International Unions

Just read this informative article in Mother Jones. (A great magazine, btw, and I really should subscribe because I buy like every issue at the newsstand.) It raised a possibility that I have never even thought of: international labor unions. The article says the United Steelworkers, which represents workers in the US and Canada and the United Kingdom's Unite, are in talks to join forces.

I like the basic idea of this arrangement. Corporations and manufacturers have been going international for years. This is evident by the change in the prototypical average American job - it used to be working in the factory; now it's on the sales floor at Wal-Mart.

However, the idea is just a bit off base, in my opinion. Manufacturing jobs aren't leaving the US and going to the UK. They're going to Mexico, China, India, Bangladesh, etc. These are the countries who should have a union. Sounds obvious, right? The workers in these countries don't make a living wage, have no hope of proper health care and no guarantee of safe working conditions. The reason factories are going to these places is because the workers come so cheaply. Sometimes they are literally a dime a dozen. They NEED an organized and experienced voice to speak for them. If this international union merger works out, they should set their sights on a country more in need of one.

A Brief History of Labor Day

Labor Day, aka The Last Real Weekend of the Summer, never used to be about heading down to the shore and having a barbeque. For a really interesting, in-depth look, check out this article from Forbes. Here's the Reader's Digest version from the History Channel Website:

"On May 11, 1894, workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago struck to protest wage cuts and the firing of union representatives. They sought support from their union led by Eugene V. Debs and on June 26 the American Railroad Union called a boycott of all Pullman railway cars. Within days, 50,000 rail workers complied and railroad traffic out of Chicago came to a halt. On July 4, President Grover Cleveland dispatched troops to Chicago. Much rioting and bloodshed ensued, but the government's actions broke the strike and the boycott soon collapsed. Debs and three other union officials were jailed for disobeying the injunction. The strike brought worker's rights to the public eye and Congress declared, in 1894, that the first Monday in September would be the holiday for workers, known as Labor Day."

I think it's interesting that the entire country has forgotten about what Labor Day is really about, especially since worker injustices just keep piling up even today. Do you shop at Wal-Mart? STOP IT. I haven't shopped there in years, and not just because there isn't one in New York City. Check out this website and watch this movie if you don't know what I'm talking about. Ugh this deserves a special post all to itself.