that instance. The goal of unions is to increase democracy within the workplace and in your case, the union lost.
I would point more toward the wholesale abandonment of the working class by the Democratic Party rather than unions in your example with the trades.
I have full confidence that union teachers and nurses probably enjoy things like class size/nurse-patient ratios, bilingual pay, shift differentials, yearly step advances, continuing education bonuses and reimbursement, etc. Not to mention the work their unions no doubt do to combat the continuing disinvestment in public education and public health on the policy front. And that’s without mentioning how unions have held the line on covid safety for those two specific professions.
A union’s job it to fight for its members whether they’re the best worker in the shop or the worst - and most often the person defining which is which is the boss.
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.)
The Twins are the poster team for not having a ace,or a legitimate big league starter. The last place Twins, in a weak division.
I wish we could get a handle on if deGrom really will come back this year (assuming they're in it) and, if so, when. If they've really found something and can keep the offense going, he could be the difference. Then again, I could see them lingering, being 2 out with 2 to go, bringing deGrom back to make that Saturday start against Atlanta, and having him Glavine all over it.
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.
There Is Power In A Union
As a proud union member and staffer, thanks for this one Craig. Up with the workers!