Issues of class and labor seem to pop up quite a bit on Daily Kos as sidebars or as impacting other topics in important ways, but they don't get their own diaries as often as they perhaps should. Yet work and class have enormous relevance in American life. Almost all of us must work for a living. Most of us who work owe a great debt to organized labor - even if we are not ourselves members of unions, we benefit from the advances unions have made over the years, in safety conditions, limited hours and overtime pay, benefits, child labor laws. And while a shrinking percentage of American workers are represented by unions, not only do union members earn more than their nonunion counterparts, but nonunion workers in highly unionized industries and areas benefit from employer competition for workers, leading to better pay and conditions. Class issues, too, apart from the question of organized labor, are central in many of the political struggles of the day. From bankruptcy legislation to the minimum wage to student loans, legislation affects people differently based on how much they make, what kind of access to power and support they have.
With this series we aim to develop an ongoing discussion around class and labor issues. Such ongoing discussions have emerged in the Feminisms and Kossacks Under 35 series, and, given the frequent requests for more (and more commented-in) diaries on these issues, we hope this series will accomplish the same. Entries will be posted every Tuesday night between 8 and 9pm eastern. If you are interested in a writing a diary for this series, please email Elise or MissLaura and we will arrange for you to be put on the schedule.
I started with those standard paragraphs because they are a good intro to what this diary series about and why it's important. Tonight, I want to provide some action items so people who understand the importance of organized labor can help out a little, and learn about some ongoing campaigns. If you have more actions people should support, tell us about them in the comments.
Buying union made products is one important way to support unions, and the United Food and Commercial Workers has a list of groceries and other products made by UFCW labor. Go there to learn good things to buy in your everyday shopping or as you stock up for holiday parties.
Another thing you might be doing for the holidays is shipping packages. Well, don't use FedEx. That they're aggressively anti-union is only the beginning of the ways they mistreat their workers. Go elsewhere to do your shipping, and go to American Rights at Work's Fed Up with FedEx page to take further action.
I'm sure you would never shop at Wal-Mart if you could avoid it, but it's always worthwhile learning what's going on in the campaign against Wal-Mart's many abuses of workers, local economies, and all that is right in the world. So go to Wake Up WalMart and see about that.
Obviously the WGA strike is still ongoing, and there are a few actions you can take to support those workers. First, especially if you live in Los Angeles,
On Wednesday, December 19th, the Housing, Community and Economic Development Committee of the Los Angeles City Council will be meeting to discuss the impact of the strike on Los Angeles.
In the next two days, we have a chance to weigh in with those council members and ask them to help us end the strike.
Please cut and paste the email below and send it to one (or more) of these five Council Members:
Herb Wesson councilmember.wesson@lacity.org
Eric Garcetti councilmember.garcetti@lacity.org
Ed Reyes councilmember.reyes@lacity.org
Tony Cardenas councilmember.cardenas@lacity.org
Jan Perry jan.perry@lacity.org
MoveOn has also started a petition and Facebook group to Bring Back the Daily Show.
And finally, for some non-holiday, non-WGA action items:
The AFL-CIO has a new member education program called An Economy That Works For All:
Consider that workers’ productivity almost quadrupled between 1947 and 2005, while wages have not even doubled in that time. Where has the money gone? In 1980, the average CEO made 42 times the salary of the average blue-collar worker. In 2006, the ratio had jumped to 364-1, the highest in the developed world by far.
After World War II, real family incomes doubled and the incomes of the poorest families increased even faster than those of the richest families. But since 1973, the incomes of the richest 20 percent of families have risen much faster than those of the other 80 percent.
Between 1979 and 2001, the incomes of the top 0.1 percent—families earning $1.7 million a year—increased by 181 percent. And incomes of the top 0.01 percent (one-tenth of one percent—those earning $6 million a year) grew by nearly 500 percent. Long-term, structural shifts have created this shift in wealth from working families to CEOs and big corporations.
Union members have a new tool to challenge the corporate-driven economic policies that benefit Big Business at the expense of working families. The AFL-CIO has launched “An Economy That Works For All,” a train-the-trainer member education program that provides facts on the reasons underlying the structural shift in our economy and explaining how we can dismantle the corporate agenda and build a working family agenda. Click here for more information.
So far, some 612 union members have been trained to present the program to their unions and community groups.
Members of AFL-CIO unions can sign up for the training to help spread understanding of these issues.
The AFL-CIO also lets us know about the FCC's new ruling to allow greater media consolidation. Go to Stop Big Media for ways to protest this ruling.