Danger! “Shock Doctrine” Union-Busting on the Rise

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.jwjblog.org/2010/10/danger-shock-doctrine-union-busting-on-the-rise/

By Treston Davis-Faulkner, on October 20th, 2010

Naomi Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, described the idea in an interview:

is a philosophy that holds that the best way, the best time, to push through radical free-market ideas is in the aftermath of a major shock. Now, that shock could be an economic meltdown. It could be a natural disaster… these crises, these disasters, these shocks soften up whole societies. They discombobulate them… in that window, you can push through what economists call “economic shock therapy.”

Today, with unemployment continuing to hover around 10% nationally and some cities experiencing joblessness at rates higher than 25% (even as the government and the mass media suggest the economic recovery is well underway), corporate interests are using the heightened insecurity of working people to push through their own “economic shock therapy”: lowering labor costs in order to maximize profit. Central to this agenda is undermining, at every opportunity, workers’ right to organize unions and collectively bargain for wages, benefits and working conditions.

A few weeks ago, members of the International Longshore Association shut down the largest port on the East Coast in protest of the fruit company Del Monte’s announcement that it will move its banana-and-pineapple shipping operation to a non-ILA pier across the river from Philadelphia. This shift could cost ILA Local 1291 in Philadelphia 200-300 jobs. The pier these jobs would move to is said to be advertising positions paying as little as $8.50 an hour with few benefits. The ILA port in Philadelphia’s wages range from $17 to $25.50 an hour.

This Del Monte episode is an example of the disturbing trend of corporate employers seeking to rid themselves of a workforce that has a voice on the job.

This past summer, 300 distribution center workers at Shaw’s warehouse in Methuen, Massachusetts, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers, went on strike to protest vicious attempts by their employer to not only slash health care and pension benefits, but also to cut jobs and gut the grievance procedure and ultimately break the union. The recent struggle at Mott’s in upstate New York is another recent example when a company attempted to exploit the economic climate to maximize their profits at the expense of their workers.

FULL story at link.

[snot]

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