Back during college “vacation summers” at age 18, I obtained a summer job at Tyler Pipe and Foundry in Swan, Texas. No air conditioning - no surprise as it was an iron and brass foundry. No cafeteria, brought my own lunch. No area to sit down to eat but there was the loading dock. No hot water in the segregated bathroom to wash up for lunch. No safety equipment provided - just my own swim goggles, Dad’s yard gloves, his fatigue jacket and cap and a cowboy scarf tied around my face to “protect” my breathing in an environment where you knew if a man worked with iron (I ground the rough edges of manhole covers on a 36” grindstone) or with brass because you either had orange or green tinted exposed skin. An iron filing that entered my eye was removed on site with a magnet. Worked overtime for same hourly pay. Oh, and there was another thing I remember and which had a lasting effect on me - no Union in 1966. Became a lifelong supporter of Unions.
I love this reminder. Like so many ‘holidays’ now recognized by our Federal government - they are often markers of rights hard fought and not always completely realized.
I’m always struck by the many faces of Henry Ford. And I very much appreciate your point that while he did support his Ford Motors Labor and institute labor friendly policies - he did so because he knew that ultimately it would lead to more cars being purchased and better business for him. Those same years he was purchasing and promulgating antisemitic conspiracy tropes and being awarded German honors from the Order of Nazism and supporting the KKK here in the US.
This is why education is so important for our children in public school - why we cannot ban parts of history but not others. And it’s also how we learn to hold multiple truths at once.
I have always loved that image of a bending arc of justice. Because as you point out, we’ve made so many gains for workforces in the US and enjoy so many fruits of Union labor (no pun intended 😉) that we take many of our rights for granted. And, we still don’t have a federal ERA amendment. We still don’t have equal pay for equal work. We still don’t have universal maternity and paternity leaves. We still don’t have access to affordable child care allowing for a reasonable work/life balance and increased time with our children in their most formative years. But if this current truncated Presidential campaign season and election coming in two months!! has done anything for me - it has inspired my hope that the proverbial arc is ever-bending.
And while all of this is so important to remember, to contemplate and to act upon - it’s also a big deal to enjoy the last whispers of summertime with rest and relaxation … and if you’re in Minnesota like I am - with a good old corn dog on a stick at the final day of the Minnesota State Fair! Hey - they even have vegan corn dogs this year … that arc just keeps on a’bending!!!!
Ford, the grand poobah of assembly lines and standardization / efficiency, like most others who tout “good things” for workers did so for his own benefit. His words got more attention than how “privileges” like higher pay were implemented. A product of his time, he used his social services dept to invade worker’s personal lives & homes to check on their worthiness. A lesson to all of us to consider what is offered with one hand may be taken away with the other if we are not vigilant & organized.
Funny how school kids only learn about how he implemented assembly lines to make cars affordable for the middle class, but nothing about what a bigot and a tyrant he was.
I would guess the1848 Marx/Engels Communist Manifesto with its slogan Workers of the world, unite, was influential in creating this labor movement in the US & elsewhere. Bernie advocates for a four day work week. Employers are still stingy with pay - the minimum wage remaining $7.25 to this day. One can work an hour and buy either a loaf of bread or a pound of butter, but not both. Some Republican governors are allowing children to work. Talk about going backwards.
I hope the teacher's union becomes stronger. This telling educators what they can & cannot teach, threats of firing, even prison, book banning etc. is unacceptable. Promises made, however, are not always able to be promises kept.
OK, but to me being influential in the creation of something means at the start of it. Then you use things Bernie (a Democratic Socialist) proposes as examples. A little confusing. I think you may be referring to influence about the 1930s (Great Depression) until it was short lived run was squelched by Taft-Hartley which among other things, required union officers to sign affidavits that they were not communists.
I grew up during remnants of the ‘red scare.’ I’ve never known a communist although in my teens my dad, in a moment of frustration, called me a ‘commie’. I’ve known a fair number of socialists. One a labor organizer who was lovingly called a “flaming socialist” by his colleagues. The slogan was great, but all in all elements of democratic socialism shared more values with labor than government ownership of their jobs.
My father was a Union man. Prior to his first union job, he was in and out of employment numerous times. When He finally got the union job, he was there until his death. I know the importance of Unions. I would love the US to follow the European countries adapting of Unions. In Nordic countries the union is the third arm of government. That would be fantastic for the US political structure.
Union Strong! Project 2025, Chapter 18 and the Dolt salivating about firing striking workers should be all the evidence needed for Union workers to recognize who is actually trying to steal their jobs and benefits...hint- it isn't immigrants (except Elon), illegal or otherwise so Vote 💙 to protect jobs, regain rights, help our planet, live with decency and Democracy.
"While none were identified as the bomber, their inflammatory speeches led to their being charged as accessories to the murder." Hmm... I wonder if those standards could apply to a certain you-know-who. (Recently read about the Battle of Olgreave in Scotland in 1984. 5,000 miners who were on strike were picketing a mine in South Yorkshire. The nasty Margaret Thatcher sicced 6,000 police on the miners. The result was the bloodiest battle in recent British history. The fight for workers' right marches on.)
Hmmmm. Have we ever heard JD take a break from maligning women to speak about Breathitt County KY and the unemployed coal miners & their union (UMWA) fighting for black lung benefits as those former miners slowly suffocate? Or how many of the 45 people in the region died in the flooding in 2022 exacerbated by the strip mining? Or… or … or…
(Ned Pillersdorf knows of what he speaks. He’s fought for these folks in the courts for yrs.)
When I was 16, only seventy-four years ago, I needed to help my family by working during the summer time in a three room “factory” in the Lower East Side of NY for fifty cents an hour! In my underwear as there was no air conditioning of course, I carefully placed a portion of the interior of a woman’s shoe on a machine and quickly withdrew my fingers before the hot lead imprinted a symbol of a Fifth Avenue store on the insert. Of course my mom like most folks of that time insisted that I not open the weekly pay envelope in cash before delivering it to her hands. No unions of course! Wonder if that little disaster of a factory ever installed big fans? As everyone who is reading this knows that’s the way it was, wasn’t it? You had your own story and took the job that was available to survive! regardless of age or health. In the twentieth century no less!
I am so dismayed that many today do not recognize your point of how the evolution of the labor movement has benefitted the nation. Right wing propaganda has insidiously convinced many blue collar people, much like lower income rural people, that the GOP is on their side economically. This is one the biggest political bamboozles in American history.
Yes, absolutely. He started the culture wars, courted the evangelical vote, and promoted the huge lie of trickle down economics, all the while decimating the middle class.
Yes, he and Atwater had to tone down Goldwater’s scary rhetoric on war etc & make the GOP more palatable to voters. Atwater went for the referring to race in an “abstract” way. There is a video of an interview of Atwater while he worked in the Reagan WH that came out later. In it he explains how they could not use overtly racist language. —
“So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.…”
There is the background & video at — Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
If you read Israeli news you will see the labor movement is extremely influential. Today in Israel there is a national strike first called by Histadrut for a cease fire and to have the hostages returned. Estimates are almost a million people are in the streets protesting. That would be about 1 in 10 Israelis. Workers - union members or not - were among the hostages.
I am very happy that they are striking and that the Israelis are railing against Netanyahu and his murderous regime! Bibi, today, made a speech that just shows how defiant he is in not taking responsibility for the deaths of the people at the festival nor the thousands of innocent Palestinians. He is Israel’s Trump. Did you hear that the precious 6 hostages may have been killed because Trump called Bibi not to give in to a ceasefire?? Violation of the Logan Act which states: “forbids private citizens from engaging in unauthorized correspondence with foreign governments.” https://thehill.com/video/trump-told-netanyahu-no-cease-fire-says-pbs-logan-act-violation/9972562/
I saw that the right wing is suing the union for acting outside its boundaries - charter (?). That this strike has nothing to do with workers issues etc. That could be an interesting debate. There are reports in Israeli news that new startup businesses are failing, there aren’t enough workers for some sectors because so many are serving & then the way war itself affects worker on the job too.
I saw some of bibi’s comments live. First a history lesson where he left out feeding Hamas. Everyone else’s fault for not supporting Israel “conquering” Gaza and Lebanon.
I try not to think about what these 2 bozos could mean for my grandson in the Navy or where he is deployed.
That phone call news slipped by me. Apparently was supposed to have happened mid-August. Of course they both deny that was the content of the call. PBS got it from another source that may or may not be the most reliable.
BUT it is totally in line with this character and previous public comments:
In his press conference last Thursday Trump criticized the Democrats' calls for a ceasefire. For instance the report from Newsweek about it included this:
He [trump] said: "From the start, Harris has worked to tie Israel's hand behind its back, demanding an immediate ceasefire, always demanding ceasefire...which would only give Hamas time to regroup and launch a new October 7 style attack."
"I will give Israel the support that it needs to win but I do want them to win fast," he added.
Trump went on to threaten to arrest what he called "pro-Hamas thugs" and "jihad sympathizers”
From what I have read from posts on X and Threads, there is an investigation forming by the Dems on the Oversight Committee like Jamie Raskin and Sheldon Whitehouse.
I think it is worth pausing, as we celebrate this Labor Day, to salute our wonderful President, Joe Biden, who has done more than any recent predecessors to steer the ship of state out of the fetid, rock-strewn swamp of trickle-down economics and into the open waters of a system that is based upon the welfare of all.
Thank you, Joe. We're done with the lies, we are not going back.
But perhaps one might also reflect on what would happen to a labor force deprived - as only Project 2025 would forcibly deprive - of immigrants. Who would do the dirty work? Not MAGA, I fear.
A great reminder of how far we have come… and unions have been at the core of these advances for all workers (not just union members.)
My Dad was a heavy equipment operator for a company that specialized in municipal abd private construction (water and sewer pipe laying, small bridge and road construction, etc.) My maternal Grandfather and Uncle owned the company, but as they were at only about 25 full time employees, they were not a union workforce. Dad thought unions just took your money and made union bosses wealthy (which was partly true, especially in South Jersey where the mob was often involved.)
BUT…. Back in the mid-to-late 60’s Federal prevailing wage laws took effect that changed my Dad’s life—and those of his co-workers. The rules required a set pay scale for each type of labor skill (heavy equipment operators were even better paid than foremen) for any job involving Federal funding. And the scale was quite generous for those times. It quickly lifted us up from working class to lower middle class—my Dad even bought his first new car soon after he turned 40, and we suddenly had and did things we never expected. Best for him was anything over 8 hours a day paid “time and a half” rates—Sundays and Holidays were double time.
While he never spoke about it, I am certain he eventually recognized that he was a beneficiary of union efforts. Just a short reminder of what it means to "build from the bottom up and the middle out."
I worked at the DOE’s Hanford Site from 1990-96. While there I conceived of a program to manage what I called “nuisance hazardous waste” (aerosol cans, paint waste, batteries) that were being managed the same way as other hazardous waste and at ridiculous cost. Because the workers on the site viewed me as coming from “the ivory tower” (the white-collar professionals), I knew I’d need a partner. I’d been working with a man named Dennis Poor, an older man who’d been a union iron worker. He was a proud man and taught me a lot about unions and their role in creating the middle class. Once the project was finally completed (things move at glacier speed on government projects, even easy and sensible things) it received national recognition from the DOE. That never would have happened without the alliance I had with Dennis. He was trusted and respected by the workers because he’d been a union man.
Interesting and makes perfect sense. Trust is the basis of human interaction.
With one of the unions I belonged to for years is SEIU (Service Employees International Union). I had a business agent who forged relationships with management and taught his stewards how to do that without compromising the rights of employees. Some employers refused. But those who didn’t found there were fewer grievances and other other workplace issues. A better working relationship for everyone.
There is a much larger story here about HCA/Mission Hospital but as the story says, this happening in NC is a big deal. The ASHEVILLE WATCHDOG is a small Indy that grew out of the ashes of the Gannett-owned Asheville Citizen-Times. They’ve followed this saga from the beginning.
Back during college “vacation summers” at age 18, I obtained a summer job at Tyler Pipe and Foundry in Swan, Texas. No air conditioning - no surprise as it was an iron and brass foundry. No cafeteria, brought my own lunch. No area to sit down to eat but there was the loading dock. No hot water in the segregated bathroom to wash up for lunch. No safety equipment provided - just my own swim goggles, Dad’s yard gloves, his fatigue jacket and cap and a cowboy scarf tied around my face to “protect” my breathing in an environment where you knew if a man worked with iron (I ground the rough edges of manhole covers on a 36” grindstone) or with brass because you either had orange or green tinted exposed skin. An iron filing that entered my eye was removed on site with a magnet. Worked overtime for same hourly pay. Oh, and there was another thing I remember and which had a lasting effect on me - no Union in 1966. Became a lifelong supporter of Unions.
I love this reminder. Like so many ‘holidays’ now recognized by our Federal government - they are often markers of rights hard fought and not always completely realized.
I’m always struck by the many faces of Henry Ford. And I very much appreciate your point that while he did support his Ford Motors Labor and institute labor friendly policies - he did so because he knew that ultimately it would lead to more cars being purchased and better business for him. Those same years he was purchasing and promulgating antisemitic conspiracy tropes and being awarded German honors from the Order of Nazism and supporting the KKK here in the US.
This is why education is so important for our children in public school - why we cannot ban parts of history but not others. And it’s also how we learn to hold multiple truths at once.
I have always loved that image of a bending arc of justice. Because as you point out, we’ve made so many gains for workforces in the US and enjoy so many fruits of Union labor (no pun intended 😉) that we take many of our rights for granted. And, we still don’t have a federal ERA amendment. We still don’t have equal pay for equal work. We still don’t have universal maternity and paternity leaves. We still don’t have access to affordable child care allowing for a reasonable work/life balance and increased time with our children in their most formative years. But if this current truncated Presidential campaign season and election coming in two months!! has done anything for me - it has inspired my hope that the proverbial arc is ever-bending.
And while all of this is so important to remember, to contemplate and to act upon - it’s also a big deal to enjoy the last whispers of summertime with rest and relaxation … and if you’re in Minnesota like I am - with a good old corn dog on a stick at the final day of the Minnesota State Fair! Hey - they even have vegan corn dogs this year … that arc just keeps on a’bending!!!!
Peace to everyone.
Thank you. All excellent points.
Ford, the grand poobah of assembly lines and standardization / efficiency, like most others who tout “good things” for workers did so for his own benefit. His words got more attention than how “privileges” like higher pay were implemented. A product of his time, he used his social services dept to invade worker’s personal lives & homes to check on their worthiness. A lesson to all of us to consider what is offered with one hand may be taken away with the other if we are not vigilant & organized.
Funny how school kids only learn about how he implemented assembly lines to make cars affordable for the middle class, but nothing about what a bigot and a tyrant he was.
Sadly, it is by design!
Yes, it’s very difficult for me to give Henry Ford any kudos for the ill will he wished upon Jews and Blacks. Daughter of Holocaust victims, here.
I would guess the1848 Marx/Engels Communist Manifesto with its slogan Workers of the world, unite, was influential in creating this labor movement in the US & elsewhere. Bernie advocates for a four day work week. Employers are still stingy with pay - the minimum wage remaining $7.25 to this day. One can work an hour and buy either a loaf of bread or a pound of butter, but not both. Some Republican governors are allowing children to work. Talk about going backwards.
I hope the teacher's union becomes stronger. This telling educators what they can & cannot teach, threats of firing, even prison, book banning etc. is unacceptable. Promises made, however, are not always able to be promises kept.
More likely Marx etc. were influenced by the labor movement as it came first.
• Possibly the first (recorded) strike in the in the US was organized by Philadelphia printers in 1786, who opposed a wage cut.
• Others say journeymen tailors in 1768.
• The first labor union in the US is considered to be the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (leather workers and cobblers), founded in 1794.
• Trade unions pre-date Karl Marx by a century. The Industrial Revolution in Europe created the necessity & opportunity. https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0113/the-history-of-unions-in-the-united-states.aspx
I said what I wanted to say.
I’m sure you did. Attaching the commie label to origin of the American labor movement doesn’t work with the timeline. That synergy came later & is still used as a political cudgel (not only against the labor movement). https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/how-cultural-marxism-threatens-the-united-states-and-how-americans-can-fight
I did not say origin, I said influential.
OK, but to me being influential in the creation of something means at the start of it. Then you use things Bernie (a Democratic Socialist) proposes as examples. A little confusing. I think you may be referring to influence about the 1930s (Great Depression) until it was short lived run was squelched by Taft-Hartley which among other things, required union officers to sign affidavits that they were not communists.
I grew up during remnants of the ‘red scare.’ I’ve never known a communist although in my teens my dad, in a moment of frustration, called me a ‘commie’. I’ve known a fair number of socialists. One a labor organizer who was lovingly called a “flaming socialist” by his colleagues. The slogan was great, but all in all elements of democratic socialism shared more values with labor than government ownership of their jobs.
Enough !
My father was a Union man. Prior to his first union job, he was in and out of employment numerous times. When He finally got the union job, he was there until his death. I know the importance of Unions. I would love the US to follow the European countries adapting of Unions. In Nordic countries the union is the third arm of government. That would be fantastic for the US political structure.
Union Strong! Project 2025, Chapter 18 and the Dolt salivating about firing striking workers should be all the evidence needed for Union workers to recognize who is actually trying to steal their jobs and benefits...hint- it isn't immigrants (except Elon), illegal or otherwise so Vote 💙 to protect jobs, regain rights, help our planet, live with decency and Democracy.
Exactly.
"While none were identified as the bomber, their inflammatory speeches led to their being charged as accessories to the murder." Hmm... I wonder if those standards could apply to a certain you-know-who. (Recently read about the Battle of Olgreave in Scotland in 1984. 5,000 miners who were on strike were picketing a mine in South Yorkshire. The nasty Margaret Thatcher sicced 6,000 police on the miners. The result was the bloodiest battle in recent British history. The fight for workers' right marches on.)
Hmmmm. Have we ever heard JD take a break from maligning women to speak about Breathitt County KY and the unemployed coal miners & their union (UMWA) fighting for black lung benefits as those former miners slowly suffocate? Or how many of the 45 people in the region died in the flooding in 2022 exacerbated by the strip mining? Or… or … or…
(Ned Pillersdorf knows of what he speaks. He’s fought for these folks in the courts for yrs.)
https://wvpublic.org/breathitt-county-residents-sue-coal-companies-saying-strip-mining-made-floods-worse/
No, we haven't heard a peep.
When I was 16, only seventy-four years ago, I needed to help my family by working during the summer time in a three room “factory” in the Lower East Side of NY for fifty cents an hour! In my underwear as there was no air conditioning of course, I carefully placed a portion of the interior of a woman’s shoe on a machine and quickly withdrew my fingers before the hot lead imprinted a symbol of a Fifth Avenue store on the insert. Of course my mom like most folks of that time insisted that I not open the weekly pay envelope in cash before delivering it to her hands. No unions of course! Wonder if that little disaster of a factory ever installed big fans? As everyone who is reading this knows that’s the way it was, wasn’t it? You had your own story and took the job that was available to survive! regardless of age or health. In the twentieth century no less!
Thanks for that truth. It should not be a choice of “survival versus fairness.”
Happy Labor Day to all!
I am so dismayed that many today do not recognize your point of how the evolution of the labor movement has benefitted the nation. Right wing propaganda has insidiously convinced many blue collar people, much like lower income rural people, that the GOP is on their side economically. This is one the biggest political bamboozles in American history.
So true. That surely was the Reagan goal to get people to vote against their own best interests.
Yes, absolutely. He started the culture wars, courted the evangelical vote, and promoted the huge lie of trickle down economics, all the while decimating the middle class.
Yes, he and Atwater had to tone down Goldwater’s scary rhetoric on war etc & make the GOP more palatable to voters. Atwater went for the referring to race in an “abstract” way. There is a video of an interview of Atwater while he worked in the Reagan WH that came out later. In it he explains how they could not use overtly racist language. —
“So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.…”
There is the background & video at — Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
I would like to add that Harris walked the UAW picket line in 2019 as VP. It gives her street cred with the UAW and other unions. https://x.com/ABC7Chicago/status/1816141515900502065
If you read Israeli news you will see the labor movement is extremely influential. Today in Israel there is a national strike first called by Histadrut for a cease fire and to have the hostages returned. Estimates are almost a million people are in the streets protesting. That would be about 1 in 10 Israelis. Workers - union members or not - were among the hostages.
It is being covered a little in the US. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-main-labor-union-calls-general-strike-monday-2024-09-01/
I am very happy that they are striking and that the Israelis are railing against Netanyahu and his murderous regime! Bibi, today, made a speech that just shows how defiant he is in not taking responsibility for the deaths of the people at the festival nor the thousands of innocent Palestinians. He is Israel’s Trump. Did you hear that the precious 6 hostages may have been killed because Trump called Bibi not to give in to a ceasefire?? Violation of the Logan Act which states: “forbids private citizens from engaging in unauthorized correspondence with foreign governments.” https://thehill.com/video/trump-told-netanyahu-no-cease-fire-says-pbs-logan-act-violation/9972562/
I saw that the right wing is suing the union for acting outside its boundaries - charter (?). That this strike has nothing to do with workers issues etc. That could be an interesting debate. There are reports in Israeli news that new startup businesses are failing, there aren’t enough workers for some sectors because so many are serving & then the way war itself affects worker on the job too.
I saw some of bibi’s comments live. First a history lesson where he left out feeding Hamas. Everyone else’s fault for not supporting Israel “conquering” Gaza and Lebanon.
I try not to think about what these 2 bozos could mean for my grandson in the Navy or where he is deployed.
That phone call news slipped by me. Apparently was supposed to have happened mid-August. Of course they both deny that was the content of the call. PBS got it from another source that may or may not be the most reliable.
BUT it is totally in line with this character and previous public comments:
In his press conference last Thursday Trump criticized the Democrats' calls for a ceasefire. For instance the report from Newsweek about it included this:
He [trump] said: "From the start, Harris has worked to tie Israel's hand behind its back, demanding an immediate ceasefire, always demanding ceasefire...which would only give Hamas time to regroup and launch a new October 7 style attack."
"I will give Israel the support that it needs to win but I do want them to win fast," he added.
Trump went on to threaten to arrest what he called "pro-Hamas thugs" and "jihad sympathizers”
From what I have read from posts on X and Threads, there is an investigation forming by the Dems on the Oversight Committee like Jamie Raskin and Sheldon Whitehouse.
Interesting. I see that the PAC which was the source sent a letter to DOJ and Dept of State asking for the same.
Exhausting but we don’t have time to slow down.
Yeah…not for one minute.
I think it is worth pausing, as we celebrate this Labor Day, to salute our wonderful President, Joe Biden, who has done more than any recent predecessors to steer the ship of state out of the fetid, rock-strewn swamp of trickle-down economics and into the open waters of a system that is based upon the welfare of all.
Thank you, Joe. We're done with the lies, we are not going back.
A moving reflection on Labor Day….
But perhaps one might also reflect on what would happen to a labor force deprived - as only Project 2025 would forcibly deprive - of immigrants. Who would do the dirty work? Not MAGA, I fear.
A great reminder of how far we have come… and unions have been at the core of these advances for all workers (not just union members.)
My Dad was a heavy equipment operator for a company that specialized in municipal abd private construction (water and sewer pipe laying, small bridge and road construction, etc.) My maternal Grandfather and Uncle owned the company, but as they were at only about 25 full time employees, they were not a union workforce. Dad thought unions just took your money and made union bosses wealthy (which was partly true, especially in South Jersey where the mob was often involved.)
BUT…. Back in the mid-to-late 60’s Federal prevailing wage laws took effect that changed my Dad’s life—and those of his co-workers. The rules required a set pay scale for each type of labor skill (heavy equipment operators were even better paid than foremen) for any job involving Federal funding. And the scale was quite generous for those times. It quickly lifted us up from working class to lower middle class—my Dad even bought his first new car soon after he turned 40, and we suddenly had and did things we never expected. Best for him was anything over 8 hours a day paid “time and a half” rates—Sundays and Holidays were double time.
While he never spoke about it, I am certain he eventually recognized that he was a beneficiary of union efforts. Just a short reminder of what it means to "build from the bottom up and the middle out."
I worked at the DOE’s Hanford Site from 1990-96. While there I conceived of a program to manage what I called “nuisance hazardous waste” (aerosol cans, paint waste, batteries) that were being managed the same way as other hazardous waste and at ridiculous cost. Because the workers on the site viewed me as coming from “the ivory tower” (the white-collar professionals), I knew I’d need a partner. I’d been working with a man named Dennis Poor, an older man who’d been a union iron worker. He was a proud man and taught me a lot about unions and their role in creating the middle class. Once the project was finally completed (things move at glacier speed on government projects, even easy and sensible things) it received national recognition from the DOE. That never would have happened without the alliance I had with Dennis. He was trusted and respected by the workers because he’d been a union man.
Interesting and makes perfect sense. Trust is the basis of human interaction.
With one of the unions I belonged to for years is SEIU (Service Employees International Union). I had a business agent who forged relationships with management and taught his stewards how to do that without compromising the rights of employees. Some employers refused. But those who didn’t found there were fewer grievances and other other workplace issues. A better working relationship for everyone.
Julie Su was nominated to be Secretary of Labor 18 months ago. Why has she never been made permanent?
https://mailchi.mp/c6a54e90eaa6/heres-your-watchdog-weekly-newsletter-20826?e=fa00ecbaff
There is a much larger story here about HCA/Mission Hospital but as the story says, this happening in NC is a big deal. The ASHEVILLE WATCHDOG is a small Indy that grew out of the ashes of the Gannett-owned Asheville Citizen-Times. They’ve followed this saga from the beginning.
Happy Labor Day y’all!