I was recently sent an essay which I find to be quite pertinent considering the holiday that falls this weekend.
In the article, the author Dave Johnson, offers some insight as to how and why some bad feelings about unions and organizing *could* exist. I know, say it aint so! Allow me to highlight some of the finer points:
People who own companies think that the company is their “private property” and they can do what they want with it, regardless of the effect on the people who work there or the surrouding community. Their goal is to make as much money as possible and to do that you lower costs as much as possible.
[O]wners of companies try to convince us that unions are bad. They form and fund "business groups" like the Chamber of Commerce, to fight to keep unions from having the right and power to organize their workers. We hear it repeated over and over in our corporate-dominated society, a drumbeat that labor unions are sinister, shady, harmful, corrupt, violent, “raise prices,” ”cost jobs,” and generally hurt the economy and country. The owners of companies have a lot of money to spend on convincing the public to let them have free reign, and they know from selling products how to sell things to the public. Repetition, repetition and repetition. Marketing works.
[Y]ou shouldn't expect to see, hear or read on any corporate-owned TV station, radio station or newspaper about the benefits to people from joining a union. Think back and see if you can remember the last time you heard it explained to the public in one of these outlets how members of unions are better off?
I'll keep this brief and let the article speak for itself. However, as your brand new and friendly TAG Organizer, I felt I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't at least present this for everyone to read.
So, the next time you hear someone speaking of the Evil Labor Unions or ill of organizing in general, think to where they got their information and how that vitriol was fueled.
Yours, as always, in solidarity ..
How Companies Turn People Against Unions by Dave Johnson
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7 comments:
OK. What does our Union have to offer employers?
Offer employers? The Union offers a talented, experience work force that will enable the employers to make a decent profit.
Decent profit not enough? Then go non-union and exploit your clueless workers. After all, getting rich is what really matters, eh?
You may excuse yourself Mr. Norman. The answer is so cooky cutter. Of course there are tons of experienced animation people out there needing work. Why not hire only newbies hot out of school, if they have made it that far? It seems to be that is what is set in place. No room for oldies. No need for experience, ANYONE can work in animation. Thats how it is set up. Why do you think that people with experience are passed over for younger people? Talent? Haw! Money? Haw!
Thanks Steven,
Aside from the union/image issue that you focus on, the first paragraph, all by itself is a concise articulate explanation for the current state of our economy.
Big corporate will stop at nothing trying to convince the American public that laying off masses of workers and sending their jobs overseas is somehow good for the general economy and inherently and essentially American, (as opposed to, "eeeuw!" a European/"Socialist" economy with cooties).
It's all a smokescreen designed to give them cover to act greedily and destructively. Proof? Just look around.
Unions will continue to get a bad rap as long as the larger higher profile unions(mostly those in the public sector) use their leverage to remain shiftless and corrupt. See: LA Unified Teacher's Union.
Huge cost. Zero results. Massive sense of entitlement.
There are plenty of good unions but the bigger powerful ones are what America is sick and tired of.
The philosophy of labor and the philosophy of commerce are two entirely separate universes, their divergent interests having absolutely nothing to do with one another. It is a joke that these sides even show up at the same table - they talk different languages and negotiate over terms that are meaningless to each other, then exit each claiming victory. It's two morons taking swings at each other in a gigantic darkened gymnasium, one playing football the other playing cricket, each hoping to hit each other at some point with something. Meanwhile, the world turns and people get shit done in spite of both of their neanderthal grunts and groans about the meaning of life.
And how do "people get shit done" if there isn't labor involved? Magic? Positive thinking? People getting shit done are usually involved in labor of some sort. Labor unions formed to help those people get something closer to their fair share of the commerce from the shit they produced. Some labor unions may do a better job than others, but to say employees, and employee unions, are irrelevant to shit getting done is just more of the pervasive anti-union Kool-Aide that the mass media has been peddling.
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