Who says America has lost her leadership role in the world?
Where else do workers put in a full day for the equivalent of about four euros an hour?
Of course there are lots of places where working folks make less... Zimbabwe, Haiti, Slovenia... but when we look at wages in the so-called developed world, American workers are clearly heading for third world status.
Fast food workers held another protest in New York City today, where the Captains of Commerce apparently think seven bucks an hour is a living wage.
The folks making that seven bucks an hour know better.
These would be the same Captains of Commerce who are reverentially fawned over by the business press for figuring out how to avoid paying taxes in America. The same Captains of Commerce who would be outraged if their seven and eight number pay packets were seriously taxed.
The same Captains of Commerce who truly believe that they are entitled to more every year than what their lowest paid workers will earn over their lifetime.
Right now Amazon workers in Germany are on strike. They already make three or four dollars an hour more than their American counterparts. Not only that, but the German workers get 34 paid days off every year.
So why are workers in other developed nations doing so much better than American workers?
Do you think the fact that they are far more likely to be unionized has something to do with it?
Showing posts with label decline of unions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label decline of unions. Show all posts
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
The decline of unions in Canada
In an article that has appeared on both the anti-worker Bloomberg site and the generally pro-labour Counterpunch site, Kris Warner makes the case that the cause of organized labour's long drift into irrelevance in the US is due to a hostile climate.
His arguments are relevant as far as they go. There is no question that unions in America are up against a hostile environment, and that environment grows ever more hostile. However, his article is gravely misguided in using Canada as the benchmark for what unions could be.
While it's true that the overall climate in Canadian society is somewhat more conducive to and tolerant of union activity, the difference is one of degree, rather than of kind.
Warner is correct in claiming that there is yet no equivalent to "right to work" in Canada. Yet.
But listen to Ontario's wannabe Conservative Premier Tim Hudak. He's definitely a "right to work" kind of guy, and a Conservative victory in the next provincial election is not an outlandish prospect. The fact that traditionally union-friendly Michigan next door just went down that road doesn't help.
Even Ontario's supposedly labour-friendly Liberal government had no qualms about passing a bill that allowed it to "legally" quash the collective bargaining rights of Ontario's teachers, a bit of skulduggery that the most reactionary right-to-work governors must be admiring.
Warner's analysis misses the big picture, and the big picture is this; since the 1970's the rate of unionization in Canada's private sector has fallen by more than half.
True, it's fallen even more precipitously in the US, but Canada is hardly poster-boy material for a "make America union friendly" campaign.
His arguments are relevant as far as they go. There is no question that unions in America are up against a hostile environment, and that environment grows ever more hostile. However, his article is gravely misguided in using Canada as the benchmark for what unions could be.
While it's true that the overall climate in Canadian society is somewhat more conducive to and tolerant of union activity, the difference is one of degree, rather than of kind.
Warner is correct in claiming that there is yet no equivalent to "right to work" in Canada. Yet.
But listen to Ontario's wannabe Conservative Premier Tim Hudak. He's definitely a "right to work" kind of guy, and a Conservative victory in the next provincial election is not an outlandish prospect. The fact that traditionally union-friendly Michigan next door just went down that road doesn't help.
Even Ontario's supposedly labour-friendly Liberal government had no qualms about passing a bill that allowed it to "legally" quash the collective bargaining rights of Ontario's teachers, a bit of skulduggery that the most reactionary right-to-work governors must be admiring.
Warner's analysis misses the big picture, and the big picture is this; since the 1970's the rate of unionization in Canada's private sector has fallen by more than half.
True, it's fallen even more precipitously in the US, but Canada is hardly poster-boy material for a "make America union friendly" campaign.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
110 dead in fire at Walmart contractor in Bangladesh
This is what the race to the bottom looks like.
Burning to death in a sweat shop where you work for $37 per MONTH.
Burning to death in a sweat shop where you work for $37 per MONTH.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Labour day
Or labor day as our friends south of the 49th like to call it, because after all, there's no "u" in labor!
Not many of u anyway.
Dean Baker has an opinion piece at the AJE site today where he uses Canada as an example of how labour might be revived in the US.
I sort of lost him after he pointed out that in Western Europe union membership tends to be 80% of the workforce or more.
That's the example we should be following. On paper Canada's 31% looks impressive, but Baker forgot to mention that in the private sector it's closer to 12% and shrinking. In fact one of the prime items on the wish list for the Harper gang is to bring in US-style right-to-work-for-less legislation.
Big Unions in the US were flirting with self-destruction and irrelevance for years, but their wholesale acquiescence to two-tiered contracts was the kiss of death. How can you tell the new hire he's working for 14 bucks an hour but the old guy next to you is going to keep his 30? This is the antithesis of what unions should be about.
And the new hires know it.
I was listening to a couple of talking heads discuss Obama's lack of appeal to the so-called NASCAR vote. The Democrats are ostensibly the union-friendly party, so what's the problem with the blue-collar white guys? They think their interests are better represented by a guy who claims corporations are people too?
Unfortunately, that's exactly what a lot of them think. The complacency of union leadership over the past forty years has led them to that point. The seeds of that complacency were evident within the membership all along.
It was my observation on one shop floor after another that the rank and file were a lot more conservative than the leadership. On being hired into a union shop back in the sixties or seventies, the average worker would initially be very cognizant of the fact that their low-skill job payed four or five times the minimum wage because there was a union contract. Hell, they'd even attend the odd union meeting!
Talk to them a year or two later and it's a different story. They're not working class anymore, they're middle class. Their taxes are too high. And goddamn, what are they paying all those union dues for anyway? After a couple of years on the job the typical UAW member had succeeded in convincing himself that the only reason he was getting a mere four or five times minimum wage and not eight or ten was because the union was holding him back.
I've seen it a thousand times.
And that's the attitude that's played so nicely into the hands of the oligarchs and the corporate weasels who came up with "right to work". Sounds good, doesn't it? Of course you should have the right to work! And who needs unions? Aren't you man enough to walk into the boss' office and demand your due? Of course you are, and we'll help you out by moving your job to Georgia or Alabama where it's going to be a lot harder for those union types to hold you back!
How stupid can people be!
What hope I see on the horizon for workers doesn't come from the Canadian labour model, which I fear is meandering down the same road to irrelevance that their American brothers and sisters have already trod.
The hope is coming from a new generation of workers who will realize that what the Teamsters and the USW and the UAW have left them isn't good enough, and will take matters into their own hands.
In China militant workers have been known to toss recalcitrant managers from the factory roof. In America those managers will be joined by a few union bosses once the next generation gets their hands on the wheel.
Not many of u anyway.
Dean Baker has an opinion piece at the AJE site today where he uses Canada as an example of how labour might be revived in the US.
I sort of lost him after he pointed out that in Western Europe union membership tends to be 80% of the workforce or more.
That's the example we should be following. On paper Canada's 31% looks impressive, but Baker forgot to mention that in the private sector it's closer to 12% and shrinking. In fact one of the prime items on the wish list for the Harper gang is to bring in US-style right-to-work-for-less legislation.
Big Unions in the US were flirting with self-destruction and irrelevance for years, but their wholesale acquiescence to two-tiered contracts was the kiss of death. How can you tell the new hire he's working for 14 bucks an hour but the old guy next to you is going to keep his 30? This is the antithesis of what unions should be about.
And the new hires know it.
I was listening to a couple of talking heads discuss Obama's lack of appeal to the so-called NASCAR vote. The Democrats are ostensibly the union-friendly party, so what's the problem with the blue-collar white guys? They think their interests are better represented by a guy who claims corporations are people too?
Unfortunately, that's exactly what a lot of them think. The complacency of union leadership over the past forty years has led them to that point. The seeds of that complacency were evident within the membership all along.
It was my observation on one shop floor after another that the rank and file were a lot more conservative than the leadership. On being hired into a union shop back in the sixties or seventies, the average worker would initially be very cognizant of the fact that their low-skill job payed four or five times the minimum wage because there was a union contract. Hell, they'd even attend the odd union meeting!
Talk to them a year or two later and it's a different story. They're not working class anymore, they're middle class. Their taxes are too high. And goddamn, what are they paying all those union dues for anyway? After a couple of years on the job the typical UAW member had succeeded in convincing himself that the only reason he was getting a mere four or five times minimum wage and not eight or ten was because the union was holding him back.
I've seen it a thousand times.
And that's the attitude that's played so nicely into the hands of the oligarchs and the corporate weasels who came up with "right to work". Sounds good, doesn't it? Of course you should have the right to work! And who needs unions? Aren't you man enough to walk into the boss' office and demand your due? Of course you are, and we'll help you out by moving your job to Georgia or Alabama where it's going to be a lot harder for those union types to hold you back!
How stupid can people be!
What hope I see on the horizon for workers doesn't come from the Canadian labour model, which I fear is meandering down the same road to irrelevance that their American brothers and sisters have already trod.
The hope is coming from a new generation of workers who will realize that what the Teamsters and the USW and the UAW have left them isn't good enough, and will take matters into their own hands.
In China militant workers have been known to toss recalcitrant managers from the factory roof. In America those managers will be joined by a few union bosses once the next generation gets their hands on the wheel.
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