Reply #68: Too much power... [View All]

[Nadienne]

Now with Bill Moyers on Friday night had an interview with (I think his name is) Thomas Frank who wrote the book What's the Matter with Kansas? - talking about people in Kansas voting against their economic interests.

At some point he talked about unions. He said that, like, 8% of the country is unionized. He said that he did a poll (or there was a poll taken), asking whether or not poll takers would like to be members of a union - the poll used the word "union". 40% said yes, they would like to be part of a union... But it was too difficult to get one started, etc... Another poll asking whether or not poll takers would like to have bargaining power with their employers - for things like wages and benefits - basically what a union is supposed to provide. 80% of the people polled said, "Yes."

Which seems to indicate (at least in my opinion) that there is a certain stigma to the word "union".

Recently a local meat-packing plant has been in my local news. The plant and the union leaders haven't concluded negotiations for a contract renewal. So the unionized workers have been working there for the past month or two without a contract. While there might be some tension, so far the workers haven't gone on strike.

The websites of the local news stations, and the newspaper, took this opportunity to criticize the union for corruption... which might be true, for all I know. And they talked about a plant in a near-by town that doesn't have unionized workers - and those workers are happy and aren't complaining and get paid "better" than the workers at unionized plants.

But none of the news articles spent much time defending the union's perspective.

If my news is like the news elsewhere, then no wonder there's such a stigma on the word "union". The media seems complicit in the corporate power game. The media tells us, you know, "wealth trickles down" and "don't bite the hand that feeds you" and "if you don't like that corporations have too much power, you must be a Communist like Stalin".

There is real danger in this...