From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/12/27-4
by David Macaray
Published on Thursday, December 27, 2012 by Common Dreams
By now, most people realize that private sector union membership in the U.S. stands at about 7-percent, which means that 93-percent of all private sector jobs are non-union. Which makes those accusations of unions of being “too big” and “too powerful” even more ridiculous and hysterical than they were when private sector membership was only a meager 10-percent.
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 hate them. They fear them. They resent them. 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 breakfast cook. I’m not exaggerating when I say that, back in those days, it was the dream of every cook to get a job in a union manufacturing plant. That was their life’s goal. These guys didn’t dream of being millionaires or lottery winners or entrepreneurs; they dreamed of working in an 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 today. 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.
Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/12/27-4
