35 years ago, I was pretty anti-union. I tho't they'd had their day; they'd been useful and good once upon a time, but they'd become too big and too powerful (therefore corrupt), and so they needed to be reined in. I don't think I was wrong as far as that particular tho't was concerned at that particular time. What makes it all wrong now is that unions have been beat back and beat down for so long, that we're seeing all of the bad shit happen that the unions warned us would happen if we abandoned the unions altogether, rather than just getting things back into balance.
So, basically, what's happening is that the American labor force is being reduced to the standards of the rest of the world, when what we used to hold out as a primary goal was the raising of labor standards in those other countries to be more in line with our own.
What I'm having the most trouble understanding is why we think downward pressure on wages and prices is a good thing when we're supposed to be the level-headed-clear-eyed capitalists who understand that exactly the opposite is what makes the whole thing actually work.
From
Bill Moyers:
Today, a single parent earning minimum wage takes home $15,080 a year. That’s $3,400 below the federal poverty line for a family of three. President Obama noted the statistic in his State of the Union Address — “That’s wrong,” he said, calling for an increase in the minimum wage to $9 an hour because “in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty.”
A "small" example of the relationships between Unions, Wages and Outcomes by way of
Addicting Info:
In the current anti-union climate in the U.S., there may not be any group of unions that has been singled out for more criticism than teachers’ unions. Unions such as the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have been blamed by politicians, think tanks, and the public for everything from low student achievement to blocking proposed education reforms.
However, despite claims from some quarters that unions are a large part of the problem with American public education, there is ample evidence that teachers’ unions are a vital piece of the education puzzle, and that students benefit from their existence.
If I pay the worker in Laos a whopping 3 bucks a day to make toasters, then I can sell a toaster to you for 10 or 12 bucks (instead of 30 or 40), which means I can pay you less for whatever you do (like teaching?), which means I can keep more for myself.
Like I said above, oddly enough it works (and works better for more people) when we do it the other way around, but apparently that's just too complicated for the geniuses being churned out by American MBA mills. They aren't learning Fair Practice or Business Ethics or Mutual Advantage or anything else that doesn't fit in with the Imperial Predator Model of commerce in the 21st century - which (also oddly enough) fits perfectly with what we know about how things were done 65 years ago, and 100 years ago, and 150 years ago, and 250 years ago; as far back as you care to look.
Anyway, we said we were gonna be different. So let's be different.
