Tag: Labor Issues

The Need For A United Labor Movement

I have always thought the the American got screwed by Samuel Gompers….I know who?

Samuel Gompers (1850-1924) was the first president of the American Federation of Labor, the first enduring national labor union. He served as president from 1886 until his death in 1924, except for a single year, 1895. Born in London, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 13, and worked as a cigar-maker. He became the leader of the cigar-makers’ union, and transformed it into one of the country’s strongest unions.

Gompers believed that labor had the most to gain by organizing skilled craft workers, rather than attempting to organize all workers in an industry. He refused to form an alliance with the Knights of Labor. “Talk of harmony with the Knights of Labor,” he said, “is bosh. They are just as great enemies of trade unions as any employer can be.”

Gompers repudiated socialism and advocated a pragmatic “pure and simple” unionism that emphasized agreements with employees–which would spell out for a stipulated period the wages, hours of work, and the procedures for handling grievances. Gompers proposed that agreements contain clauses stipulating that employers hire only union members (the closed shop) and that any employee should be required to pay union dues. Employers advocated the open shop, which could employ non-union members.

https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm

He seemed to think that the worker should go for economic power instead of political power….I believe he shafted the workers.

Look at labor today….did the economic power work out for them?  Maybe in the earlier days but now they are spinning their wheels and falling for any lame ass promise some random politician gives them.

We on the Left have been advocating a unified labor movement for many decades….this is from 1933 and the rise of fascism….

‘The Need for a United Labor Party’ by A.J. Muste from Labor Age. Vol. 22 No. 1. February-March, 1933.

I agree that a functioning labor party would have and will make the workers the strongest subset in American politics….but from the shadows the corporate slugs and their minions in politics will do everything possible to prevent the workers from gaining any power at all.

This concept needs revisiting in these days of loss of income and livelihood….time to ask the important questions….but will we?

The real problems is that we do not elect more workers because the campaigns have gotten out of hand and the candidates owe too much to the fat cats that fund them.

But if one wants more information on that thought….

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/08/28/why-we-need-to-elect-more-workers-to-public-office

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

cogito ergo agito

Employee Free Choice Could Save The Economy

This is a statement from the AFL-CIO blog:

AFL-CIO Now In a statement delivered today to Capitol Hill and published as a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post, more than three dozen of the nation’s top economists call on Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to help restore an economy that works for everyone, built on a sustainable, wage-based growth.

The statement, signed by 39 of America’s top economists, including two Nobel Prize winners, points to the failure of U.S. labor laws to protect employees’ freedom to form a union and bargain as a major factor in our economic crisis. The statement says in part:

Indeed, from 2000 to 2007, the income of the median working-age household fell by $2,000—an unprecedented decline. In that time, virtually all of the nation’s economic growth went to a small number of wealthy Americans. An important reason for the shift from broadly shared prosperity to growing inequality is the erosion of workers’ ability to form unions and bargain collectively.

These economists, representing respected universities and policy institutions from across the nation, point to the corporate-dominated system for forming unions—and the coercion and anti-union campaigning by management—as the causes for declining wages and a gravely weakened economy.

A rising tide lifts all boats only when labor and management bargain on relatively equal terms. In recent decades, most bargaining power has resided with management. The current recession will further weaken the ability of workers to bargain individually. More than ever, workers will need to act together.

Although current headlines are dominated by the crises in the stock market and the financial sector, working families have been struggling for years under the weight of an unbalanced economy. These economists say that restoring bargaining power and ensuring working people have a voice in their workplace, and in their health care, pensions and wages, is critical to rebuilding our economy.

James K. Galbraith of the University of Texas, one of the economists who has signed on, says the freedom to form unions and bargain has many benefits for the economy and the country.

I support the Employee Free Choice Act for two reasons. First, it levels the playing field after a generation of anti-union policies, and in a world where far more workers are in decentralized, hard-to-organize workplaces than was true a generation back. Second, unions are a proven ally of progress, not only in politics but also in economics: unionized workforces promote technical change and productivity growth, because they make it possible to distribute more fairly and less brutally the costs of change.