http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/7/10/883212/-Unions-fight-for-justice-for-everybodyby teacherken
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Sat Jul 10, 2010 at 04:03:40 AM PDT
"My view of the labor movement today," he said in an interview, "is that we got too focused on our contracts and our own membership and forgot that the only way, ultimately, that we protect our members and workers in general is by fighting for justice for everybody."
The fundamental issue is that "every human being deserves dignity and a decent standard of living," he said, "and the whole point of the labor movement is to help make that happen."
The words are those of Bob King, head of the United Auto Workers. They appear in an important column by Bob Herbert in today's New York Times with the title Restoring a Hallowed Vision.
It is an important column. And it is not the first time a head of the UAW has demonstrated an understanding that unions need to fight for justice for everybody.
* teacherken's diary :: ::
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Herbert begins his column with another quote from King, about working people being sick and tired about the bosses getting the huge bonuses while the workers got the short end of the stick.
He then tells us about the Memphis sanitation worker's strike, in 1968, which was the reason Martin Luther King Jr. was in that Tennessee city when he was assassinated. Walter Reuther, the long-time head of the UAW, traveled to Memphis to give on behalf of he UAW $50,000 to help the sanitation workers. I had not known that, but I am not surprised to learn it.
Herbert tells us that some leaders of the UAW were shocked, then quotes a biographer of Reuther as making an impassioned defense of interracial solidarity. Herbert then offers these two brief paragraphs:
Three-thousand delegates to the U.A.W. convention later that year heard Reuther say: "We laid $50,000 on the line to demonstrate we meant business. Who helped us back in 1936 and 1937 when we were being beaten up and shot at, when our offices and our cars were being blown up by the gangsters hired by the corporations?
"Who helped us? The coal miners ... the clothing workers ... as long as I am identified with the leadership of this great union, we are going to extend a hand of solidarity to every group of workers who are struggling for justice."
I said I was not surprised. In about 7 weeks we will encounter the 47th anniversary of what we usually call the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington. It's official name was The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and it sought civil and economic rights for African-Americans. I was there, a 17-year-old who had just graduated from high school and was participating in demonstrations in New York against a hamburger chain that would not hire blacks. As a white I was in the distinct minority - perhaps 80% of the attendees were black. There was one large contingent from labor, and they proudly marched behind their banners from the United Auto Workers.
As I read Herbert's column this morning, my mind filled with myriad thoughts that connect with his words. I have not yet fully sorted them out, but feel as if I should nevertheless attempt to share - and perhaps explain - them.
Economic justice for everyone - not just those in unions. This is one thing that immediately came to mind. Think of those things we now take for granted at our places of employment, even if none of those there are unionized. 8 hour days. Overtime and holiday pay. Health insurance. Unemployment insurance. Workplace safety. All of these, and many other things, are the result of unionized workers who put themselves, their livelihoods, and sometimes their lives on the line.
Supporting people in other unions - without that solidarity, the different unions were isolated, easily attacked and suppressed by management, by the power of the wealthy and those who often run government to use the levers of power of government to crush unions. Unions that are isolated, as were those in PATCO (air traffic controllers) because they had supported Reagan and thought themselves different than other workers, find they lack that support and can more easily be crushed.
I am a union member as a teacher. My wife is a union member as an employee on the Hill. I have been the building rep. She is on the negotiating team. Many might not think of us a union people - she went to Harvard, I went to Haverford. She has a masters and a doctorate, I have two masters and was ABD before I left my program. Yet both of us need and value what we get from our unions. Both of us have learned that even highly educated middle class people are at risk if there is unbridled power on the behalf of management and often that power can only be opposed by people who will come together, in unions, to protect them all.
FULL article at link.
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