Labor Unions: Ten “Likes,” Five “Dislikes”

Labor Unions: Ten “Likes,” Five “Dislikes”

Likes

1.     Implemented 10-hour work day when shipbuilders union went on strike for grog during President Martin Van Buren’s administration in 1840. The workday had been 12 hours.

2.   40-hour work week, 8 hour workday championed by American Federation of Labor president, Samuel Gompers.

3.   Unions teach young people a valuable trade or craft. Want to make real money? Sign up to be a plumber, electrician, crane operator, etc. You will need to pass a rigorous aptitude test and also regular drug tests.

4.   Unions created a broad middle class in America, post WW II- through 1980s.

5.    When FDR imposed a wage freeze in WW II, unions started to bargain for non-wage benefits, called fringe benefits. No. 1 achievement: Health insurance, paid by employers!

6.   Unions (not all) allied with Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement.

7.    Unions have foreign policy principles. When the USSR invaded Afghanistan in the late 1970s and installed a puppet government, dockworkers refused to work on ships with cargo headed for USSR. Unions were ordered by courts back to work.

8.   Unions helped to bring democracy to Poland (Solidarity Now). This achievement has been lost to a rightwing autocrat.

9.   Unions made professional sports so much better by creating free agency, allowing your favorite team to rebuild in just a season.

10.                      Unions pushed for OSHA and worker safety.

Dislikes

1.     Unions were shamefully anti-immigrant. Just google Denis Kearney and the Workingmen’s Party of California. Awful. Fiercely anti-Chinese, anti-Japanese.

2.   Unions were major drivers of Jim Crow workplace segregation, from the 1890s-1960s. Again, awful—and widespread. Many unions had “sister” locals, code language for “colored” unions with lower wages, no seniority rights, etc.

3.   Unions were fat and sassy in the 1970s, contributing to the decline of American competitiveness in manufacturing.

4.   Unions have a history of corruption—mob ties (mostly gone today), political corruption (but not close to Donald Trump’s White House), and just recently, an FBI raid on the UAW president’s home.

5.    Unions haven’t done enough for women in the workplace. Many unions used labor agreements to marginalize women by denying them a union card—and thereby deny them access to work.