Repression of unions on the rise

[Judi Lynn]

Associated Press/BRUSSELS, Belgium
By ALISON LAPP
Associated Press Writer

Group: Repression of unions on the rise

• OCT. 18 1:47 A.M. ET Attacks on unions have increased over the past year as millions of workers continue to be denied their rights and face repression, a labor group said Tuesday.

A total of 145 people worldwide were killed because of their union activities in 2004, 16 more than in the previous year, according to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions' survey of worldwide working conditions.

Those figures reveal "just how far many governments and employers are prepared to go in suppressing workers' rights to seek a competitive edge in increasingly cutthroat global markets," said Guy Rider, general secretary of ICFTU, a group representing 234 labor organizations globally.

Labor unionists around the world also suffered more than 700 violent attacks and received nearly 500 death threats, according to the survey.
(snip/...)

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8DA8OTG6.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down&chan=db

[Robert Oak]

1. going backwards

What bothers me the most is how for over 30 years Americans took
labor rights as granted.

Thousands died in the US trying to organize and get worker rights.

Now it's gotten so bad we're returning to that same time period.

I feel my ancestors rolling in their graves over it.

[newswolf56]

2. Even here on DU, what I call "trinket materialism" -- the mindset...

that says "I don't need a union as long as I've got more trinkets than you" -- is the overwhelmingly dominant American mindset. And frankly I think it's too late: nothing short of a nationwide general strike will suffice to restore labor rights, and the public is way too far in debt to the modern company store -- the credit-card loan-sharks -- to ever be brave enough to break free.

And that's not even beginning to factor in racism -- another major anti-union force. But look at the aftermath of Katrina, which 80 percent of white America found to be merely business as usual: no racism, no class oppression, nothing at all to get upset about.

It isn't the unions that have somehow magically grown weak; the problem is that the American public has become so sociopathically greedy it cannot even grasp the basic concept of solidarity.


Edit: garbled statement (too tired to be posting, but...).

[Blue_Tires]

21. very true n/t

[99Pancakes]

26. Look at Schwarzenegger in CA

He and his corporate special interests are trying to squash the power of public employee unions. Prop 75: wants to insist unions get written permission from each member before spending their $$ on candidates or issues. Prop 74: Extends the teacher probation period to 5 years AND makes it easier to fire vet teachers(no more due process if this prop passes!). The true motive behind Ahhnuld and his gang? Union busting, pure and simple.

[Robert Oak]

33. trinket materialism

The phrase "there for the grace of God go I" doesn't seem to exist
in our society today. Really sociopathic, no solidarity or empathy.

Side note: Kennedy of all people is trying to raise the H-1B Visa cap an additional 60,000. This is used to bring in cheap foreign engineers (it's well documented) and displace American engineers.

His phone is Edward Kennedy (MA) 202-224-4543

Please call him ASAP and tell him how outrageous this is.
He's on the Senate floor arguing for an increase in minimum wage and then turns around and introduces a bill to displace American engineers and computer scientists. How hypocritical is that?

[geoshelby]

19. Tell me about it

I have a running argument with several 30ish DEMOCRATS in my office about the need for unions. Now I will not defend the specific actions of unions, but these "peers" (I am 30ish) think we don't need them because they are greedy and cost business too much. They also seem to think big business is doing us a favor by employing us and we should just be happy with what we have. They also don't think it is strange that Wal-Mart has unions in China but not the U.S. One woman even said a depression could never happen again. I suggested they read some 1920's U.S. History, and they just said I am a paranoid, off base, socialist. But the rub is that the two most conservative, gun totting bushies in the office AGREE with me on the subject of workers rights. WTF is going on with our country?

[newswolf56]

24. It's called "class consciousness" :

"...the two most conservative, gun totting bushies in the office AGREE with me on the subject of workers rights."

It's also why, in a real political fight, I'll trust those gun totting bushies long before I would ever trust a snide sneering backstabbing never-had-to-work-for-anything, identify-totally-with-the-oppressor bourgeois "democrat" like you described: the same sort of "democrat" who destroyed the New Deal with "welfare reform" and betrayed every worker in America with NAFTA and CAFTA. Bottom line, some people are real. But in today's America, most upper middle class people are so aggressively selfish, they won't know reality until it hands them a pink slip (foreclosure notice to follow).

[geoshelby]

30. strange days

My family has been in Oregon for as many as 6 generations on one side. Politically, we have always been what I guess you would call Southern Democrats; socially liberal, fiscally conservative - stay out of my back yard and I will stay out of yours. This coupled with a frontier mentality has made my family strive to be as self sufficient as possible. My father is a republican and my mother a democrat. We own firearms, support secular charity, support individual rights such as abortion and death with dignity (assisted suicide), avoid credit and try to only spend what we have, support soft drug legalization while hammering down on hard core drugs. So I guess we are just strange.

As an example; I have never taken any government assistance such as unemployment, not because I wasn't eligible but because I could still find a way to eat and keep warm without it. Yet I see countless people work at seasonal jobs which pay prevailing wage and then go on the dole for the off season because they think it is their right.

My pet theory is that the up-swelling of social change put into motion by the baby-boomer generation died at the end of several gun barrels and people gave up and changed from the "we" generation to the "me" generation. Now their children, my peers, don't know anything different. (I know my post deals with generalities, but I am feeling awfully lonely these days)

[rfkrfk]

3. avoid commercial air travel if you can, support striking mechanics

at Nothwest.
Don't support the SCABS.

What is needed here is an indusrty-wide STRIKE.

[niallmac]

17. I was very impressed by the way the British Air unions

stuck together when the caterers were trashed. This is an unsung moment of collective
bravery and a lesson as to how we as Americans should be supporting each other in our trades and professions.
Hang together...or

[cornermouse]

4. Repression of the unions has been steadily rising since the

70s; Reagan's term.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. Since Reagan fired the air traffic controllers wholesale, ALL unions

have paid the price by becoming impotent.

[cantstandbush]

9. And he fired the air traffic controllers at the same time as championing

union movement in Poland. Bizzare?

Reagan was the first of the great union busters as he scoled at the Soviet Union and communism over workers' rights. Remember Leck?

[gulfcoastliberal]

18. Carter "deregulated" interest rates with a dem controlled congress, just

as Biden decriminalized usury with his MBNA bill.

a call to citizens:
REAL POPULISTS PLEASE STAND UP!
We are ruled by Big Business and Big Government as its paid hireling, and we know it. Corporate money is wrecking popular government in the United States. The big corporations and the centimillionaires and billionaires have taken daily control of our work, our pay, our housing, our health, our pension funds, our bank and saving deposits, our public lands, our airwaves, our elections and our very government. It’s as if American democracy has been bombed. Will we be able to recover ourselves and overcome the bombers? Or will they continue to divide us and will we continue to divide ourselves, according to our wounds and our alarms, until they have taken the country away from us for good?

Senate Democratic majority leader George Mitchell exclaimed late in 1994, shortly before he abandoned Congress in disgust: “This system stinks. This system is money.” The law of life among us now is what Jefferson called “the general prey of the rich upon the poor.” The moment is dangerous. Democracy is not guaranteed God’s protection; systems and nations end. If we do anything serious now we might make things worse; if we do nothing serious now we are done for.

http://www.angelfire.com/al/10avs/call.html

The cynic in me says we're done for. Big time.

[hogwyld]

14. Reagan wasn't inaugurated until 1981

How do you explain the drop in unions during the '70's?

[oscarmitre]

27. I think during the 1970s

there was a resurgence in the anti-union behaviour of the employers, regardless of who was in the White House or who had control of Congress. They just decided they were going to get rid of unions and they went at it. Reagan was simply a gift to them.

[TomClash]

5. I hate to say it but the truth is

there's only one way unions will regain strength.

[drduffy]

6. frankly,

there's probably only one way the people will regain their country from the corporatists...

[OKthatsIT]

8. Afraid to say 'force them' to reconsider their priorities?

The media is the key. If the media continues with business as usual, no one will know where to get their footing.

[LetsGoMurphys]

10. In Philadelphia I have seen several big pickup trucks...

Union stickers all over and a Bush/Cheney sticker to go right along with it. Someone please explain this to me. Thats like having a Yankees and Red Sox sticker on your car. Anyone else experience this or ran into any union people who like Bush?

[AFSCME girl]

16. I have seen that periodically

here in Detroit, too. I don't get it at all :shrug:

AFSCME girl

[bleedingheart]

22. it's over guns...I am from PA and we see it on the other side here in Pgh.

[mitchum]

25. guns and racism

[LetsGoMurphys]

28. If this is the case the GOP really did their jobs well

by making people LITERALLY vote against themselves and their families.

[Jimbo S]

32. "What's the Matter With Pennsylvania?"

A play on words. Just started reading the book. Right away touched the very subject being mentioned.

[LetsGoMurphys]

11. You guys should check out the Dropkick Murphys

They are a real pro union band who play at strikes for the picketers. They have several pro union songs including

Our father was a union man some day i'll be one too.
The bosses fired daddy what's our family gonna do?
Come all you good workers good news to you
I'll tell of how the good old union has come in here to dewll.


Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

My daddy was miner and I'm a miner's son
and I'll stick with the union 'til every battles done.

They say in Marlan County there are no neutrals there
you'll either be a union man or a thug for J.H. Blair

Oh workers can you stand it?
Oh tell me how you can will you be a lousy scab or will you be a man?
Don't scab for the bosses don't listen to their lies
us poor folks haven't got a chance unless we organize.

They also sing a song about one of the singer's (Ken Casey) grandfather and how he got the Irish jobs through union organization when no one else would help them out.

On a side note I am going to law school next year and I am thinking about becoming a labor attorney but I don't know any or too much about the field. Can someone shed some insight on this subject?

[newswolf56]

13. First thing you should do is start learning labor history. Google:

"Coal Creek War"
"Fraterville Mine Disaster"
"Triangle Shirtwaist Fire"
for starters.

By the way -- no offense intended -- it's "Harlan County": Eastern Kentucky just north of the Tennessee line: in the mountains, the Appalachian coal fields.

Good luck!

[intheflow]

20. Labor history

Mother Jones
The Ludlow Massacre
Martin Luther King's assassination
Rosie the Riveter
Haymarket Riot http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/haymarket.htm
Integration of African Americans into the Armed Forces and Baseball
Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huertas

Demopedia link to the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23


I'll have to check out the Dropkick Murphys. :) Good luck in law school!

[lovuian]

12. Yes hello its been happening over the 10 years but I

feel a comeback!!!

[IndianaGreen]

15. For those that defend capitalism....

you are getting capitalism to its fullest now. Kiss your pensions and health benefits good bye!

The rightwing's greatest achievement was to turn the middle class against the very same labor movement that made the middle class possible. My hat is off to the Fascists!

Now, let's discuss the alternative to capitalism...

[struggle4progress]

23. Murders of unionists on the rise in the Americas

Wednesday, 19 October 2005, 10:11 am
Press Release: ICFTU OnLine
ICFTU OnLine 18 October 2005

Brussels, 18 October 2005 (ICFTU OnLine): Murders and death threats against trade unionists in Colombia and the Americas generally are on the increase, according to the latest ICFTU worldwide Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights, published in Brussels today.

Throughout the region, 114 unionists were killed, 456 received threats, 120 suffered torture, beatings or injuries while over 200 were arrested and nearly one thousand were arbitrarily dismissed in 2004. The overwhelming majority of these events took place as a direct result of legitimate trade union action.

In Colombia alone, 445 trade union members received death threats and 99 were murdered - nine more than in 2003. In Colombia's Arauca province, three trade union leaders were assassinated by the army in cold blood. Two of them, Héctor Alirio Martínez and Jorge Eduardo Prieto Chamusero, were covered by special protection measures provided by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) since 2002.

The year was marked by continuous and increasingly violent attacks by the government, employers and the courts on collective bargaining, the right to strike and social dialogue as a whole. The Labour Day celebrations were harshly repressed by police, leaving 12 people seriously injured <snip>

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0510/S00316.htm

[rfkrfk]

29. do American unionists know what an indusrty-wide strike is?

the machinist's union of Northwest airlines is being killed.

thank you, SCABS, SCAB-sympathizing unions,
and SCAB-sympathizing customers

[Megahurtz]

31. This is bad.....

we are so screwed. :( I may be negative but I'm not seeing any light at the end of this tunnel.