I ain't saying that smoking is good for you, the dangers are well known, and as a smoker I fully agree it's a bad, bad habit.
But.
Nobody cares about your health really, and if you doubt it just take a look at the food they feed you, the poisons and the pollution everywhere, and the general quality of life low income people (and not only) have come to expect.
What's this got to do with unions, you say?
Bear with me.
Before smoking was vilified, and while it was socially acceptable, workers who smoked (and that would be the majority) always demanded their break.
No way you can make smokers work longer than they have to, without a "smoko".
During the break, their hands busy rolling, smoking, lighting a cigarette, offering their lighter, they'd socialise with each other, and what would random workers talk about?
You guessed it!
Work, the boss, payment and whatever else they had in common.
Kaboom!
Here's your union in the making.
Fast forward to today.
I was passing by a construction site the other day, and workers were having their lunch break. Nobody smoked, naturally. The outcast smokers, (that is, one guy maybe), were far from the crowd, as the law demands, looking around with a guilty face. The majority of the workers were all sitting on a line, stuck on their phones, totally oblivious to the world around them.
Now try getting a Union out of these guys.
Conclusion? The war on smoking has always been part of the class war, but smartphones and social media were the final nail in the coffin of unionisation.
You could try taking $ bets on the outcomes of reform efforts... Also, why aren't there more mystery/detective novels starring a health and safety rep, or a union steward? Life and death stuff, full of tension, swarming with enemies. See Tim Sheard's Lenny Moss novels -- I assume everyone is familiar with them!!!
Great stuff, Hamilton. On a (slightly) side note, I just watched an interview Jordan Chariton of Status Coup News on YouTube did with a community organizer, Tammy Tsai, in East Palestine, the small town in the heart of the Ohio rust belt that was devastated last year by Norfolk Southern's toxic train derailment and explosion (http://tinyurl.com/bdfzhrhp ).
One of the points Tammy made was that the company has successfully pitted residents against each other. This is a town in a region that was at the epicenter of the corporate gutting of industrial jobs and industrial unionism in the 20th and early 21st centuries. A region that went from majority traditional blue collar, Democratic voters, to solid "Trump country". The destruction of social solidarity has downstream effects far afield of individual workplaces.
By contrast, she pointed out the story of Times Beach, Missouri, another community that also suffered devastating health injuries due to corporate negligence, but whose unbreakable solidarity won residents comprehensive concessions from government and corporate interests.
"reporters who talked to the corporate executives, in the same way that some hardy reporters specialize in visiting prisons to chat with serial killers"
I'm retired now but from a union family, and there's so much that's attractive about unions if people only knew...
Yes, there's the quality of work life when people unionize, and there's the wonderful feeling of solidarity and community that comes with the process of unionizing.
There's also the incredible history: Joe Hill, Ginger Goodwin and all the amazing others who did so much for ordinary people. It's also a class thing, so many members of the working class support unions, but much of the middle class looks down on them mostly, I think, because of the anti-union propaganda.
All that wonderful history and those great values are so appropriate for these times.
Read and shared your article from in these times. It made me think of how affluent people have chosen to support stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, which, in my community displaced union markets, and the jobs in those stores are unreliable. The one time I went to Whole Foods the clerk told me that she only gets a promotion if she loses weight. I consider UFCW desperately important in representing grocery workers and warehouse workers. All of them should be unionized. I agree with one of your readers that the absence of union stories on television is very noticeable and troubling.
Despite being viciously attacked in the first paragraph, I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. And saved the In These Times article to read after work. Looking forward to seeing you in Chicago!
I was very excited to go to one of the CA dates but I got a wicked head cold from international travel and don’t want to accidentally give it to a bunch of nice strangers
My grandmother worked in sweat shops in the 20’,30’s & 40’s. She would be the loud mouth worker who was skilled. She refused to clean toilets while working at an ice cream packing house in Brooklyn. She told all the ladies to refuse. They hired a kid from the neighborhood to clean. She worked for a company putting 10 lollipops together with a wrapper & tiny rubber band. She had a 1/2 gallon bucket that if filled by the end of the day you were paid 50cents. She was a fast worker & did 2 to 3 per day. When my mother was in high school in 1940, my mom convinced her mom to take a free typing course the school offered. She did and got a job at an insurance company typing the reports (hand typed (no electric typewriters) lined, spaced, spreadsheets. No printers.) She worked got a small pension & her social security. She never owned a house & was proud her daughter did well.
Today a person with a 8th grade education can’t even get hired. She lived to 80at my mom’s house.
Today my family, has been union members for three generations. We continue to support the need to fight corporate greed that has sold a bill of goods to Americans to work hard & you will be a billionaire. 😂 only rich ppl get that. Working class is being destroyed!!! We need to stop the oligarchs. It’s like the 1910’s when the Railroad Magnates controlled the govt. they were fought by the young unions!!! Bring unions back ! Buy union. Support Unions Talk about the good unions go for workers!!!
I’d love to see you do strong profile of Jane McAlevey emphasizing all of her work building organizing infrastructure. Also, The Hammer was great. Also great: Have you read Nick Romeo’s The Alternative?
Your message would be better received if it were not so obviously couched in political terms.
In particular, the reality that unions have affiliated with the Democrat party despite said party now obviously focusing on government, corporate and academic elites.
The failure to recognize the class nature of labor vs. management, as opposed to the "liberal" vs. "conservative" or the "Republican vs. Democrat" is a structural problem in this attempt to "communicate" labor relations news.
I think where I disagree with you is that I really believe that labor organizing is potentially the tool to OVERCOME the sort of increasing political divide that you touch on. It can change people who might be tending to slide into fascism otherwise. But that can only happen if we vastly expand union organizing.
Now, before admonishing me, hear me out.
I ain't saying that smoking is good for you, the dangers are well known, and as a smoker I fully agree it's a bad, bad habit.
But.
Nobody cares about your health really, and if you doubt it just take a look at the food they feed you, the poisons and the pollution everywhere, and the general quality of life low income people (and not only) have come to expect.
What's this got to do with unions, you say?
Bear with me.
Before smoking was vilified, and while it was socially acceptable, workers who smoked (and that would be the majority) always demanded their break.
No way you can make smokers work longer than they have to, without a "smoko".
During the break, their hands busy rolling, smoking, lighting a cigarette, offering their lighter, they'd socialise with each other, and what would random workers talk about?
You guessed it!
Work, the boss, payment and whatever else they had in common.
Kaboom!
Here's your union in the making.
Fast forward to today.
I was passing by a construction site the other day, and workers were having their lunch break. Nobody smoked, naturally. The outcast smokers, (that is, one guy maybe), were far from the crowd, as the law demands, looking around with a guilty face. The majority of the workers were all sitting on a line, stuck on their phones, totally oblivious to the world around them.
Now try getting a Union out of these guys.
Conclusion? The war on smoking has always been part of the class war, but smartphones and social media were the final nail in the coffin of unionisation.
Can we undo this?
You could try taking $ bets on the outcomes of reform efforts... Also, why aren't there more mystery/detective novels starring a health and safety rep, or a union steward? Life and death stuff, full of tension, swarming with enemies. See Tim Sheard's Lenny Moss novels -- I assume everyone is familiar with them!!!
I have lowkey been thinking about writing short stories like this, but in a more science fiction setting like another planet.
That would be just fine to do!!! You could probably sell them.
Great stuff, Hamilton. On a (slightly) side note, I just watched an interview Jordan Chariton of Status Coup News on YouTube did with a community organizer, Tammy Tsai, in East Palestine, the small town in the heart of the Ohio rust belt that was devastated last year by Norfolk Southern's toxic train derailment and explosion (http://tinyurl.com/bdfzhrhp ).
One of the points Tammy made was that the company has successfully pitted residents against each other. This is a town in a region that was at the epicenter of the corporate gutting of industrial jobs and industrial unionism in the 20th and early 21st centuries. A region that went from majority traditional blue collar, Democratic voters, to solid "Trump country". The destruction of social solidarity has downstream effects far afield of individual workplaces.
By contrast, she pointed out the story of Times Beach, Missouri, another community that also suffered devastating health injuries due to corporate negligence, but whose unbreakable solidarity won residents comprehensive concessions from government and corporate interests.
"reporters who talked to the corporate executives, in the same way that some hardy reporters specialize in visiting prisons to chat with serial killers"
ouch and touche
I'm retired now but from a union family, and there's so much that's attractive about unions if people only knew...
Yes, there's the quality of work life when people unionize, and there's the wonderful feeling of solidarity and community that comes with the process of unionizing.
There's also the incredible history: Joe Hill, Ginger Goodwin and all the amazing others who did so much for ordinary people. It's also a class thing, so many members of the working class support unions, but much of the middle class looks down on them mostly, I think, because of the anti-union propaganda.
All that wonderful history and those great values are so appropriate for these times.
Here's a song that always moves me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Kxq9uFDes
Also, congratulations on your book.
Read and shared your article from in these times. It made me think of how affluent people have chosen to support stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, which, in my community displaced union markets, and the jobs in those stores are unreliable. The one time I went to Whole Foods the clerk told me that she only gets a promotion if she loses weight. I consider UFCW desperately important in representing grocery workers and warehouse workers. All of them should be unionized. I agree with one of your readers that the absence of union stories on television is very noticeable and troubling.
Despite being viciously attacked in the first paragraph, I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. And saved the In These Times article to read after work. Looking forward to seeing you in Chicago!
Enjoyed the article! Thanks.
I was very excited to go to one of the CA dates but I got a wicked head cold from international travel and don’t want to accidentally give it to a bunch of nice strangers
My grandmother worked in sweat shops in the 20’,30’s & 40’s. She would be the loud mouth worker who was skilled. She refused to clean toilets while working at an ice cream packing house in Brooklyn. She told all the ladies to refuse. They hired a kid from the neighborhood to clean. She worked for a company putting 10 lollipops together with a wrapper & tiny rubber band. She had a 1/2 gallon bucket that if filled by the end of the day you were paid 50cents. She was a fast worker & did 2 to 3 per day. When my mother was in high school in 1940, my mom convinced her mom to take a free typing course the school offered. She did and got a job at an insurance company typing the reports (hand typed (no electric typewriters) lined, spaced, spreadsheets. No printers.) She worked got a small pension & her social security. She never owned a house & was proud her daughter did well.
Today a person with a 8th grade education can’t even get hired. She lived to 80at my mom’s house.
Today my family, has been union members for three generations. We continue to support the need to fight corporate greed that has sold a bill of goods to Americans to work hard & you will be a billionaire. 😂 only rich ppl get that. Working class is being destroyed!!! We need to stop the oligarchs. It’s like the 1910’s when the Railroad Magnates controlled the govt. they were fought by the young unions!!! Bring unions back ! Buy union. Support Unions Talk about the good unions go for workers!!!
I’d love to see you do strong profile of Jane McAlevey emphasizing all of her work building organizing infrastructure. Also, The Hammer was great. Also great: Have you read Nick Romeo’s The Alternative?
Your message would be better received if it were not so obviously couched in political terms.
In particular, the reality that unions have affiliated with the Democrat party despite said party now obviously focusing on government, corporate and academic elites.
The failure to recognize the class nature of labor vs. management, as opposed to the "liberal" vs. "conservative" or the "Republican vs. Democrat" is a structural problem in this attempt to "communicate" labor relations news.
I think where I disagree with you is that I really believe that labor organizing is potentially the tool to OVERCOME the sort of increasing political divide that you touch on. It can change people who might be tending to slide into fascism otherwise. But that can only happen if we vastly expand union organizing.