Listening to Mary Kay Henry, the head of the service workers union, this morning brought back a flood of memories.
1. Ozzie and Harriet/Leave It to Beaver America: The 1950's is the touchstone for Donald Trump's white base. Those were the good old days; the nostalgia crowd always talks about the time when a man could go off to the factory with his lunch pail, his wife at home raising the kids and he could take 2 weeks vacation in August, drive his car up to the lake, where he had his boat with its outboard motor and drag the kids water skiing behind. Shangrala.
Of course, the 50's were also a time of whites only water fountains in the South, a time when sex was dirty, forbidden and not to be mentioned, a time when everyone smoked, doctors, too and when the family had only one car because the wife was a home waiting for Daddy to come home and take her shopping, the house was small, women could not get credit cards without their husbands' permission and a lot of bored, lonely housewives became drunks.
Fact is, those halcyon times, especially in the Rust Belt, were created by unions. Before unions, factory workers were impoverished.
2. A surgeon complaining about the hospital "housekeeping" staff, men who cleaned operating rooms between surgeries who cleaned the OR's in 15 minutes, effectively, but whose union contracts said they got 45 minutes to do it, so between every case, there was a 30 minute idle time and multiplied out through the course of 20 operating rooms, through the course of the day, that 30 wasted minutes translated into a $20 million dollar loss for the hospital which could have gone to paying the rest of the staff more, the nurses, the cafeteria workers, all because the housekeeping staff was riddled with "slackers."
3. The news that when Volkswagen said it would be happy to have its factories in Tennessee unionized, as they were in Germany, both United States Senators, the governor blocked that idea. Unions were the modern equivalent of freeing the slaves: what would happen if all those low life's got more power?
4. Reading a contract from Hospital Corporation of America, which said:
A. The employee was forbidden from discussing his salary with other employees.
B. If the employee left the employ of HCA he could not work within 20 miles of any other HCA hospital or facility; i.e., leave HCA and you have to leave town.
C. If the employee is a physician, he is not allowed to contact any patient to inform that patient of where he is relocating, or having any contact with former patients. The patients, in essence, "belonged" to HCA, not the doctor. The patients, doubtless, would have been surprised to learn they belong to the corporation.
Beyond these memories are the realities of today's work environment.
The complexities of the current labor environment are complex:
1. McDonald's store (franchise) owners do not own the land on which their stores are owned, so McDonald's in Chicago can always pull the rug out from under them. McDonald's central does not set wages. The local store owner does, so there is no way to negotiate nation wide wages for McDonald's workers.
2. The gig economy: Uber does not have the same responsibility to Uber drivers the old corporations did. Uber drivers are not "employees" only contractors. So wages, cuts of ride payments, work safety, health insurance or retirement benefits are not in play.
3. The Supreme Court, as much as the President or Congress has been a problem for workers.
4. The Republicans, who really represent the entrenched corporate executives, are so much better than Democrats, at marketing, at the name game. They want to pass "Right To Work" laws everywhere. Well, who would be against a right to work?
Of course, what these laws really are are laws against unions. Unions cannot extract dues from workers for whom they negotiate. Kill a union's cash flow and you kill the union.
Somehow, if we are ever to address income inequality, where the CEO makes $10,000 an hour when the line worker makes $10 an hour, the only foreseeable way would be to get a government in which promotes unions.
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| Mary Kay Henry |
1. Ozzie and Harriet/Leave It to Beaver America: The 1950's is the touchstone for Donald Trump's white base. Those were the good old days; the nostalgia crowd always talks about the time when a man could go off to the factory with his lunch pail, his wife at home raising the kids and he could take 2 weeks vacation in August, drive his car up to the lake, where he had his boat with its outboard motor and drag the kids water skiing behind. Shangrala.
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| This, too, was the 50's |
Of course, the 50's were also a time of whites only water fountains in the South, a time when sex was dirty, forbidden and not to be mentioned, a time when everyone smoked, doctors, too and when the family had only one car because the wife was a home waiting for Daddy to come home and take her shopping, the house was small, women could not get credit cards without their husbands' permission and a lot of bored, lonely housewives became drunks.
Fact is, those halcyon times, especially in the Rust Belt, were created by unions. Before unions, factory workers were impoverished.
 |
| Bill Gates did not build America |
2. A surgeon complaining about the hospital "housekeeping" staff, men who cleaned operating rooms between surgeries who cleaned the OR's in 15 minutes, effectively, but whose union contracts said they got 45 minutes to do it, so between every case, there was a 30 minute idle time and multiplied out through the course of 20 operating rooms, through the course of the day, that 30 wasted minutes translated into a $20 million dollar loss for the hospital which could have gone to paying the rest of the staff more, the nurses, the cafeteria workers, all because the housekeeping staff was riddled with "slackers."
3. The news that when Volkswagen said it would be happy to have its factories in Tennessee unionized, as they were in Germany, both United States Senators, the governor blocked that idea. Unions were the modern equivalent of freeing the slaves: what would happen if all those low life's got more power?
4. Reading a contract from Hospital Corporation of America, which said:
A. The employee was forbidden from discussing his salary with other employees.
B. If the employee left the employ of HCA he could not work within 20 miles of any other HCA hospital or facility; i.e., leave HCA and you have to leave town.
C. If the employee is a physician, he is not allowed to contact any patient to inform that patient of where he is relocating, or having any contact with former patients. The patients, in essence, "belonged" to HCA, not the doctor. The patients, doubtless, would have been surprised to learn they belong to the corporation.
Beyond these memories are the realities of today's work environment.
The complexities of the current labor environment are complex:
1. McDonald's store (franchise) owners do not own the land on which their stores are owned, so McDonald's in Chicago can always pull the rug out from under them. McDonald's central does not set wages. The local store owner does, so there is no way to negotiate nation wide wages for McDonald's workers.
2. The gig economy: Uber does not have the same responsibility to Uber drivers the old corporations did. Uber drivers are not "employees" only contractors. So wages, cuts of ride payments, work safety, health insurance or retirement benefits are not in play.
3. The Supreme Court, as much as the President or Congress has been a problem for workers.
4. The Republicans, who really represent the entrenched corporate executives, are so much better than Democrats, at marketing, at the name game. They want to pass "Right To Work" laws everywhere. Well, who would be against a right to work?
Of course, what these laws really are are laws against unions. Unions cannot extract dues from workers for whom they negotiate. Kill a union's cash flow and you kill the union.
Somehow, if we are ever to address income inequality, where the CEO makes $10,000 an hour when the line worker makes $10 an hour, the only foreseeable way would be to get a government in which promotes unions.
Mad Dog,
ReplyDeleteAgreed. If indeed strengthening organized labor will "Make America Great Again", as you and I believe it will, why doesn't the Democratic party make it more of a priority and do a better job educating the masses on it's importance. This needs to be done not just in election years when its mentioned in passing during debates, but continually-election year or not. It is not one of the major issues in the campaign, it never is, most likely because the general public is unaware of it's link to their pocketbook. Would this be different if the Democrats put forth a major educational effort on this subject?
Maud
Maud,
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Dems need a sustained effort.
Firefighters, a unionized group, went for Sunnunu for governor of New Hampshire, which must mean something not good.
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