It has been a long time since the general public has heard about the benefits of unions. If we read or hear anything from the corporate media today it is usually about “corrupt” unions “driving up prices,” “taking” dues from wages or “causing companies to leave” the state or country. And who would expect a corporate-controlled media to ever say anything good about unions or bad about corporate rule!
Have you heard the saying, “The labor movement – the people who brought you the weekend?” Think about that seriously for a minute. The reason we have weekends off, vacations (such as we do have them), an 8-hour workday, sick leave, child labor laws and so much more is because people organized into unions and demanded those things.
Do you know why manufacturing jobs have “traditionally” paid good wages? The reason is because unions organized the manufacturing industry.
In fact, unions are the reason we have a middle class in America.
Do you know why unions were formed? Before there were unions wages, working hours, worker safety rules, worker rights and general working conditions were terrible. This is because there is a huge imbalance in our economic system. Corporations have the ability to organize huge amounts of money and resources as well as to influence the government. But individuals are on their own. And in the 19th and early 20th century a very few people used the power and influence of corporations to perpetuate a system that enabled them to collect most of the proceeds of the industrial revolution and the work of millions largely for themselves, sharing very little with the regular people of the country. So to counter the power and influence of the big companies workers learned that they needed to organize themselves to help each other. And so the labor movement was born.
The unions were able to bring millions of regular people together to fight back against the consolidated power of corporations. Slowly over time working conditions, wages, etc. improved. And through this organized effort the government became more responsive to regular people as well.
But the owners of the corporations fought back. In the late 1960s and early 1970s a corporate-sponsored conservative political movement was organized. They used modern marketing techniques to influence people and persuade them to yield more and more power back to the corporations. In the decades since they have been able to largely take over the government and to wear down the unions to a fraction of what they were.
And we can all see the results. When unions were strong people had retirement pensions and health insurance and good wages they could count on. When unions were strong our government was much more responsive to the will of the people not the corporations.
Why can you do about this? You can join a union and start to fight back!
Why should you join a union? I’ve been looking around online for info and arguments to help make the case, and here is a compilation of some of them. (Each link means the info following it is from a different website. Click through the links for more.)
Cause trouble where you work – print this out and stick it on bulletin boards around the workplace when no one is looking.
Union Workers Have Better Health Care and Pensions
Union workers are more likely than their nonunion counterparts to covered by health care and receive pension benefits, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March 2007, 78 percent of union workers in the private sector had jobs with employer-provided health insurance, compared with only 49 percent of nonunion workers. Union workers also are more likely to have retirement and short-term disability benefits.
Dignity: The presence of a union means employees must be treated fairly by their employer, and that you have a voice and vote in important decisions that effect you.
Power: An employee has little power and almost no way to improve wages, benefits, or working conditions. Collective Bargaining balances the power that an employer has over its employees even in a “Team” or high performance work environment.
Protection: Without a union there is no due process at work. Unions provide a grievance & arbitration procedure which ensures fairness for all employees.
Here are five good reasons to join your co-workers in uniting to form a union:
# 1 – Working together, union members have the strength to win better wages, affordable health care, a secure retirement, and safer workplaces.
# 2 – The “union advantage” is substantial. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, union members are much more likely to have health benefits and pensions.
# 3 – For people of color and women workers, the union impact is even greater. Women workers who are union members earn nearly $9,000 a year more than their non-union counterparts. For African-American workers, the union differential is also about $9,000, and for Latino workers the yearly advantage is more than $11,000.
# 4 – In addition to helping workers win better wages and benefits, unions help all workers by giving working families a stronger voice in our communities, in the political arena, and in the global economy.
# 5 – By joining together, we can build the strength to hold elected officials accountable, stop the “race to the bottom” by employers who cut wages and benefits in favor of bigger profits, and win improvements such as affordable, quality health care for all.
Union members earn better wages and benefits than workers who aren’t union members. On average, union workers’ wages are 30 percent higher than their nonunion counterparts. While only 14 percent of nonunion workers have guaranteed pensions, fully 68 percent of union workers do. More than 97 percent of union workers have jobs that provide health insurance benefits, but only 85 percent of nonunion workers do. Unions help employers create a more stable, productive workforce–where workers have a say in improving their jobs.
Unions are making a difference. With most of the economic benefits of our economy going to corporate America, working people are using the power of collective action to get their fair share.
Workers never got anything without uniting for it.
* The 40-hour workweek
* The 8-hour workday
* Overtime
* Sick Leave
* Paid Vacation
* Employer-paid health insurance
* Pensions
* Safety and health protections
* Grievance procedure for wrongful discharge and discipline
* Fairness in promotions
* Higher wages
Just think of what you and your coworkers may be able to win if you had a union contract.
And, finally, it’s time for the wealthiest to share the pie: Income for the Wealthiest Is off the Charts.

I am at the Take Back America conference in Washington DC.
One common discussion here at Take Back America is that conservative economic policy chickens are coming home to roost. Another phrase I am hearing is Wild West Banking. People here are talking about the big story in the news right now: an economic and financial crisis that some economists are saying is the worst since the depression.
For decades, as conservative economics increasingly led to lower wages, loss of pensions and health insurance, and general “you’re on your own” economic insecurity many people have been using up their savings while other people turned to borrowing to make up the difference, taking out second mortgages or running up credit cards.
Meanwhile the financial system, increasingly deregulated, cooked up riskier and riskier schemes — like loaning money to people and companies to use to make their payments on their existing debt.
Now we appear to be reaching the limit of people’s ability to borrow. And when people and companies have been borrowing to meet their payments this can mean a collapse. When people can’t pay the mortgages the financial companies aren’t receiving their payments. So they can’t make their payments, and the companies they aren’t paying can’t make their payments. Think of this as a spiral of debt extending from the overextended consumer at the bottom to the biggest financial companies at the top. Now that spiral is beginning to “unwind.”
This is happening because of so many years of conservative government focused on deregulating and on protecting the interests of the corporations and the wealthy instead of protecting the interests of the public from the moneyed interests. This is what conservatives do. A while back I wrote a very short post titled Republicans and Economics:

…there was a REASON that Americans were loath to elect a Republican into the government for an entire generation after the Great Depression: They remembered.

But eventually the public forgot, and the moneyed-interests used their money to again become the dominant voice in the public discussion. They used this dominance to persuade people to dislike unions, accept 401Ks as alternatives to pensions, and all the rest of the things that have led to another economic crisis. But even many of my progressive readers didn’t understand what I meant. So I had to add an update,

Previous generations REMEMBERED. There was nothing to add. Over time people have forgotten how Republican economics caused the depression, and how they fought every single program that helped the people at the expense of the wealthiest and the powerful corporations. (And in fact led to the prosperity that the wealthiest and corporations enjoyed since.)
But now people do not remember how concentration of wealth, corporations preying on citizens, anti-union policies, etc. LED TO the economic collapse.
The depression was ended by pro-union policies, redistributive taxes, REGULATIONS on businesses and the fuinancial sector, and an understanding that We, the People run the government, and the reason we have corporations is for OUR benefit, not just the benefit of the few.
Over time, as I said, people forgot. And here we are again.

How do we help the public understand what is happening and how conservative policies are responsible?
One possible way is to use a shorthand — call this the “Iraq Recession.” It isn’t entirely accurate, but it does lay the blame exactly where it belongs. Up to three trillion dollars will be spent by the time we are out of Iraq, assuming it ends soon. And Iraq is entirely a Republican enterprise. So this shorthand places the blame where it belongs. What do you think?

With the Cal State University faculty having voted overwhelmingly to strike as a result of the impasse with CSU’s adminstration over its contract, Speak Out California has called for support of the Faculty’s efforts to negotiate a fair contract with the CSU administration. If you didn’t receive our ACTION ALERT, please go to our HOME page and click on the TAKE ACTION link at the top of the page. From there you’ll find a model draft of a letter to go to state legislators urging their support for the Faculty Association in its efforts to receive a fair contract. In addition, Speak Out is seeking your support for legislation which will add sunshine to the CSU’s compensation practices which have given favored administrators raises of up to 60% in the past two years while faculty salaries lag up to 35% below counterparts in other state university systems.
The California State University system is one of the key educational components to our state’s future so we’ve been following this closely. Here’s the most recent update from Speak Out Board member and Assistant Professor at Cal State Sacramento, R. Stanley Oden as to where the situation stands now.

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If this were a perfect world, putting these three items in the same sentence might not rouse any kind of negative response. For some who don’t read the newspaper or haven’t been personally impacted by any of these products, lumping them together might seem puzzling. But for those who realize that these are just examples of what happens when industries are not regulated in how they function and are able to set their own “voluntary” standards in dealing with the public health impacts of their goods, it becomes quite clear that “voluntary” participation in protecting the public doesn’t hold a candle to the concern for profits in our oh-so imperfect world.
There are so many examples of the public learning too late to save the lives of those who were unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of corporate indifference to public health and safety that it would take far too long to list them. But we do know that one of the important functions of government is to regulate industries and businesses that produce goods and services that can be potentially harmful. Sadly, we see over-and-over again instances when we simply end up closing the barn door after the animals have fled. Unfortunately, when we’re dealing with leaders who would rather let these businesses regulate themselves (i.e. letting the fox guard the hen house), the door often doesn’t get truly closed until more damage and death occurs and the public cry becomes too loud to ignore. Enter State Senator Dean Florez who represents portions of the Central Valley and is seeking to protect the public health by introducing his “California Produce Safety Action Plan” designed to create and enforce effective safety standards in the growing and processing of leafy vegetables in California.

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