Working-class resentments against unions are misplaced

[Omaha Steve]

http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071019/OPINION03/710190411/1007/OPINION

By SHANNON HOFFMAN

Tennessee Voices

How often do you hear Bill Gates speak ill of Warren Buffett? Or the Rockefellers publicly running down the Carnegies? It doesn't happen.

Only at the other end of the economic spectrum does the quarrel over crumbs from the corporate table get so brutal.

The UAW recently approved a new contract to help bail out GM. The contract includes a two-tier wage scale for some jobs and lets the company buy its way out of retiree health insurance.

It has become a trend, as autoworkers — long among the pacesetters in wages and benefits — now see their lifestyle erode. Yet instead of recognizing the threat to all workers when the floor gets lowered, most people see red while turning green with envy.

Most of the comments I read are from people complaining that they don't have what autoworkers have.

Whiners complained that they don't have a pension or lifetime health care, like the GM workers. Some find it "galling" that the autoworkers briefly struck to make their point, while already earning more than they do.

Did it ever occur to the complainers that they might do better, too, if they were members of a union?

Instead of dragging down unionized workers, maybe they should organize to lift themselves up.

It's hardly a coincidence that the squeeze on working people comes at the same time that unionized workers — now only 7 percent of the private sector labor force — have seen their ranks shrink. Yet few make the connection between the decline of unions and the decline of the working-class lifestyle.

FULL story at link.

[papau]

1. Management selling their labor the con that they are "real strong men" and not wimps that need

a union and a union hand in their pocket taking dues out of their wages - the success of this sale is something I have never understood - when I was working common labor I always netted after dues a major percentage improvement in wages, benefits, and indeed treatment and respect from Management when I was in a union compared to being "at will labor".

That this con job still sells - and sells well - is a tribute to our medias ability to sell crap - indeed they sold us Bush - twice.

[monktonman]

2. I always say something like...

OK let me get this straight...
your boss offers to double your pay, give your family great health care benefits
and a pretty good pention when your done and you would say NO?
You owe it to your family to get unionized.
Dont be a wuss.

[jedr]

3. for the same reasons that;

I see the lowest income people in my county vote Republican against their best interests. Reagan did a wonderful job of blaming the unions for the collapse of manufacturing in the East during the '80's when the plan had been in the works for years. Capitalizing on the corruption within the unions, he made them the fall guys. True the Unions went too far, but this could have been worked out in 1 or 2 contracts. Thomm Hartman puts this all in perspective but is never heard by those who need it the most. More needs to be done to bring the "New" union message to the workers.