Are Unions Important to the Middle Class?...

[catnhatnh]

It was asked in an earlier post tonight.

My Grandpa was a Rum Runner when that was how to support his wife and 5 kids. Later he was a mechanic and then a supervisor and as a manager never joined a union himself. But as 3 of his boys came back from 2 different wars, and with his advice, they were. The oldest, Became a shop steward and fought for his guys for 30 years. The youngest only was a member for the last 20 years of his life. The middle boy was a National Representative for a major union for decades...

But these guys each joined the middle class that their Dad saw coming down the road when profitable businesses realized that money could be made EVEN when labor was not impoverished.

I worked my life both within and without unions. I would rather be in one.

Every statistic tells the tale. Every job that has union representation has a higher wage than those not represented. When fast food workers or restaurant workers talk unions the employers go berserk.

A lot of people will tell you how corrupt unions are... How corrupt would they need to be for the workers to lose?

[leftstreet]

1. No, but they are important to the working class n/t

[readmoreoften]

20. +1.

[xchrom]

24. many if not most in the middle class are workers.

they may not fit a traditional notion of what a worker is -- their paychecks might be different -- but they are workers.

and it would not be inappropriate to unionize many of those people.

[Iris]

2. I would argue they helped create the middle class.

[baldguy]

5. +1000

The 40-hr work week, child labor laws, the minimum wage, workplace safety & health regulations. etc etc etc etc...


Without unions, the average worker would be a slave.

[Denninmi]

3. I say yes, vital.

People in the middle class don't seem to "get it" that the lifestyle they USED to enjoy (before our country was all but destroyed by the right) was made possible ONLY by the sacrifice of millions of workers before them, who literally fought and died to be treated like human beings.

The right has been brilliant in it's propaganda, and one of the key pieces of that has been the "unions are evil" meme.

Unfortunately, I think people are going to have to fall to a level where they are once again treated like dogs before they appreciate and understand what they've lost. That day is almost here, alas.

[Omaha Steve]

4. This is a no brainer

K&R!

To bad the Jimmy John's union lost today.:-(

[dflprincess]

6. Yes

If it wasn't for unions we'd all still be working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week with no benefits, sick time or vacation.

Any middle class person is deluding themselves if they think wearing khakis to work, sitting in a cube or office, and being salaried instead of hourly means they aren't labor.

Unless there's golden parachute in your future or a good chunk of your compensation is in stock options you're just another worker bee and at the mercy of your employer the same as anyone working on an assembly line.

[AndyTiedye]

7. If Unions Could Prevent Outsourcing/Offshoring, They Would Be Important

As things stand today, there aren't any unions, except in those jobs that cannot be outsourced or offshored.

[Rincewind]

8. Without unions,

there would be no middle class. I am a fifth generation union carpenter (retired).

[Scuba]

9. The unions are depriving millions...

...of children the right to a factory job.

[OHdem10]

10. Without Unions we would have little to no worker's standards.

Unions have contributed to raising of standard of living
in this country.

Of course Business would be happy if there were none. I
wonder why.

Unions are a convenient bashing target for the Republican
Party who have worked to keep states Right to Work or free
of Unions.

Check out those states and you will find some of the highest
rates of poverty, in education the schools fall at the very
lower to lowest rating in the country.

More persons do not have health care. (yes, Unions having HC
made it so other workers asked for and sometimes got Companies
to provide Health Insurance.)

Just go down the quality of life issues and see how these usually
Republican Run Right to Work states stack up.

Two things will hit you between the eyes: Conservative Economic
Fundamentalism and No Unions.

[haele]

11. The middle class was not attainable to most workers until after the New Deal.

Most working class people served the rather middle class that was made up primarily of the younger children and relatives of people with wealth or the rare opportunity to apprentice into the middle class to begin with; some places workers were treated well enough that with enough ingenuity, they could eek themselves into a middle class.
There was also the Frontier up through the very early 1900's, where a worker could homestead into a patch of his or her own land and start a ranch, farm, or mine - but even then, those who worked for the owner were dependant on that owner for food and housing and whatever was negotiated as pay.
The cost of living was also different; even in the cities, someone who worked diligently and with ingenuity or a lucky windfall of a small amount of money, could save up enough to rent or perhaps buy a small house (with few amenities) or hardscrabble plot of land to raise a family in - but most tended to live in with family, several generations and siblings with their families in an local area pitching in, sharing resources and living spaces. Immigrant families and frontier families were more likely to have the nuclear family as we know now.
People didn't have as much to purchase other than the necessities, so "poor" generally meant unemployed with no reliable shelter, not enough to eat and ragged clothes living on charity. A working man at least had a job, which no matter how poorly paying, brought him and his family out of the assumption of poverty, even if he was in debt up to his eyeballs, and was living little better than someone on charity.
But he and his family would not be considered middle class. They would rarely be considered eligible for a loan from a bank to, say, buy a house - even if they had savings; their children would be expected to work instead of doing something as radical as getting an education.
It took Unions, it took the fear of a Communist uprising, it took the New Deal and the GI Bill to bring the Working Class to the same level as the Middle Class - and it was mainly so as to preserve the Professional and Upper Classes from the same fate that was occurring to their European counterparts due to forty years of wealth of the Country being consolidated up-wards.

The 1910's are coming back. Workers are being forced back in to the role they occupied at that time, as a form of heavy-labor servant class to corporate owners or master tradesmen.
And as usual, there are a majority of rather simple people who think History is apparently something that doesn't affect them, it's just a hobby of them over-educated nose in the air type people...

Haele

[Bozita]

12. Good post!

[applegrove]

13. Unions made the middle class along with progressive income tax.

[WillyT]

14. HUGE K & R !!!

:kick:

[Stinky The Clown]

15. A couple of weeks ago we went past Sikorsky and then to Lordship. Lycoming is a wasteland now

Howie's and Ahern's are both gone.

Not sure how many union families remain in that part of the world.

[DebJ]

16. What would a graph look like comparing the percentage of

people in the middle class to the percentage of people with union memberships, year by year? I can't make one, but I get a very distinct visual just thinking about it.

[diane in sf]

17. If you have to work for a living you're working class, middle class just means your job

pays better and is probably more pleasant--in other words you're a house slave, not a field slave.

[SocialistLez]

18. That's like asking if humans need air, food, water, etc.

Of course unions are important.

Like many things in this life, they are prone to corruption but I wouldn't let a few bad apples determine the character of all the other ones.

Workers NEED and DESERVE collective bargaining rights.

[AmandaMae]

19. Yes. They're sure important for my dad...

and many other working people I have known. My dad complains about his union sometime but he acknowledges that without it, he wouldn't be making what he is now. He packages food in a factory; hard work but the union gets him enough to at least support his family and plan for retirement.

[laughingliberal]

21. K & R nt

[TBF]

22. Now that we are down to less than 10% membership in unions

in this country I think we can see for ourselves the results: high unemployment, very low wages, constant down-sizings, people being changed to perm part-time so they don't get benefits, the list goes on and on...

My dad worked in a union shop until his retirement and always said "the unions aren't perfect but without them we wouldn't have anything". He was right.

[stillwaiting]

23. Of course there is corruption within unions...

But there is MASSIVE corruption within management that currently heavily outweighs ANY corruption concerns that involve unions.

Unions are sorely needed to provide an equilibrium to the benefit of the middle, working classes, and poor in society. Without unions, management clearly will continue to squash the working class to the benefit of the top 1-2%.

ANY time human beings are involved in any type of bureaucratic, hierarchical organization corruption will have the opportunity to manifest in pursuit of the power and wealth that being in charge of these organizations provides.

It was the equilibrium between unions and management that helped build the middle class. Opposing interests that found an equilibrium. Now that management has effectively squashed or infiltrated unions, the results of the past few decades are entirely expected.

I have no idea why so many people fail to understand this. I get they've been brainwashed, but I just can't personally understand how brainwashing on such an obvious issue could possibly work. It's pretty scary.

[tavalon]

25. I'm a nurse

Whether you call me middle class or working class, since moving north and becoming part of a union (a very weak union) my job security is up and a lot of the usual abuse is down. So, yeah, I'm a fan, maybe not of this specific one but of unions overall. They allow workers to unite and become stronger.