Union Chic: Is the Labor Movement experiencing a much deserved revival?

[Fridays Child]

After years of the systematic destruction of collective bargaining by Labor-hostile administrations and congresses, are unions resurging? I'd like to think so, and there does seem to be more than the usual amount of emphasis, this time around, on which union is supporting which candidate. But maybe my viewpoint is not so objective, so I want to know what you guys think.

[Gabi Hayes]

1. too late

way too late

[Fridays Child]

2. What's too late?

[Gabi Hayes]

3. for unions to regain the power they once had, and I'm speaking as an NEA

member

I hope that I'm more wrong on this than I've ever been, but the world is turning coporate/fascist at a rate rivaling Hubble's Red Shift

[Fridays Child]

5. In your opinion, are unions getting better press, these days?

[Gabi Hayes]

9. that's a good question. I remember, as a child, thinking, "why do they go on strike?.....

they'll never make the money back they lose by striking," etc. But, I was a child, my parents were republicans (Birchers!), and their beliefs were mine, until I started thinking for myself. Among the first realizations to which I came when I wised up (the first probably being what a hypocritically racist nation we are), was what a stiffing the average worker has gotten, and always will get, and that unions, despite the (necessary?) drawbacks of of scale economics as applied to large bureaucracies, are one of the cornerstones of economic democracy, without which political democracy is impossible.

See Robert McChesney's "Rich Media, Poor Democracy" for an excellent analysis of economic liberalism/political democracy, as an introduction to his book on the importance of a free, unfettered media to worldwide economic/political democracy.

that said, I think the corporate media has pretty much been on the side of the owners for as long as I remember, and in most of the reading I've done.

[Fridays Child]

11. Where I see the changing face of the Labor Movement isn't in the corporate media.

It's on the Internet. Just another reason that the corporate media want to kill Net Neutrality, I guess.

[billyoc]

10. Good news!

You're wrong. :hi:

[Kelly Rupert]

4. Doubt it.

I'd like to see one year in which Union membership by percent doesn't decline before I say it's "reviving."

[Fridays Child]

8. I think that would have to be preceded by a re-branding, so to speak, of the movement.

I wonder if that's what's happening now.

[enid602]

6. GWB

Unionism, communism, liberalism, socialism, progressivism, the Christian Left and (as your avatar suggests) Chavezism are all on the rise and resurgent thanks to one man: George W. Bush of Texas. When you think of it, he has unwittingly done what no one else could. Think what you want about him, he is single-handedly (well, maybe with a little help from Unca Dick) responsible for the global resurgence of the Left. If he doesn't bomb Iran this month, there's hope for this world.

[Fridays Child]

7. I agree. However unwitting--or, maybe, witless--he has been an effective posterboy....

...for everything that's wrong with neoconservatism.