Sunrise for New Labor Ideas

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Steve Plonk
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Sunrise for New Labor Ideas

Post by Steve Plonk » August 10th, 2013, 7:16 am

Sunrise for New Labor Ideas

Postby Steve Plonk » Tue Jul 02, 2013 11:51 am

We are entering an era of sunrise for new labor organizing ideas. Read an excerpt from what an author, named Gregg Shotwell, says about organizing workers today:

http://monthlyreview.org/2013/05/01/who ... king-class

Here is a portion of the article, as quoted from above:

" A union that collaborates with employers, must, by definition, be hostile to the rank and file. In any workplace, laborers face a relentless enemy. Management continually imposes new stresses on the workers, routinely violating the collective bargaining agreement. A cooperative union must then either negotiate ever-weaker contracts or ignore the grievances that workers file. As Shotwell documents in the latter case, when workers grieve they must confront the union-management teams in the plant, both parts paid for by the employer, who have a stake in shunting the grievance aside or settling it jointly in a corporation-friendly manner, regardless of the needs of the aggrieved employees. When this fails and grievances accumulate, the national union simply concedes them in the national bargaining. When workers protest, the one-party state votes them down.


What then should workers do? How do you wage a struggle against both your employer and your union? Shotwell is a proponent of “work to rule,” which he correctly sees as a potent form of sabotage that both pressures employers to settle disputes with workers and helps workers stop and reverse the erosion of their control over the labor process. But to put this into practice will require much patient organizing both inside and outside the workplace. It will be a difficult process, but really there is no other choice, except complete capitulation. As he poetically puts it:

"Strike back.
Strike back because your brothers and sisters are laid off.
Strike back because you hate the bastards.
Strike back to redeem your dignity.
Strike back for full employment.
Strike back to abolish inequality.
Strike back because your job is a bore and your boss is an ass.
Strike back for freedom.
Strike back to restore the balance of power.
Strike back because you are human and care about life.
Strike back to break the corporate chokehold.
Strike back to get the leeches off our backs.
Strike back for more democracy.
Strike back because they never listen to you.
Strike back to control the means of production.
Strike back because Medicare doesn’t cover prescriptions for your mother.
Strike back because politicians retire in splendor.
Strike back because injunctions are only against unions and never against management.
Strike back because judges are the lackeys of industry.
Strike back because no one believes in the system.
Strike back to show we can strike back.
Strike back."


Re: Sunrise for New Labor Ideas

Postby Steve Plonk » Tue Jul 02, 2013 12:05 pm

For Your Information: Chattanooga, TN, is in the midst of organizing efforts at the new Volkswagon Automobile Plant here. How it will turn out is anyone's guess. I think some
of the ideas quoted here, by Shotwell, might help the efforts. Unions, organized today,
must be more democratic in regard to the rank & file workers.
We all need to hang together or otherwise the efforts to unionize will not succeed. There must be advantages to be in the union which will outweigh paternalistic efforts by the German authorities. The German bosses must treat our workers fairly... :)

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