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avevale_intelligencerI grew up in a staunchly Conservative household. My dad, though working class by birth, believed that hard work and honesty could get you all the way to the top, and proved it in his own case; and he also believed that unions were the thin end of the Communist wedge, irredeemably corrupt and out to smash the British economy and pave the way for an economic takeover by Russia.* Or something like that. He read the Daily Express, which could always be relied upon for a trenchant editorial or a pithy cartoon about slacking workers holding the country to ransom, singing The Red Flag while their bloated, cigar-puffing shop stewards were carried about on litters and fanned by overalled punkah wallahs. And for a while I was taken in.
But the only way to maintain that kind of knee-jerk view of unions and their activities is to close your eyes and your mind to reality, to imagine yourself into the boss's chair, seeing the world through his reversed telescope in which the workers who sustain the productivity of his company, who are the reason for its existence and the masters he was placed on high to serve, are as tiny and negligible as ants, and he is the only significant person in the whole place. Not all bosses are like this, I am happy to acknowledge; but as long as even one is--and the newspapers, even the Conservative ones, bring us reports of the enormities of such bosses every day--then it is vitally necessary that the ants, sorry, I mean the workers, have an organisation which can loom large enough in the telescope to make the boss take notice. Unions are necessary.
I've now seen two contrasting views of the Wisconsin protest, one from California, by someone who thinks the way my dad did, and one from Wisconsin, by someone who is one of the protesting workers. (I'm not linking to either post, because one of them is flocked, but here's the New York Times on the subject.) The former is full of figures proving that the workers in Wisconsin are perfectly able to take a real-terms ten per cent pay cut to pay for their health care and benefits and therefore should do so cheerfully. The latter talks not about money, but about the actual provisions of the bill, whose purpose seems to be less about "budget repair" and more about stripping away collective bargaining rights, forcing cuts in education, destroying Medicare statewide, and other horrors. The latter poster also points out that the same administration which is trying to persuade government employees to "pay their fair share" has pushed through more in tax cuts for, you guessed it, big corporations, than the amount the NYT quotes as the current deficit they're facing; in other words, if the corporations paid the tax they should, the government could balance its books quite happily.
So this is the usual conservative agenda, as we've seen it time and time again; more money and no tax for the government's wealthy cronies, and the rest of us can fuck off and die. If the unions are fighting that, then sorry, but I'm with them, and always will be; and anyone who tells me that unions are not vitally necessary is talking utter rubbish, because as long as it is possible for governments to be conservative (and right now it doesn't seem possible for them to be anything else), the people will need organisations to represent them, to oppose the depredations of the robber barons.
Support your union. Support your friends' union. If you think your union's corrupt, join it and vote for change, or become an officer yourself and do better. If you think it's toothless, join it and give it at least an extra gum. If you think it's in the bosses' pocket, definitely join it and get it out. But don't dare to enjoy the rights you have as a worker while condemning unions, because each and every one of those rights was fought for; if not in your industry, then in others, so that they became accepted as a standard. I believe, though I have no proof, that without unions, no workers' rights would exist, anywhere. I really would hate to find out that I was right.
*Which, given that the Conservative Party and its pale shadow "new" Labour have presided over the asset-stripping of the British economy and the sale to foreign interests of every major industry and utility they could actually shift, is pretty funny in itself. Or, you know, not.
But the only way to maintain that kind of knee-jerk view of unions and their activities is to close your eyes and your mind to reality, to imagine yourself into the boss's chair, seeing the world through his reversed telescope in which the workers who sustain the productivity of his company, who are the reason for its existence and the masters he was placed on high to serve, are as tiny and negligible as ants, and he is the only significant person in the whole place. Not all bosses are like this, I am happy to acknowledge; but as long as even one is--and the newspapers, even the Conservative ones, bring us reports of the enormities of such bosses every day--then it is vitally necessary that the ants, sorry, I mean the workers, have an organisation which can loom large enough in the telescope to make the boss take notice. Unions are necessary.
I've now seen two contrasting views of the Wisconsin protest, one from California, by someone who thinks the way my dad did, and one from Wisconsin, by someone who is one of the protesting workers. (I'm not linking to either post, because one of them is flocked, but here's the New York Times on the subject.) The former is full of figures proving that the workers in Wisconsin are perfectly able to take a real-terms ten per cent pay cut to pay for their health care and benefits and therefore should do so cheerfully. The latter talks not about money, but about the actual provisions of the bill, whose purpose seems to be less about "budget repair" and more about stripping away collective bargaining rights, forcing cuts in education, destroying Medicare statewide, and other horrors. The latter poster also points out that the same administration which is trying to persuade government employees to "pay their fair share" has pushed through more in tax cuts for, you guessed it, big corporations, than the amount the NYT quotes as the current deficit they're facing; in other words, if the corporations paid the tax they should, the government could balance its books quite happily.
So this is the usual conservative agenda, as we've seen it time and time again; more money and no tax for the government's wealthy cronies, and the rest of us can fuck off and die. If the unions are fighting that, then sorry, but I'm with them, and always will be; and anyone who tells me that unions are not vitally necessary is talking utter rubbish, because as long as it is possible for governments to be conservative (and right now it doesn't seem possible for them to be anything else), the people will need organisations to represent them, to oppose the depredations of the robber barons.
Support your union. Support your friends' union. If you think your union's corrupt, join it and vote for change, or become an officer yourself and do better. If you think it's toothless, join it and give it at least an extra gum. If you think it's in the bosses' pocket, definitely join it and get it out. But don't dare to enjoy the rights you have as a worker while condemning unions, because each and every one of those rights was fought for; if not in your industry, then in others, so that they became accepted as a standard. I believe, though I have no proof, that without unions, no workers' rights would exist, anywhere. I really would hate to find out that I was right.
*Which, given that the Conservative Party and its pale shadow "new" Labour have presided over the asset-stripping of the British economy and the sale to foreign interests of every major industry and utility they could actually shift, is pretty funny in itself. Or, you know, not.