Saturday 3 November 2007

What Have The Unions Ever Done For Us?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is that a Canuk shout-talk radio host sporting a sun tan and an Aussie accent? Nope. Too beefy to be our boy. Ha!

Anonymous said...

The unions have done great things for CUPE. To the tune of paying them more on the picket line for NOT working than all minimum wage earners make. Way to go.

Anonymous said...

It's funny that more working people don't appreciate these facts...oh wait, anybody who is old enough to remember is RETIRED! (with a pension...)

Richard_Cranium said...

I will agree that unions in the thirties did incredible things to right the injustices that were being inflicted on their members. HOWever, today that is not the case, and a union injustice today is 15 percent instead of the demanded 17, or 5 weeks vacation instead of 6. The unions have done such a good job in the past that they now are pulling real boners trying to improve on things that are not broken. They have no public support, and that is needed to be sucessful and avoid long drawn out strikes.

Divisions - with Aaron Ekman said...

6 weeks vacation would be fantastic! Although I think we should ask for more since it's not quite as much as George W. Bush gets in a year. Or Conrad Black for that matter,(although I suppose he's on one long extended vacation nowadays)

Saying that unions have outlived their usefulness is like pretending the 2-day weekend will last forever, (ask a constuction worker how often they get two consecutive days off in a row) or that universal medi-care is timeless and invincible.

Rights for workers don't protect themselves. After a victory, we have to get out and continually fight against the boss's attempt to roll our conditions back. The best way for us to do that is to organize ourselves into unions.
The second thing we need to do is not be ashamed of our organizations when the boss tells us we've been bad.

I'm sure as hell not ashamed of what I make. My parents and my grandparents fought like crazy for the conditions I enjoy today, and the gap between the rich and the poor STILL continues to grow. Unions are more important now than they've ever been, and we've still got a truckload of work to do.

Tyler said...

Here is a thought for all you would-be-union-bashers. Try getting an education, or bettering yourself in some shape or form to bring yourself,and your wages up to thier level, instead of fighting to bring them down to yours. The fact that the minimum wage is where it is, is not because your Government thinks its fair, but rather because the "Unions" have demanded it.