Standing Up for Union Labor

H.L. Menken was no friend of the Left. He referred to the people as “the boobery” and thought trust in democracy was, at best, naive. Yet he recognized a simple truth:

“It is assumed that men become radicals because they are naturally criminal, or because they have been bribed by Russian gold, but what actually moves them is simply the conviction that the Government they suffer under is unbearably and incurably corrupt. The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched.”

If the following “common wisdom” hypocrisies bother you:

* “Unions are only after more and more money,” while the average corporate CEO salary (of corporations small and large) is now 170 times that of the average worker and unearned stock dividends and share prices are at astronomical all-time highs.

* “Unions had their place but there is no need for them now,” that is, management as a united front that should be trusted to act in their workers best interests, while the workers have no practical rights to unite in their own interest. Meanwhile the only laws ever passed to protect workers’ rights go unenforced. Should the same management which in foreign countries run virtual slave camps be trusted not to do the same here if they could?

* “The unions are not democratic enough,” may be true enough, but the unions are democratizing while management is an undisputed and unchallenged dictatorship.

* “The unions are too powerful,” while what little power they do have is being destroyed and corporate power to bribe our politicians and dictate the news goes unchecked. Witness the attempts to (for all practical purposes) kill the unions’ right to contribute to political campaigns. Union political contributions are miniscule compared with corporate donations and the funds provided by the wealthy.

* “The unions are making it impossible to compete globally,” while the conditions of global competition are being dictated by the same corporate interests through trade agreements such as GATT and NAFTA, and government-financed organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF. And they want more. More rights and no responsibility beyond the responsibility to rake in profits.

…then you understand why labor unions are necessary.

“More and more workers are toiling in jobs near the minimum wage, in non-unionized operations like Wal-Mart, K-Mart and McDonald’s. These service sector jobs are not inherently low-wage. They are low wage because they are non-union.

Exacerbating the situation of low-wage workers, the minimum wage has failed to keep pace with inflation. The present $5.15 minimum wage represents more than $2.00 less in real, inflation-adjusted purchasing power than the minimum wage of 1968. (According to the Institute for Policy Studies, if the minimum wage, which stood at $3.80 an hour in 1990, had grown at the same rate as CEO pay over the decade, it would now be $25.50 an hour, rather than the current $5.15 an hour.)” — Ralph Nader, Labor Day, and American workers’ rights

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted…” — Frederick Douglass, West India Emancipation Speech, August 1857.