Unions 101 – Which Side Are You On?
"There’s no such thing as neutral. You have to be on one side or the other. Some people say, “I don’t take sides - I’m neutral.” There’s no such thing. In your mind you’re on one side or the other. In Harlan County there wasn’t no neutral. If you wasn’t a gun thug, you was a union man. You had to be."
Rand Paul doesn't know squat about Harlan County Kentucky. He should have studied up by now, and his ignorance, be it willful or just plain stupid, is a slap in the face to the Kentucky coal miners who fought and died over many generations for the right to organize the mines.
Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how that good old union
Has come in here to dwellChorus
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?My daddy was a miner
And I'm a miner's son
And I'll stick with the union
Till every battle's wonThey say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. BlairOh, workers can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?Don't scab for the bosses
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize
Florence Reece was the wife of a Harlan County coal miner and labor organizer and her simple message "Us poor folks haven't got a chance unless we organize," may resonate more today than at any time since she wrote those lines in the midst of a terror attack at the hands of deputized company gun thugs sent to arrest or beat or kill her union organizer husband Sam.
The Kentucky coal mines weren't union back then. If you worked the mines, a company payday lender issued you company scrip - actually an advance against unearned wages which was designed to trap the worker in debt - which you could redeem in the company store for shoddy overpriced merchandise.
Many lost their lives due to the neglect of operators who in some cases robbed the miner of his dignity, his honor and his rights to earn a decent living for his family. I am a coal miners daughter. One of eight children who lived in a four room company house, in a company camp, traded at the company store, with company scrip. To get silver money a miner got 85 cents in silver for every dollar in scrip. My dad did owe his soul to the company store.
As a Kentucky coal miner, you paid rent right back to your employer for the right to live in a company hovel. If you were willing to pay a little extra, you might have had running water - out on the front porch with open drainage directly into the street.
When you died, a company funeral home buried you in a company cemetery.
The absentee mine owners also owned the police and the jail - Harlan County Sheriff J. H. Blair bragged that most of his deputies were mine guards still on the company payroll. There was no democracy in a company town or coal camp - everything was controlled by the company.
The paternalistic system worked well enough in boom times - coal was king before petroleum - and the vast profits rapidly accumulated by mine owners gave them plenty of cash with which to quash any attempts at organizing while paying their workers just barely enough to get by.
But after World War One, coal prices slumped, and the subsistence wage boom times were over. A decade of pay cuts and layoffs followed, and by 1930 or so, the workers were getting really fed up. Or, more accurately, not fed at all.
Q4 Can you tell us something about the condition of the people in this hollow?
A: The people in this country are destitute of anything that is truly nourishing to the body. That is the truth. Even the babies have lost their lives, and we have buried from four to seven a week all along during warm weather.
Q5 Due to lack of food?
A: Yes, on account of cholera, famine, flux, stomach trouble brought on by undernourishment. Their food is very bad, such as beans and harsh foods fried in this lard that is so hard to digest. It is impossible for a little baby's stomach to digest them. The digestive organs are not strong enough to digest this food.
Q6 Is that the only food they have, if they have that?
A: They can only get beans. Their parents have been out of work this summer. Families have had to depend on the Red Cross. The Red Cross put out some beans and corn....
Q11 Do they give to every one that asks?
A: No the Red Cross does not give to every one. I always thought they was selfish; they didn't have the right kind of heart.
Q12 Do they give to members of the National Miner's Union?
A: No, they stop it when they know a man belongs to the union.
Q13 What did they say about it?
A: The Red Cross is against a man who is trying to better conditions. They are for the operators, and they want the mines to be going so they won't give anything to a man unless he does what the operators want him to. For instance, I will explain this. My husband took pneumonia and flux for three months. He has not been able to work since this strike. I have to carry back something for my husband to eat from the soup kitchen. The Red Cross won't give anything. We are really in destitution. I talked to the Red Cross lady over at Pineville....
Q15 Did she offer to give you any relief?
A: No, because they was members of the National Miners Union. They said, "We are not responsible for those men out on strike. They should go back to work and work for any price that they will taken them for." That was last week.
Q16 How many children die a month or a year under these conditions?
A: Now in the summer, it would be three to seven each week up and down this creek....
Q20 Are these houses sanitary and healthful to live in?
A: Therse houses bring grip, flu and pneumonia.
Q21 Is this a company house?
A: Yes.
Q22 Does the company fix it?
A: They do not fix it. Just plainly speaking they are no more interested in the men, in the miners, they have not got the sympathy that people has for stock, for the mules.
Q23 Much less, because a man who owns stock knows he must take care of it or he loses money. They don't feel that way about the miners, I believe you.
A: If I had a milk cow or a horse I certainly would be more interested in them than the coal operators is in these people.
Is your husband a member of the N.M.U.?
A: My husband is a member of the National Miners Union, and I am too, and I have never stopped, brother, since I know of this work for the N.M.U. I think it is one of the greatest things that has ever come into this world....
Q29 You know all the people in this village are suffering from lack of food?
A: Yes, they are destitute of food and clothing.
Q30 You have been a nurse in this community?
A: Yes, just charity.
Q31 You have brought children into this world?
A: Yes sir, 65. My poor husband, he did all he could do. They took their wagons and they would beg for these pumpkins and corn and that would be all they would get without any seasoning and many days they had nothing but those pumpkins. It's all right if we had the other things to fix the pumpkins up but we had nothing and it is very hard to digest that way.
Q32 What do they do with the pumpkins?
A: They feed their hogs. If you had the flavoring, you could fix up something good.
That was the testimony of Aunt Molly Jackson before the Dreiser Committee in 1931. Jackson was a blacklisted miner's wife and a midwife, a union organizer and, per Woody Guthrie, "one of America's best native ballad singers."
Actually, Woody had a little more to say about Aunt Molly Jackson.
When she saw these little babies starving to death like flies all around her, Aunt Molly got interested in good wages for their dads. She got up in front of the miners, sung them songs, made them speeches, yelled at them to lay down their tools and wait till the boss raised the pay. She tells of the meetings they had. How the winchester rifle bullets use [sic] to kick the gravel up in your face while you was out making a talk about the rich coal operators and the poor hungry miners. In a year Aunt Molly told more truth than the politicians could bear to hear, so it got too hot for her down in Kentucky.
...
I know Molly well. She's strong and she's good, and she aint [sic] afraid of the police. She says what she thinks when she thinks it. The big guys call her a red. Well, Molly, it looks like if you always say just exactly what you think is right, they'll jump on you and say you're a red.
Some folks just aint quite got the nerve to say what they think is right. But some day they'll wish they had. You aint scared of nobody, Molly. I know it. I've been around you long enough to know that. And you can't stay around Molly for even a few minutes, but what she'll speak out something that is so good, so true, and so honest, that it'll stick in your head as long as you live.
Kentucky coal miners know how to speak out. They also know how to take action.
The bloodiest battles to build a union have been in the coal fields -- in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois, Colorado, and Kentucky. And surely the toughest and meanest of all the coal field where men fought for a voice and a place in the sun was "Bloody Harlan" in Kentucky.
...In 1931, coal miners in Harlan County were on strike. Armed company deputies roamed the countryside, terrorizing the mining communities, looking for union leaders to beat, jail, or kill. But coal miners, brought up lean and hard in the Kentucky mountain country, knew how to fight back, and heads were bashed and bullets fired on both sides in Bloody Harlan.
The violence ebbed and flowed, but the Kentucky miners stuck to their guns (literally) and in 1933, they won the right to organize
Unionism finally came to Harlan County in May 1933, when section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act recognized the legal right of workers to organize unions. The UMW organized the coal mines in a matter of months. By autumn of 1933, the workers signed their first collective bargaining agreement with the coal operators.
One of the most important things about Harlan County is that it attracted national attention to the plight of the coal miners, much as the civil rights demonstrations of the early 1960s brought the injustice of segregation to the awareness of the nation. In late 1931, novelist Theodore Dreiser and a team of writers came down to report on (as Dreiser put it) "terrorism in the Kentucky coalfields." And during the strike, writer Waldo Frank organized an "Independent Miners Relief Committee" to bring food to the miners. Busloads of northern college students came South to support the miners, handing out food and copies of the Bill of Rights. Florence Reece's song, "Which Side Are You On?" also served to spread the word about the conflict, and became a lasting favorite of labor and civil rights activists.
For people around the country, the Harlan County uprising of the early 1930s demonstrated the limits of the company paternalism and welfare capitalism of the 1920s. In this way, it helped pave the way for the Wagner Act of 1935, which guaranteed workers the right to organize and created a legal process for attaining union recognition. The northern writers and organizers who told the story of Harlan County to the rest of the country helped to cast union organization as American and democratic, and the actions of the companies as tyrannical, violent, and arbitrary. Finally, the ultimate victory of the miners showed that even under the most difficult conditions, in the most rural communities, workers could organize and win union representation. The mineworkers' union, with its stronghold in Harlan County and Appalachia, would remain a powerful force in the United States throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and the entire postwar era.
Winning the right to organize was not the end of the struggle for Harlan County coal workers. Violence continued for many years as miners struggled to educate reluctant owners. In April of 1941, the last union organizing gun battle in the SE Kentucky area took the lives of a mine owner and some company officers and guards as well as at least one union member.
Rhodes was a large, reckless young man who arrogantly told union men that if miners attempted to picket his mine, he would slaughter them. For months, he and Bob Robinson, a former Tennessee highway patrolman, had been parading around with their Tommy guns and challenging the miners to a fight. More than half of the employees had been signed up by the UMWA, but Rhodes ignored their demands and hired more thugs.
On April 15, 1941, the union decided to post a picket line in the safest place they could find. The pickets chose stations where they could take cover in case they were attacked by company guards, and then moved to a strategic place near the mine. When the caravan of cars came to a stop at the state line and started to unload, the fifty pickets were greeted with a broadside from fifteen or eighteen armed guards who had word they were coming and had preceded the pickets to the state line. On the first volley, one picket was killed and more than a dozen were wounded, nine seriously enough to be hospitalized.
...
The battle raged across the state line and more than a thousand shots were fired.
This was the last gun battle in southeastern Kentucky and/or Tennessee over the UMWA’s right to organize. The feudal coal barons learned a valuable lesson from this encounter, namely that times were changing. They could no longer murder miners like dogs with impunity and with the protection of state governments. They had been taught that workingmen, for the first time in American history, were thought of as first-class citizens.
Thinking back, I realize that the Harlan County gun thugs in reality got nothing for their efforts to drive out the union. Most of them died violent deaths.
The ones who survived or died natural deaths had their consciences to live with. How they did it, I do not know.
Harlan county coal miners fought and died and beat back the capitalist thugs that were treating them worse than farm animals, and they set the stage for the Wagner Act and other labor victories.
Today, the working class is being squeezed and exploited in much the same ways that the coal miners were. The elite have stolen our wealth. Payday lenders and credit cards trap the working poor in debt. Wages have been stagnant or falling for years. Working families are turning to relief agencies to feed their kids.
Don't scab for the bosses
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize
There's no such thing as neutral. Which side are you on?
ACTION:
If you are not a union member, join Working America and get involved.
If you are a union member, join Working Families and get involved.
If you're interested in forming a union at your workplace (that's a BFD!), start here and stick to it.
Support American workers - use union shops whenever you can and buy from American manufacturers when possible.
Note: This post was inspired by Ross Altman's awesome presentation of American protest songs archived at Pacifica and broadcast by Community Radio WMNF in Tampa last Friday.
Unions 101 – We Are All Working Class
Having just left Las Vegas - a trip I set out on with the trepidatious goal of avoiding as much of the traditional Vegas Strip experience as possible, I've been ruminating on the efficiency of the Vegas machine at doing exactly what it is designed to do - extracting wealth from willing victims. Then Digby pointed me to John Cole who posted a George Carlin clip and something Carlin said really stuck in my mind. Speaking of the plight of America's middle class, Carlin says
The table is tilted... the game is rigged...
And I thought to myself, "Gee, just like Las Vegas."
Mandatory Disclaimer: I loved NN10. It was my first, and I can't wait to do it again next year in a city I will feel a little more comfortable in. And I, for one, very happily noted the Union Bugs on the NN10 Made In America t-shirts and swag bags. Netroots Nation sets an awesome example by supporting American Union Workers.
With dozens of bars and restaurants, shops, swimming pools, convention facilities, theaters, bowling alleys, and more all prominently placed just steps from the hotel's colossal central square casino, the only thing I did not see at the massive Rio Hotel complex was a church - I guess they don't want the competition.
Not that that's a bad thing - Vegas is organized religion without so much hypocrisy. Nor the promise of eternal life - Vegas manages to lure its true believers with a slim but instantly gratifying chance at riches and happiness right here and now.
Dizzied by bells and smoke and flesh and booze, the faithful are efficiently bled dry and more and bigger and better cash cathedrals are swiftly erected upon their desiccated remains.
Vegas is totally upfront about what it aims to do to its followers. The marks flock to the city knowing full well that the aim of their host is to leave them penniless, and that the odds are always with the house - the game is rigged, the table is tillted.
At least Vegas uses union labor to separate the masses from their asses - churches tend to find a way to get folks to work for a lot less than their labor is worth. Much like our economy of late.
And for most folks, a trip to Vegas is voluntary. But there's nothing voluntary about being born into an economic world of rigged games and tilted tables. The victims of our economic casino are not willing dupes but the working class - we are all ensnared by a system that is increasingly efficient at extracting our wealth for the exclusive benefit of the ownership class.
It's time to change the odds, to level the table a bit, and to fix the rigged games to ensure that the increasingly elusive American dream is an attainable reward, not a jackpot with impossibly high odds of winning. It's time to join with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and America's Labor Unions and begin to make the odds a little better for America's working class.
Speaking as part of a panel on Building a Progressive Economic Vision, Trumka outlined the need for the the nation to invest in infrastructure, implement fair trade policies, change our tax policies, enact comprehensive immigration reform and reform our broken labor laws. The full panel included consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren, progressive Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, Center for Community Change Executive Director Deepak Bhargava, Green for All’s Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and National People’s Action Executive Director George Goehl. (Watch it here.)
Trumka pointed out how the United States is falling behind other countries in creating green technology. While our nation is building 500 miles of high-speed rail, China has begun construction of 5,000 miles and is outspending the United States 2:1 on green technology, making it even far urgent for the United States to invest in green jobs and high-end manufacturing infrastructure now before we fall further behind.
For those who say we can’t afford to make these investments, Trumka explained how we can do it with a financial speculation tax that encourages capital to invest in concrete things and discourages unproductive speculation or paper pushing for a quick buck, all the while raising more than $100 billion. Trumka made it clear that lawmakers must not reduce the federal deficit at the expense of creating jobs.
Next up, Trumka described the need for anintegrated trade policy. The nation can’t focus solely on increasing exports, we need to focus on net exports. We can’t open our markets to other countries who won’t open theirs. We can’t support countries that murder trade unionists. All we want is to compete on a level playing field and to do that we must have fair trade policy.
Third, Trumka laid out what we must do to modify our tax policy:
We need a tax policy that encourages people to produce and manufacture things in this country, not reward those who outsource and produce things abroad. We have to close the loopholes that allow corporations who have record profits to use gimmicks to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
Fourth, Trumka loudly and proudly spoke out in favor of comprehensive immigration reform and made it clear that every AFL-CIO union has endorsed our five-point plan for immigration reform. Current U.S. immigration policy has allowed corporations to create a permanent underclass of workers who they can take advantage of.
And finally, just as corporations have taken advantage of immigrants, they have skirted, exploited and violated labor laws that empower workers to form a union and bargain for a better life. The good jobs of the past were good jobs because workers organized and fought for fair wages and benefits. Without labor law reform, corporations will continue to take advantage of workers and no matter how much we invest in our economy, how much we increase our productivity, our wages will remain stagnant and we will continue to fall behind.
Immigration reform, a financial transactions tax, fair trade, infrastructure investment (clean energy and high speed rail leap to mind), job creation - The American Labor agenda lines up well with the larger progressive agenda. We're all in the same economic boat - if you cash a paycheck you are working class - and the American Labor movement aims to lift us all up and rebuild a strong American middle class.
ACTION:
If you are not a union member, join Working America and get involved.
If you are a union member, join Working Families and get involved.
If you're interested in forming a union at your workplace (that's a BFD!), start here and stick to it.
Support American workers - use union shops whenever you can and buy from American manufacturers when possible.
Unions 101 – Stickin To The Union
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.
Union Maid
by Woody Guthrie
I firmly believe that unions are key to a revitalization of our middle class. I have a good union job. Good pay, great benefits, including free healthcare, and a little bit of democracy in the workplace. I think that what I have is the absolute minimum that any worker anywhere should have, but I know how lucky I am to have what I do.
That's why a certain attitude amongst some of my union brothers and sisters really pisses me off. I'm talking about the mostly white mostly male mostly Limbaugh and Beck fans who are in the exact same position as me but somehow fail to see that if not for the union, they would likely be working for peanuts and eating catfood.
With that in mind, join me over the fold for an open letter to the union brother with whom I worked last night.
Brother,
Please don't take this the wrong way, but you are acting like an inconsiderate parasitic prima donna.
After we finished unclogging those tubes last night, we were talking and you started in with how you were fed up with everything, including the union.
I asked you about the union. You recited some WATB tale about how the hall is letting you down because they refused to settle a grievance by cutting corners and allowing you to change job classification.
When I suggested that you go to the hall sometime and show your face or even just pick up the phone and talk to your rep and work something out, you said you don't have time.
When I asked you why you've never been to a monthly meeting at the hall, same answer.
So then I said that maybe you ought to get a little more involved before you start bashing the union. I mean, really - the hall seems to be doing a good job representing you and they feel that it's best to stick to the contract and play by the rules and they will eventually prevail for you.
But you're a selfish bastard, and you don't have time to let the process work through.
In fact, you told me outright that "it's time to think of myself not the union." And then you said that your union dues give you the right to bash the hall to anyone who will listen.
And then the best part - after I pointed out to you that our non-union competition pays non-union workers about 1/3 less in wages and that they charge for health insurance and that the only fucking reason you make what you do is that we have a collective bargaining agreement in place to ensure that even the dumbasses such as yourself are compensated at the same fair rates as the rest of us, after all that, you had the stupidity to blurt out "I wish I was a contractor with my own vehicle. I would make a killing!"
Did you hear even one fucking work I said to you?
First, if you think your future is in dropping your union membership and becoming a contractor, I urge you to do so. You'll probably never age and never fall ill. You'll be young forever and able to work 12 hour days without ever breaking a sweat. You are super tech.
But if you were just blowing smoke about the whole contractor thing, then you really need to lose the selfish. Unions are never about the individual. There are going to be times that you disagree with your union. There are going to be times when you are frustrated beyond words. Too bad. Suck it up. If you want to change things, get your ass down to the hall and get involved. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
I hear this whiny ass shit from brothers like you all the time. You're pissed because things aren't going 100 percent your way. You're spoiled, narcissistic twits, endlessly sniveling about your bad lot in life, privileged union members, lucky to have full benefits and a better salary than 90 percent of hourly earners in this area, but self-deluded and convinced that you are somehow a victim and that the union is your oppressor.
Listen: You are the union. I am the union. We are the union. The only way you will become a victim is if you work against the union. Whether you know it or not, your long term interests are being served by the union. By bad mouthing the union for following policy that is designed to make things fair for everybody, you are undermining your own long term security.
So, if you have a legitimate beef, come down to the hall and discuss it. You can even air your concerns to all of your brothers and sisters if you would simply show up and raise your voice at a monthly meeting.
But don't be one of the moochers who sticks around for years sucking up all the benefits of union membership, who never gives anything back to the union and who never, ever passes over an opportunity to denigrate the hard work of those who do take the time to get involved.
We don't need brothers and sisters like that.
In Solidarity,
Norwood
Labor Unions 101 – Words Have Meaning
LaFeminista posted a good Daily Kos diary about unions recently, and reading the diary and comments reminded me that despite my avid pro-union stance, until about 5 years ago when I lucked into a union job, I, like the vast majority of workers who are not as lucky as I am, really had no idea what it means to actually be a union member.
But I've managed to gain a little knowledge in the last few years and I feel that compiling and regurgitating that knowledge in a slightly altered form might be just the thing to clear some of the fog that's clouding the brains of my brothers and sisters on Daily Kos.
Join me over the fold for the first installment of my Labor Unions 101 series - Words Have Meaning.
Labor Union - A group of workers who engage in...
Collective Bargaining - negotiations on a contract that covers a union member's terms of employment. If contract talks break down or if the company grievously harms one or more of us, we may decide to...
Strike - Which is really the nuclear option - it hurts everybody. When there is a less drastic dispute, typically we might form a...
Picket Line - A group of workers demonstrating solidarity by protesting the actions of management. No one crosses picket lines except for...
Scabs - NOT my bothers and sisters. But picket lines and strikes are for bigger disputes. We usually start with a...
Grievance - An assertion by the union that one or more members has been treated unfairly by management. After a grievance is filed, a union representative and a company representative will get together and attempt to hash things out. A grievance must be filed by a representative of...
The Hall - Our collectively run Union Hall and the folks who work there. It can be a rented storefront or a dilapidated shack or just an average looking commercial building. It doesn't really matter what it looks like - it houses our business offices and it's where we get together for meetings and the planning of the revolution. We are...
Brothers and Sisters - Every member of the working class is my brother or my sister and union members are...
Craft - Any Union brother or sister. As opposed to...
Management - A supervisory employee not covered under a collective bargaining agreement. Management is paid to fight the union. Managers cross picket lines (see: Scab) and do our work when we strike. Managers have sold their soul to the company and thrive on carrying out the orders of the corporate suborners. Managers continuously fight amongst themselves and will knife each other in the back for a promotion because they have no...
Solidarity - The core tenet of unionism. Solidarity means I support my brothers and sisters above all. That doesn't mean that unions prevent the firing of horrible employees just because they are union - it means that the company will be made to justify any action against a union member. The company must honor our...
Weingarten Rights - "If this discussion could in any way lead to my being disciplined or terminated or have any effect on my personal working conditions, I respectfully request that my union representative, officer, or steward be present at this meeting. Without union representation I choose NOT to participate in this discussion." (Yes, a lot of us have it memorized.) That's right - a brother or sister is guaranteed representation by a...
Steward - Or Shop Steward - A brother or sister who has taken on extra responsibilities by agreeing to act as the union representative for a group of workers. Unfortunately, we have...
Right-to-work states - States which have passed anti-union laws as encouraged by...
Taft-Hartley - The 1947 federal anti-union act which specifies that the Steward must also represent...
Free Riders - Workers in right-to-work states who decline the chance to join the union and thus weaken the union by enjoying the benefits of union membership without paying...
Union Dues - Used for office expenses and the salaries of union officers as well as the costs of negotiating contracts and...
Organizing - Which is like proselytizing, only for a good cause. Because union shops make life better for all by putting upward pressure on...
Prevailing Wages - The wages and benefits in a region are affected by union contracts - non-union shops must be competitive if they are to attract good...
Workers - Anyone who works for a living. If you are not independently wealthy, if you rely on a paycheck to pay the bills and grow your savings, then you are a worker. If you are a worker and you are not pro-union, then you are a traitor to the...
Working Class - "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common." So says the preamble of the constitution of the...
Wobblies - The Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, or Wobblies, are a legendary international union of workers which you can join. Formed in 1905 by socialists and anarchists, the Wobblies continue to organize oppressed American workers to this day, including Starbucks baristas and bicycle messengers, two groups who could really use a...
Break - Which I am going to take right now. If you got a problem with that, talk to my steward.