Michigan workers hurt by ‘right to work’ laws

[ckaihatsu]

Michigan workers hurt by ‘right to work’ laws

By Tom Burke

Grand Rapids, MI - Michigan workers are now seeing the harm caused by last year’s so-called ‘right to work’ law. Passed by Republican politicians in Lansing in 2013, the new law caused a noticeable drop in union membership - from 16.3% down to 14.5%. The trend is likely to continue as more union contracts, typically three years long, come to an end.

Later this year, the United Auto Workers (UAW) will feel the effects of the law as the contracts with big car-producing companies expire.

‘Right to work’ says workers are not required to belong to the union at a unionized work place, despite the votes and decisions of the majority. It creates a division amongst the workers and weakens their ability to act in concert for good contracts and to enforce safety work rules, fairness and equality.

In 2013, there were 3.9 million employed workers in Michigan, of whom 633,000 were union members. Now in 2014, there are 4 million employed workers of whom 585,000 are union members. The number of employed workers in Michigan increased by 139,000 overall, while the number of union members decreased by 48,000, hurting the unionization rate even more.

The statistics show that a higher percentage of workers covered by union contracts stopped paying their dues. These ‘free riders’ benefit from the union contract that their co-workers negotiate and pay for.

Michigan Republicans also stripped teachers of the ability to pay their union dues via direct deposit with their employer. Government workers know it as dues check-off and, despite its popularity, Republicans passed a law denying this basic right to teachers.

Across Lake Michigan, in the state of Wisconsin, Republicans are threatening a similar law and union members are beginning to mobilize to fight it. Jacob Flom is the creator of a Facebook page “Defeat Right To Work in Wisconsin” (https://www.facebook.com/defeatrighttowork?ref=br_tf )that says “We are rank-and -file union members and Wisconsin residents who want to keep our state union strong. Fight Governor Walker's union busting agenda with mass protest!”

Unions are based on workers joining together to act as one in relationship to their bosses and owners. Union contracts provide millions of workers around the world with higher wages, better health care, sick time off, vacations and a chance to defend themselves from arbitrary discipline and firing. Union members like nurses and health care workers can enforce health and safety rules for themselves and the public they serve.

Republicans plan to finish off unions, attacking and outlawing them state by state. The Democratic Party stands idle, feigning surprise. Judges rulings in U.S. courts are threatening to do away with public sector unions over the next five years as well.

Union members in the U.S. tend to live better lives than non-union workers and command more respect from their bosses. Bureau of Labor Statistics show median income for a union worker in 2014 was $970 per week, while non-union was $763.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[Mr. Piccolo]

Good post. What I find so distressing is that so many American workers seem to support anti-worker legislation. Their attitude seems to be very self-defeating.

[ckaihatsu]

Good post. What I find so distressing is that so many American workers seem to support anti-worker legislation. Their attitude seems to be very self-defeating.


I chalk it up to a lingering belief that 'job security' still exists -- workers who still harbor the illusion that they're something more than mere commodities will erroneously identify with the company they work for, thinking that they're being workplace-'politic' by doing so, and that their loyalty will be reciprocated with job security and/or favoritism.

Either that or else they think that the company has to come first and stay afloat if there's any chance for them to continue working.

Unions are notoriously corrupt but on the whole they at least provide a kind of umbrella organization that's more worker-centric than workers might otherwise be without them -- rank-and-file organizing is the best, though.

[consuming negativity]

In 2013, there were 3.9 million employed workers in Michigan, of whom 633,000 were union members. Now in 2014, there are 4 million employed workers of whom 585,000 are union members. The number of employed workers in Michigan increased by 139,000 overall, while the number of union members decreased by 48,000, hurting the unionization rate even more.

The statistics show that a higher percentage of workers covered by union contracts stopped paying their dues. These ‘free riders’ benefit from the union contract that their co-workers negotiate and pay for.

Michigan Republicans also stripped teachers of the ability to pay their union dues via direct deposit with their employer. Government workers know it as dues check-off and, despite its popularity, Republicans passed a law denying this basic right to teachers.

the us is so ridiculously anti-union it's horrifying

i meet a lot of people who are worse than bosses, on your ass about everything and acting like they get something out of it

they're fucking idiots

i don't even think the majority of people know what the fuck unions actually do

[Counterculturalist]

The term "right to work" implies that unions are somehow depriving people of the right to employment. It's Orwellianism at its finest.

I worked at my old shop before they had a Union. One night the entire day shift went out for drinks after work, stayed out all night and called in sick the next day. The day after that there was a petiton going around to bring the union in.

The local of the CAW (Canadian Auto Workers - now called Unifor) to which my shop belongs is notoriously corrupt and often sides with management, accepts concessions, etc. Despite those problems, things improved almost immediately once we brought the union in.

The anti-union cliches people spout are enough to make you lose faith in people. Conservatives seem to think that they would all be CEOs if it wasn't for those damn unions holding them back.

My favorite is "if you don't like your job, you should go get a better one." As if the clock wouldn't turn back to 1830 overnight if unions were abolished.

Now that I'm in school full time, it's especially hilarious hearing some grad students badmouth unions, as if these privileged kids on a fast-track to management positions have a clue about wage slavery.

[Mr. Piccolo]

As others have mentioned here, American workers are often not only anti-union but anti-worker. There was a teacher's strike in my city and most of my co-workers were complaining about the whiny, overpaid, lazy teachers going on strike. People were saying things like: "You don't see me going on strike when I have a bad day!" and "I have a real job, not like these teachers!"

The worst are the comments when big box retail or fast-food workers go on strike. Those comments are even worse because many of the workers in those industries are non-white so you get a lot of racism thrown in as well.

The lack of solidarity in the United States is appalling. I am not sure what causes it. Much of it probably comes from more educated, skilled workers thinking they are better than those who are less skilled and less educated.

The late Joe Bageant put it this way in response to a letter from a person who argued that the problem with poor people is that they are lazy and don't pull themselves up by their bootstraps:


Dear Kelly:

I used to think that way too. Then I came to understand how working class Americans came that way over generations through conditioning. You gotta stand waaaaay back to see how it works.

Look at it this way: The empire needs only about 20-25% of its population at the very most to administrate and perpetuate itself -- through lawyers, insurance managers, financial managers, college teachers, media managers, scientists, bureaucrats, managers of all types and many other professions and semi-professions.

What happens to the rest? They are the production machinery of the empire and they are the consumers upon the empire depends to turn profits. If every one of them earned a college degree it would not change their status, but only drive down wages of the management class, who are essentially caterers to the corporate financial elites who govern most things simply by controlling the availability of money at all levels, to to bottom, hence your hard struggle to pay for college in an entirely capitalist profit driven economy. In every other modern post industrial economy you would have attended for free as long as you chose to, and been given free healthcare and a stipend to live on while you did it.

Clawing down basic things like an education in such a competitive, reptilian environment makes people hard. And that's what the empire wants, hardassed people in the degreed classes managing the dumbed down, over-fed proles [Emphasis added] whose mental activity consists of plugging their brains into their television sets so they can absorb the message to buy more, and absorb themselves in the bread and circus spectacles provided them through profitable media corporations operating mainly as extensions of the capitalist state's propaganda system, such as "buy this," or "you have it better than anyone in the world," (not at all true). The more generations subjected to this, the more entrenched ignorance, materialism and lack of intellectual drive becomes. So you are right to the degree that we live in a degraded society.

But the dumb mooks down on the corner did not do the degrading. They never had that much power. At the same time average household income in America is $34,000. So a guy like you making $75,000 has two choices. He can feel like the money justifies a superior attitude, or he can take some time to think about things other than the capitalist state's stamp upon his brain that, yes, he is superior because he can buy more things, and he can call other Americans lazy because they did not make the same choices he did.

Only about 20-24% of Americans get a college degree. One quarter of Americans do not finish high school. Interestingly, they are beginning to come together, though they don't know it. Right now we are seeing the proletarianization of college graduates, as increasingly more of them are forced to take service and labor jobs. (Remember that it only takes a limited number to directly or indirectly manage the working masses, which these days includes workers like hospital technicians, and a thousand other occupations we have not traditionally thought of as working class.)

You are a young person. America will go through its most profound changes ever within your own lifetime. When the ecological and economic collapse comes, and it is now unavoidable, you may well find yourself gutting chickens at a Tyson poultry plant. Be nice to the Mexican-American guy standing next to you. He got his college degree the same way you did.

Solidarity,

Joe

You can read the whole exchange here: http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/12/the_masses_have.html

I think "Kelly" perfectly epitomizes the attitude of many workers in the United States who actively hate and despise other workers whom they see as lazy, stupid or somehow inferior. This feeds into hatred for unions and other expressions of worker solidarity. As long as a labor aristocracy exists there will be many workers willing to support capitalism based on the theory that it is meritocratic.

[Decolonize The Left]

i meet a lot of people who are worse than bosses, on your ass about everything and acting like they get something out of it

they're fucking idiots

Well, they are conditioned to believe the things they do. An active union voice is a lone sound in the US today, so it's not surprising that people believe the things they do and act in concert with bosses' interests instead of their own.

This said, calling working class people who betray their class interests "fucking idiots" is harsh and, in my opinion, naive and poor strategy. If you want people to identify with their own interests, insulting and alienating them is probably the wrong way to go about it.

[Culicarius]

I read a quote somewhere that was along the lines of "Working Americans don't think they're in poverty, they think they're a millionaire waiting for their stroke of luck to hit." Definitely not the exact quote but that was the message it had.

It is very unfortunate. Even my own mother who works just above minimum wage in a clothes factory in New Jersey is anti-union. It baffles me that people don't see how badly they're being exploited.

I think it relates to my quote. Since people believe that one day they'll be in a position of power they don't want to support something that could, in theory, limit the wealth they can acquire. Despite the fact they'll likely never reach that point anyway.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Whatever entity is behind right to work laws deserves some credit as far as perceptions go. I was told be every employer I've ever worked for that we were in a right to work state which of course is a thinly veiled threat. They believed this, all my coworkers believed this, anyone you ask on the street believed this. Only to discover years later when I actually bothered to look it up that of four states I've worked in, none are right to work states. The idea is so pervasive that it influences states where it's not even on the books yet.

[ckaihatsu]

Defeat ‘Right to Work for less’

Wisconsin on front lines

By staff

Milwaukee, WI - Plans to introduce so-called ‘Right to Work’ legislation are threatening to make Wisconsin the 25th state to eliminate all union contracts with mandatory dues as part of employment. Right to Work laws, now covering 24 states, particularly in the South but even in relative union strongholds like Michigan, weaken workers’ rights to collectively bargain, leading to inferior contracts and lower rates of unionization.

The powerful billionaires and multi-millionaires pushing this anti-worker legislation have been bolstered by their success in 2011, when big business, Governor Scott Walker and Republican politicians pushed through Act 10, a version of Right to Work for public sector workers in Wisconsin. At the time, Wisconsin workers stepped into the national spotlight, waging an intense struggle to resist right to work and to preserve our unions. Teachers called in sick, students walked out and tens of thousands of workers and their supports occupied and surrounded the state capitol building, delaying the passage of the bill and energizing workers around the country.

“We’re suffering from Act 10 but the fight is still within us, we must do everything we can to defeat Right to Work in Wisconsin,” commented Gilbert Johnson, vice president of AFSCME 82.

Many workers are ready to fight Right to Work because Right to Work is not about democracy or choice, it’s an attack from big businesses on the organizations of working people that bargain for better wages and respect. Right to Work means banning what’s called a “union security clause” from all union and employer contracts. Almost all private sector unions in Wisconsin currently bargain into their contracts such clauses which allow the union to collect dues from all the workers it represents.

Business owners will find any way they can to undermine the effectiveness of workers’ right to collectively bargain, and making the argument that individual workers have ‘rights’ that are opposed to the collective vote of the members is a way to undermine collective bargaining and deliver weaker contracts.

Workers of these industries know that business owners don’t care about democracy or choice at all. Unions will have fewer resources and workplaces will become divided. Unions will be under pressure to accept concessions for extended contracts.

The same argument about choice was made in the 1940s by Southern segregationists, some whom were the original promoters of Right to Work, who saw racist discrimination as a choice and a ‘right’ of the employers and property owners and who saw unions as a threat.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone.”

Right to Work legislation could be passed as early as April. Workers in Wisconsin will have to do everything they can to fight back, from taking the struggle to the state capitol back to the workplaces. Reliance on the courts and politicians isn’t enough. The fight against Right to Work can help build a fighting workers movement.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[ckaihatsu]

Unions rally thousands to fight ‘right to work’

http://www.fightbacknews.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-lead-photo/MadisonCapitol.jpg

By staff

Madison, WI - Thousands of people spent the day rallying against so-called ‘Right to Work’ legislation, Feb. 24. The anti-worker law could pass the legislature as early as next week.

Workers flooded the inside Capitol rotunda in a scene reminiscent of 2011, when tens of thousands of workers surrounded and occupied the state Capitol to fight a union-busting bill aimed against public sector workers.

"I'm really happy people are fighting back against this latest attack. We just saw dramatic cuts to our education system and an awful budget for working people. We need to fight," commented Tracey Pollock, who drove down from Milwaukee to join the protest.

Sponsored by the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO, another rally is scheduled in front of the state Capitol tomorrow, Feb. 25, at noon.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[ckaihatsu]

Thousands rally in Madison against 'Right to Work'

By Andrew Urban and staff

http://www.fightbacknews.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-lead-photo/Unite.jpg

Madison, WI – Thousands of union members and their supporters converged on the Wisconsin state capitol building, Feb. 28, to oppose a Republican-sponsored ‘Right to Work’ measure that aims at undermining labor unions in the private sector. The rally was organized by the AFL-CI0.

Speaking to the crowd, Bill Carroll, president of Teamsters Local 344, said, "This Right to Work legislation is designed so we die a death of 1000 cuts, one scab at a time."

The capitol steps and lawn were a sea of union signs and banners.

After the rally, several thousand protesters ignored police and took the streets, marching around the Capitol square, their chants echoing off surrounding buildings. Many then marched inside to the capitol rotunda.

Earlier in the day, about 400 union members and their backers rallied at Library Mall and then marched up State Street, chanting "What's disgusting? Union busting!" and "What's outrageous? Poverty wages!" as they joined the AFL-CIO rally. The enthusiastic protest was organized by Defeat "Right to Work" in Wisconsin (http://fightbacknews.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a29530af96a02fc55d345e735&id=4cccf2aab9&e=d323598fe4), a grassroots group of rank-and-file union members.

Speaking on Library Mall before the march, Jorge Maya of Youth Empowered in the Struggle at UW-Milwaukee described the attack on unions as a part of a broader attack on Wisconsin's working class.

​"Workers are suffering, students are suffering, immigrants are suffering," he said.

Cherrene Horazuk, president of AFSCME Local 3800, the union of clerical workers at the University of Minnesota, stressed the importance of solidarity, telling rally participants that there was nowhere else that she would rather be than standing with Wisconsin workers.

Union members will be back at the capitol, Monday, March 2, when the Assembly labor committee takes up the Right to Work law, and again on Thursday, March 5, when the assembly is expected to vote on the measure.

For its part, Defeat "Right to Work" in Wisconsin has vowed to continue building action to oppose union busting in Wisconsin.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[ckaihatsu]

Wisconsin ‘Right to Work’ bill passes Assembly

By staff

Madison, WI - Right to Work passed in the Wisconsin State Assembly along party lines, 62-35, after a 24-hour debate. The bill is on Governor Scott Walker's desk.

The AFL-CIO held another rally, March 5, on the capitol steps as thousands of workers returned to protest.
The State Assembly room turned to chaos as workers shouted down Republicans and were thrown out by police. Another group of people blocked off Governor Walker's office entrance for hours and held a teach-in.

Defeat Right to Work in Wisconsin, a network of workers across Wisconsin that wanted to see an all-out fight, finished off a week of protests by rallying in the capitol.

"Right to Work is Wall Street's attempt to further undermine our collective bargaining, to lower our wages, to weaken our unions and lower the living standards of working people, particularly women and people of color," commented Teamster activist Daniel Ginsberg. "We will not put up with ‘Right to Work.’ This can only go on for so long."

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[ckaihatsu]

https://laborfightback.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/what-lessons-can-we-learn-from-labors-defeats-in-wisconsin-in-2011-and-2015/

[Cliff Paul]

I read a quote somewhere that was along the lines of "Working Americans don't think they're in poverty, they think they're a millionaire waiting for their stroke of luck to hit." Definitely not the exact quote but that was the message it had.

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” - a quote that is attributed to John Steinbeck

[John Nada]

I read a quote somewhere that was along the lines of "Working Americans don't think they're in poverty, they think they're a millionaire waiting for their stroke of luck to hit." Definitely not the exact quote but that was the message it had.“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” - a quote that is attributed to John SteinbeckThis is the real quote:
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

As quoted in A Short History of Progress (2005) by Ronald Wright, p. 124; though this has since been cited as a direct quote by some, the remark may simply be a paraphrase, as no quotation marks appear around the statement and earlier publication of this phrasing have not been located.

This is perhaps an incorrect quote from "A Primer on the '30s." Esquire, June 1960: 85-93.

"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.

"I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed Bold mine.

He was talking about American Communists. If this was the "most advance section and vanguard of the proletariat" at it's peak when capitalism was at it's weakest, no wonder why we're fucked.:thumbdown: Though the misquote is also true.

IME it often isn't that rightist propaganda on "pull yourself up by your bootstraps and become a millionaire" that makes people anti-union, it's fear. They think the dues will be more than they can afford, often thinking it's much higher than it really is. They're not certain that a strike or even joining a union will improve anything. The company will threaten to fire people and slash wages, exaggerate a union's flaws or make shit up, and even do illegal shit to thwart a strike or unionizing effort. It can be a lot of shit to go through without immediate pay-off and bills to pay.

Another thing is their career. The company can hang up a promotion and raises as a carrot. This is possibly threatened if you support a union. They might fear it'll hurt future prospects for employment. This may not be legal, but they'll try, particularly in "at-will" states.

Lastly, there's hate and jealousy. Strangely some have looked at unionized jobs not as "Hey, why can't we have that too?' but as "I have to do all this work, why are they getting more for it?". It's viewed like the unionized workers are stealing from them, not that the capitalist are stealing from everyone and you must fight to get a little more back. A lot of the time this takes on a bigoted chauvinist character, such as blaming minorities instead. Which is damn near the Republicans' platform, to be racists assholes. And the Democrats' platform is then "At least we're not as bad".

I'm reminded of something Trotsky said about the American workers: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/05/backwardness.htm He mentions that the American workers have an empiricist worldview. That seems accurate.

[ckaihatsu]

I'm reminded of something Trotsky said about the American workers: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/05/backwardness.htm He mentions that the American workers have an empiricist worldview. That seems accurate.


A mostly empiricist worldview is indicative of a certain degree of *privilege*, since it means that one can afford to be mostly oblivious to a range of social *implications* of empirical reality -- the finding-out of which requires some *analysis*, or cognitive effort, which is materially a step above sheer empiricism. (Who-what-where-when vs. 'why' and 'how'.)

Also, I'm reminded of the song 'Hypocrisy is the greatest luxury':

http://www.metrolyrics.com/hypocrisy-is-the-greatest-luxury-lyrics-the-disposable-heroes-of-hiphoprisy.html


And:


philosophical abstractions

http://s6.postimg.org/cw2jljmgh/120404_philosophical_abstractions_RENDER_sc_12_1.j pg (http://postimg.org/image/i7hg698j1/full/)

[ckaihatsu]

As an aside I'll show a similarity, or parallel, in Trotsky's treatment of revolutionary politics in relation to the working class, as compared to Wilde's treatment of *aesthetics* in relation to popular tastes and inclinations:





Now the situation is radically changed. What can a revolutionary party do in this situation? In the first line give a clear honest picture of the objective situation, of the historic tasks which flow from this situation irrespective as to whether or not the workers are today ripe for this. Our tasks don’t depend on the mentality of the workers. The task is to develop the mentality of the workers. That is what the program should formulate and present before the advanced workers. Some will say: good, the program is a scientific program; it corresponds to the objective situation — but if the workers won’t accept this program, it will be sterile. Possibly. But this signifies only that the workers will be crushed since the crisis can’t be solved any other way but by the socialist revolution. If the American worker will not accept the program in time he will be forced to accept the program of fascism. And when we appear with our program before the working class we cannot give any guarantees that they will accept our program. We cannot take responsibility for this ... we can only take the responsibility for ourselves.




https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/05/backwardness.htm





Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide difference. If a man of science were told that the results of his experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the subject, or disturb popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of people who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were told that he had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought, provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those who had never thought in any sphere at all – well, nowadays the man of science and the philosopher would be considerably amused. Yet it is really a very few years since both philosophy and science were subjected to brutal popular control, to authority – in fact the authority of either the general ignorance of the community, or the terror and greed for power of an ecclesiastical or governmental class. Of course, we have to a very great extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the community, or the Church, or the Government, to interfere with the individualism of speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with the individualism of imaginative art still lingers. In fact, it does more than linger; it is aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.




https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/

[Counterculturalist]

.
IME it often isn't that rightist propaganda on "pull yourself up by your bootstraps and become a millionaire" that makes people anti-union, it's fear. They think the dues will be more than they can afford, often thinking it's much higher than it really is.

Yeah, the complaints about union dues are common and irritating. At my old shop, some people would say things like "the union never did fuck all for me except steal money off my paycheck every month!" This would be from someone whose hourly wages had nearly doubled as a direct result of the union coming in! Even with $30 a month in union dues, that's a hell of an improvement.

Every month or so, management would call a general meeting where they would talk about how "the numbers weren't good," all of the money they were losing (despite constantly taking on new work and adding on to the building to make room for new presses), how they couldn't afford to continue to pay people as much as they did (despite constantly expanding management staff), and vaguely threaten layoffs or closure. It was all bullshit and most of us saw through it, but there were invariably a handful of people who would be all "maybe we should pull out of the union, after all, the days of factory workers getting paid high wages are over, we're just lucky to be working."

[Klaatu]

i don't even think the majority of people know what the fuck unions actually do

You would be absolutely correct on this. The average joe-on-the-street has no idea of where the 8-hour day came from, where vacations came from, where worker safety laws came from, where child-labor laws came from, on and on... amazing how ignorant people are

[hexaune]

You would be absolutely correct on this. The average joe-on-the-street has no idea of where the 8-hour day came from, where vacations came from, where worker safety laws came from, where child-labor laws came from, on and on... amazing how ignorant people are

Its hardly surprising, why would a capitalist system educate people in these matters, its really a depressing and massive failure of the left that more people aren't aware of where these gains have come from.

[Klaatu]

Its hardly surprising, why would a capitalist system educate people in these matters, its really a depressing and massive failure of the left that more people aren't aware of where these gains have come from.

I'll tell you exactly how they get away with this. Media organizations such as Fox News keep people distracted with manufactured "crisis" issues such as Hillary Clinton's e-mails and that perpetual investigation of BENGHAZI !!! The poor dumb people who watch that crap have no idea that the capitalist-politician has his hand on their wallet, is breaking up their union (even while calling this process "workers' freedom") and is slowly poisoning them with toxic chemical compounds from every source, etc. Ordinary people who would normally be focused on these real issues I've mentioned are distracted from them. It's like the joke where the dog yells "squirrel !"

[Jessup]

This isn't surprising. Republicans will do anything to destroy unions.

[ckaihatsu]

Michigan truck drivers, warehouse workers rally for union at Sysco

http://www.fightbacknews.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-lead-photo/MIibt.jpg

By Tom Burke

Grand Rapids, MI—Around 50 workers and drivers joined a Teamsters Union Local 406 rally outside the food distribution giant Sysco Corporation on April 29. A huge black and gold Teamster truck was parked just outside the Sysco warehouse, bordering the Gerald R. Ford airport in Grand Rapids.

The workers held up Teamster signs reading, “Stop the war on workers,” as they lined both sides of the street. Passing truck drivers honked loudly in support of the union. The biggest issue for workers is seeing their paychecks shrink.

Warehouse worker Dave Lenhard was out on the picket line with his pro-union friends and said, “I used to be a ‘no’ vote when the union came around in 1997, but all I have seen since then is us going backwards.”

Lenhard explains, “We used to get $7500 in bonuses for safety, safe driving and attendance, but they cancelled that. They let us work the entire year towards the bonus and then suddenly cancelled it. They also took away our Christmas bonus with just a few days to go.”

Workers at Sysco called Teamsters 406 in November asking for help organizing. Sysco quickly hired a union busting firm to combat the workers having their own voice.

Workers and drivers also say they need a union to combat the “WIP and DIP” program imposed on them by management. Warehouse Incentive Program (WIP) and Drivers Incentive Program (DIP) are ways to target and fire workers for minor infractions. It is being used to target workers organizing for their union.

A young truck driver, George Brewster, found out what it is to be a target of the bosses. Surrounded by his fellow drivers, Brewster said, “You know the funny thing is they never told me why I was fired. We all know why: for organizing!”

Brewster continued, “The main problem for us is bad management. Less and less money, more and more work, while Sysco is making more and more money.”

Over 160 drivers and warehouse workers are demanding Sysco recognize their union affiliation with Teamsters 406. They load and deliver food to hospitals, colleges like Michigan State University, restaurants, hotels and other large institutions. The so-called ‘Right To Work’ laws in Michigan are making union organizing harder, but determined workers are banding together to win.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[ckaihatsu]

Scott Walker greeted by protesters in Minnesota

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By staff

Saint Paul, MN - Thirty people gathered outside O’Gara’s Bar to picket against Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker. Walker was speaking at a fundraiser for the right-wing pro-corporate Minnesota Jobs Coalition.

The protesters only found out about the event a few hours beforehand and mobilized quickly to oppose Walker’s presence. The protesters picketed in front of O’Gara’s for an hour in the rain as people were going inside for the event. They chanted, “What’s disgusting? Union busting!” “Hey hey, ho ho, Scott Walker has got to go!” and other pro-union and anti-Walker slogans.

Walker has gained notoriety with harsh attacks on unions in Wisconsin and from his close relationship with the right-wing billionaires the Koch Brothers. His union busting provoked massive protests and a recall election in Wisconsin. He has also attacked immigrant rights, public education, women’s reproductive rights and more. Now Walker wants to bring those attacks to the national level by running for president.

Groups that were present protesting against Walker included the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, Iron Workers Local 512, Operating Engineers Local 49 and others.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[Comrade V]

It amazes me how many of my fellow blue collar coworkers are just completely ignorant to how much they screw themselves with the policies they support. The capitalist indoctrination runs deep.