Do CounterPunch, Fevereiro 24, 2022
Por DAVID MACARAY
By now, most people realize that private sector union membership in the U.S. stands at about 6.5-percent. Which is to say that roughly 94-percent of all private sector jobs are non-union. Which, when you fully grasp these numbers, makes those accusations of unions of being “too big” and “too powerful” even more ridiculous and hysterical than they already are. Yet, even with these depressingly low membership numbers, if America’s non-union workers rooted for unions to succeed, and, indeed, aspired to join a union themselves, it would mean, at least in theory, that the labor movement was alive and well and had a decent chance of succeeding.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Alas, too many non-union workers not only don’t admire or respect labor unions, they revile them. They fear them. They resent them. They consider them irrelevant. It’s as if America’s corporate masters had gathered all the underpaid, under-benefited non-union workers together in the same room, and done some hideous Manchurian Candidate brain-washing number on them, convincing them that they could trust the profit-motive more than they could trust a workers collective.
As a college student, I worked part-time as a cook. I’m not exaggerating when I say that, back in those days, it was the dream of every fry cook to get a job in a union manufacturing plant. That was their life’s goal. They didn’t dream of being millionaires or lottery winners or entrepreneurs; they dreamed of working in a big-time industrial setting where the wages, benefits, and working conditions were union-scale.
Which is why it’s so disappointing to see the antipathy directed toward unions. One objection is that unions are “corrupt.” That assertion has always puzzled me. Are people confusing ineptitude, laziness, and lack of imagination with “corruption,” because I’ve never seen any evidence of widespread corruption, certainly not enough to damage labor’s reputation. Are these people locked into some sort of time-warp, where they still imagine seeing newsreel footage of union honchos doing the perp-walk? Those days are over.
Another objection is that workers shouldn’t be forced to join a union or forced to pay dues. That one not only puzzles me, it enrages me. You hire into a union shop because the wages and benefits are roughly 15-percent better than non-union facilities, and yet you balk at having to embrace the very organization that made those wages and benefits possible? Several words come to mind: hypocrite, freeloader, ingrate.
In an odd way, the resentment at being “forced” to join a union (despite its obvious advantages) reminds me of the South’s resistance to desegregation. Southerners wouldn’t accept the fact that the federal government could tell a restaurant owner in Alabama that he no longer had the right to choose whom he could and couldn’t serve. Even though the restaurant was private property, his “Whites Only” signs had to come down. It was a concept people couldn’t absorb. Perhaps that same mind-set applies to union membership.
This classic labor vs. management adversarial relationship has been in place in the U.S. ever since the mid-19th century, and has existed in Europe for even longer. Because everything and everyone—the Congress, the media, the police, the banks, the Church, the city fathers—were arrayed against the unions, it was a constant struggle, and any progress labor made came at a steep price.
But the one enduring resource unions could always count on—the one built-in advantage they had—was the support of working men and women. And that was because workers felt they were all pretty much in the same boat. Moreover, it was this grassroots, across-the-board solidarity that management most feared because they had no way of combating it, other than by giving workers a larger slice of the pie.
And this is what makes the current anti-unionism so disturbing. Despite statistics clearly showing that the middle-class is losing more ground every year, the average worker, for whatever reason, continues to place more faith in the generosity and infallibility of the so-called “free market” than he does in the only lobbying organization working people have ever had. It’s like one of those old cowboy movies, but one where the Indians trust the cavalry more than their own tribe.
If the support of working men and women continues to evaporate, it means we’re sunk. Simple as that. It means Corporationism has not only won the battle, it has won the war. And who knows where this is headed? Maybe this thing is already the culmination of some dreadful phenomenon. Maybe organized labor is walking around zombie-like, not realizing that we’re America’s Undead.
David Macaray is a playwright and author. His newest book is How To Win Friends and Avoid Sacred Cows. He can be reached at dmacaray@gmail.com
Grupo de Pesquisa Sul-Sur
Este grupo se insere numa das linhas de pesquisa do LABMUNDO-BA/NPGA/EA/UFBA, Laboratório de Análise Política Mundial, Bahia, do Núcleo de Pós-graduação da Escola de Administração da UFBA. O grupo é formado por pesquisadores de diferentes áreas do conhecimento e de diferentes instituições públicas de ensino e pesquisa.
Buscamos nos apropriar do conhecimento das inter-relações das dinâmicas socioespaciais (políticas, econômicas, culturais) dos países da América do Sul, especialmente do Brasil, da Bolívia, da Argentina e do Chile, privilegiando a análise histórica, que nos permite captar as especificidades do chamado “subdesenvolvimento”, expressas, claramente, na organização das economias dos diversos povos, nos grupos sociais, no espaço.
Nosso campo de investigação dialoga com os campos da Geopolítica, Geografia Crítica, da Economia Política e da Ecologia Política. Pretendemos compreender as novas cartografias que vêm se desenhando na América do Sul nos dois circuitos da economia postulados por Milton Santos, o circuito inferior e o circuito superior. Construiremos, desse modo, algumas cartografias de ação, inspirados na proposta da socióloga Ana Clara Torres Ribeiro, especialmente dos diversos movimentos sociopolíticos dessa região, das últimas décadas do século XX à contemporaneidade.
Interessa-nos, sobretudo, a compreensão e a visibilidade das diferentes reações e movimentos dos países do Sul à dinâmica hegemônica global, os espaços de cooperação e integração criados, as potencialidades de criação de novos espaços e os seus significados para o fortalecimento da integração e da cooperação entre os países do Sul, do ponto de vista de outros paradigmas de civilização, a partir de uma epistemologia do sul. Através das cartografias de ação, buscamos perceber as antigas e novas formas de organização social e política, bem como os espaços de cooperação SUL-SUL aí gestados. Consideramos a integração e a cooperação Sul-Sul como espaços potenciais da construção de novos caminhos de civilização que superem a violência do desenvolvimento da forma em que ele é postulado e praticado.
Notícias
Africa
Agroecologia
Alienação
Amazônia
América Latina
Argentina
Arte
Bali
Biopirataria
Boaventura Sousa
Bolívia
Brasil
Buen Vivir
Campo Refugiados
Canada
Capitalismo
Chile
China
Ciência e Tecnologia
Cinema
Cisjordânia
Civilização
Colômbia
Colonialidade
Condição Feminina
Conflitos
Congresso
Corrupção
Crise
Crise Moral
Cuba
Democracia
Democrácia
Desemprego
Diplomacia Militar
Direitos Humanos
Ditadura Civil- Militar
Divida
Dívida Egíto
Droga
Drones
Ecologia
Economia
Educação
Educação Rural México
Empreendedorismo
Equador
Escravidão
Esquerda
Estado
Estados Unidos
EUA
Europa
Europeismo
Evasão de Capital
Exclusão
Exploração
Folclore
Forum Social
Fotografia
França
Futuro
Geografia Crítica
Geopolitica
Geopolítica
Gerencialismo
Golpe
Grécia
Greve
Guerra
História
humanidade
Ilhas Malvinas
Imigração
Imperialismo
Imprensa
Indígenas
Indústria
Industrialização. Brasil
Informação
Integração
Intervenção humanitária
Iran
Israel
Jornalismo
Literatura
Lombardia
Luta de Classe
Machismo
Marxismo
Medicina
Medos
Meio Ambiente
Mercosul
México
Mídia
Migrantes
Milícias kurdas
Mineração
Modelo Liberal Periférico
Montrèal
Movimento Estudantil
Movimentos Populares
Mulheres
Mundialização
Nazismo
Neocolonialismo
Neurociência
Noam Chomsky
Ocidente
ONG
Orçamento Público
Oriente Médio
Palestina
Paraguai
Pensamento
Peru
Pesamento Econômico
Petróleo
po
Poesia
Política
Políticas Neoliberais
Portugal
Precarização
Previdência
Produção Global
Questão Agrária
Redes de Computador
Refugiados
Relações Exteriores
Renda Básica
Renda Básica. Europa
Revolução
Russia
São Paulo
Saúde
Síria
Solidariedade
STF
Trabalho
Trabalho Infantil
Transnacionais
Tratado livre comércio
Universidade
Uruguai
Venezuela
violência
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário