You don’t have sick days, vacation days, weekends, workers comp, overtime pay, and a 40 hour work week because of enlightened bosses and owners doing the right thing.
There was no “market correction” in the economy that gave you these things.
You have them because union workers went out in the street and fought with fists, bats, bricks, and even guns against company hired thugs, police, and in some extreme cases U.S. soldiers dispatched by bought and paid for politicians all devoted to denying you the things that you now take for granted.
Even now, unions set the bar for wages, benefits, and pensions for all American workers whether they are organized or not.
They’ve been called “Reds”, “Agitators”, “Commies”, “Bolsheviks”, “Wobblies”, instigators, rabble-rousers, rednecks, and many things that should not be repeated. Many times they were called these things in front of their wives and children. Sometimes they were beaten and even killed in front of them too.
These 1%-ers, ultra-wealthy industrialists and financiers, built their wealth and empires on the backs and with the blood of American labor. They murdered labor leaders, strikers, men, women, and children. Places marked with workers blood such as Ludlow, Colorado; The Haymarket Riot in Chicago, Illinois; The Bayview Massacre, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Events so infamous that the names ring out through history such as The Homestead Strike, Matewan, and The Pullman Strike, just to name a few.
The Devil and Miss Jones (1941),The Molly Maguires (1970), Bound for Glory (1976),Harlan County, USA (1976),Norma Rae (1979). Matewan (1987), Bread and Roses (2000),Harlan County War (2000), The Great Debaters (2007); the list goes on in film and documentaries that capture the stories of people who risked everything for a better life for themselves and their families. These are inspiring stories that aren’t taught in school. Get inspired!
Being union is about you taking responsibility for your future. Taking responsibility for your safety, your job security, your wages and benefits, and you’re working conditions is what being union is all about. By being union you are also your brother’s, or sister’s, keeper. You take on the responsibility of keeping them safe on the job and keeping his or her job safely theirs, with the understanding and commitment that they do the same for you.
Being union requires sacrifice. Not just in dues, which are minor compared to overall union wages. You have to sacrifice your time to attend your union meetings and to learn more about what issues are shaping this country and how they affect working people. You have to develop the discipline not to rely on just one source for your news and to be skeptical of what you read and hear. You have to give up your need for instant gratification of simply accepting things as they are for thinking of REAL long term security.
Most of all, you have to have guts. We're Americans, and we have to think more like the independent thinkers who founded our great nation, and then act!
So why aren’t more people in unions? The answer lies in human nature. It is natural to fear the unknown in the changes that forming a union might bring to your workplace. It's human nature to be fearful if your boss finds out your thinking about how a union may benefit you and your co-workers.
Human nature is also a factor for some of those who are in unions. They are content to let the officers carry the load and just ride along. By not being actively involved, union members open the door for misunderstandings and corruption in their own unions. They may not realize it but they make themselves vulnerable to the efforts of corporations, who are devoted to breaking unions, even if it means spending millions of dollars to get it done. Human nature is to avoid conflict and take the path of least resistance. In short, it’s easier to do absolutely nothing.
There are even union members who complain about not being adequately represented, about having to pay dues, and blame all their troubles at work on their union. They fall into the trap and go to the polls and vote against they're own best interests, ignoring the advice of their union leadership.
The RICH never votes against their own interests.
In the face of organized labor’s extensive legacy, such actions are intellectually dishonest as well as unfair.
These may seem like harsh words, especially in a society that smacks of political correctness and grading on a curve so no one is disenfranchised, but; these words hardly seem strong enough when looking at the sacrifices and struggles that have built and kept the middle class in the middle class. You can try to turn your back on unions. You can say it’s a quaint out-dated system, you can gripe that some unions do have corruption in them. The bottom line is; who else is out there to fight for you? Politicians? Government agencies? Your employer?
The answer is: UNIONS!
Workers are being deluged with corporately sponsored and heavily slanted media like talk radio, Fox News, e-mails, blogs, and websites which are devoted to regulating morality and personal choice while deregulating and dismantling all the governments laws and safeguards that “they” say impedes American business.
This is a systematic and well financed attempt at filtering and distorting the news and the legislative process to fit their agenda. Picking purely moral and personal hot button issues like abortion, gun rights, gay rights, flag burning, racism, patriotism, and any other issue that will get a rise out of people and then saying they represent the people and attack everyone who disagrees. They tell the people who follow them how brave, patriotic, and smart they are and accuse the ones who don’t follow them as stupid, subversive, and un-American. They preach hate, intolerance, and impart anxiety and immediacy in those who fall into their trap.
This is America’s hidden history.
You can try to deny it or forget it, like laws you don’t like or agree with, but that does not mean it’s not there. If you are an American, it’s as much a part of you as the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, The Civil War, voting, military service, public service, community, church, sports, art, music, pop culture, city life, country life, biker, surfer, skateboarder, and all the other parts and pieces that bind us together as a society.
You can be like an ostrich, with your head in the sand and totally unaware, while the predators circle and close in around you; or, you can open your mind and arm yourself with weapons of truth that vanquish the shadowy incarnations that try to divide and conquer us all.