Home
Forums
New posts
Search forums
What's new
New posts
Latest activity
Members
Current visitors
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Search forums
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Home
Forums
Brown Cafe UPS Forum
UPS Union Issues
Unions and politics
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="PiedmontSteward" data-source="post: 1185466" data-attributes="member: 42270"><p>While I have very mixed feelings on labor unions supporting <strong>most</strong> Democrats - politically - it's not like the IBT is shoveling dues money at them. That's why we have DRIVE, which is an extra check-off that members can voluntarily give on top of their dues. That being said, we still lost over 50,000 members last year. The "1.4 million members" number that's touted is really more in the neighborhood of 1.2 million and falling from a high of over 2.1 million in the early 1960's. </p><p></p><p>Part of this is due to the economy, a few successful de-certification campaigns, and a lack of substantial organizing. Right-to-Work has also had more than half a century to take hold and is beginning to spread to states beyond "the solid south." Another big part of this is the fact that the IBT Organizing Department has had a lot of internal issues over the last few years; the 20-worker dinking and dunking organizing campaigns I keep reading about from IBT are great, but it's not enough to keep us alive. We really need to be organizing core industries and we definitely need to stop being afraid of giving FedEx Ground/Freight (both of which can be conventionally organized under the NLRA) a headline. </p><p></p><p>How is a higher minimum wage a draw for illegal immigrants? The same employers that hire illegal immigrants will also black mail them via their undocumented status to pay them even less. I have a pretty libertarian view of labor's role in society and simply abolishing the minimum wage alone wouldn't bring us back to the glory days of the 1930's; that would take abolishing Taft-Hartley; which made RTW laws in individual states possible and the secondary boycott illegal. Hoffa's use of the secondary boycott in the 1930's was legendary -- if a company refused to allow its workers to organize a warehouse, then every union trucking company under Teamster control nearby would refuse to move their cargo. The power dynamics between labor and capital were completely different back then -- a company couldn't dig in its heels and refuse to negotiate if they wanted to survive.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="PiedmontSteward, post: 1185466, member: 42270"] While I have very mixed feelings on labor unions supporting [B]most[/B] Democrats - politically - it's not like the IBT is shoveling dues money at them. That's why we have DRIVE, which is an extra check-off that members can voluntarily give on top of their dues. That being said, we still lost over 50,000 members last year. The "1.4 million members" number that's touted is really more in the neighborhood of 1.2 million and falling from a high of over 2.1 million in the early 1960's. Part of this is due to the economy, a few successful de-certification campaigns, and a lack of substantial organizing. Right-to-Work has also had more than half a century to take hold and is beginning to spread to states beyond "the solid south." Another big part of this is the fact that the IBT Organizing Department has had a lot of internal issues over the last few years; the 20-worker dinking and dunking organizing campaigns I keep reading about from IBT are great, but it's not enough to keep us alive. We really need to be organizing core industries and we definitely need to stop being afraid of giving FedEx Ground/Freight (both of which can be conventionally organized under the NLRA) a headline. How is a higher minimum wage a draw for illegal immigrants? The same employers that hire illegal immigrants will also black mail them via their undocumented status to pay them even less. I have a pretty libertarian view of labor's role in society and simply abolishing the minimum wage alone wouldn't bring us back to the glory days of the 1930's; that would take abolishing Taft-Hartley; which made RTW laws in individual states possible and the secondary boycott illegal. Hoffa's use of the secondary boycott in the 1930's was legendary -- if a company refused to allow its workers to organize a warehouse, then every union trucking company under Teamster control nearby would refuse to move their cargo. The power dynamics between labor and capital were completely different back then -- a company couldn't dig in its heels and refuse to negotiate if they wanted to survive. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Home
Forums
Brown Cafe UPS Forum
UPS Union Issues
Unions and politics
Top