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The time has come to explain to middle and lower income workers that they should not envy union workers' higher compensation, but instead sign the union cards that would enable them to receive the same level of compensation (wages and benefits) and worker's rights.
Union workers STILL are superior to their non-union counterparts at providing services and manufacturing products.
Union workers STILL get paid better and receive better overall compensation and employment conditions than their non-union counterparts in like occupations.
These facts are no accident.
Instead of letting corporations succeed in convincing workers to settle for less compensation, worker protections, and to resent or envy union workers for their better compensation and working protections, the labor movement needs to awaken the non-union workers in this nation and to help them realize that they could be more prosperous and enjoy better working conditions from their employers if they would join a union!
The case needs to be made.
Perceptions need to be modified in a counter-corporate publicity campaign that seeks to responsibly and accurately tell American Workers what has happened to their detriment and to the corporations' benefit in the past twenty-five years and why!
The case needs to be made.
The facts on where workers stood in terms of compensation and protections twenty-five years ago, and as they exist today.
These facts need to be contrasted to corporate management compensation and protections twenty-five years ago, and as they exist today.
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In the past 25 years the labor movement has been decimated by corporate employed propagandists.
They have convinced the American Public that unions are corrupt, act illegally, are inefficient and lazy, are greedy, and are anti-American, while corporations are honest and law abiding, efficient and trustworthy, economically just, fair in compensation to employees, and American as apple pie!
These perceptions have enabled corporations to sponsor legislators and judges who will support corporate interests over workers interests, while avoiding much public opposition:
- while they reduce the percentage of adults in the American workforce who are union members from forty percent to less than ten percent.
- while they have caused one wage earner households to become two wage earner households.
- while they have caused the children of these households to be raised by persons other than their parents, who are working longer hours away from home and family.
- while they have increased the number of work hours required to sustain a standard of living that one wage earner once accomplished on their own.
- while they have attempted to and nearly converted the full-time workforce in America into a part-time workforce with either part-time or no benefits.
- while they have pulled profits and perks from company coffers and let company capital and inventories rot only to pass the expense of their failed management of these resources upon the workers, shareholders, and customers.
- while they have sought to profit from illegal immigration and exploitation of foreign workers in the United States.
- while they have moved manufacturing and service operations and jobs abroad and cut domestic operations and jobs.
- while the federal judiciary has personified corporations as being deserving recipients of human rights by the US Constitution (even despite the dissent of now deceased Chief Justice Rehnquist, yes, that is correct, who as a SCOTUS Justice warned of the un-Constitutional injustice of such interpretations of the U.S. Constitution in his dissenting opinion of a 1st Amendment case before the SCOTUS).
- while they have assailed and conquered workers rights in every way imaginable.
- while they have elevated employers rights to be the perceived charter of the US Department of Labor and the National Relations Labor Board and various federal and state agencies, as they have reduced employee rights to be secondary to employer rights.
- while they have robbed workers' pension funds and passed the cost (billions and billions and billions of dollars) onto the American Public in the form of commitments on the The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, while hundreds of thousands of employees have lost their pensions completely to such corporate fraud and pilfering.
- while they have used "Consent Decrees" and other "anti-corruption" means to root out alleged corruption (in some cases actual corruption) in unions while turning a blind eye to massive actual corporate corruption.
- while they have restricted the tools available to unions in protecting the interests of workers, while they have given new and improved tools to corporations in combating unions.
- while they have gotten defined benefit pensions converted into defined contribution funds that in no way provide the economic security or benefit of pensions to retirees.
- while they have exaggerated the expenses and performance of these benefit funds to workers and forced workers with pensions to contribute directly into the pension funds to offset federal government authorized corporate underfunding of pensions.
- while they have eliminated and/or greatly reduced and/or passed on some of the costs for other benefits to workers (especially medical benefits).
- while they have taken record profits at alarming rates as medical corporations and insurance corporations.
- while they have hijacked the worker's compensation courts and the worker's compensation laws of the states.
- while they have hijacked the unemployment courts and the unemployment laws of the states.
- while they have altered federal unemployment statistics to the point that they lack credibility and consistency in comparison to the formulas used to calculate those statistics just thirty years ago.
- while they have altered the inflation index to be devoid of consideration of actual determinants of inflation (e.g. fuel and heating costs).
- while they have hijacked various agencies of the federal government, such as OSHA, with their politically sponsored henchmen becoming the politically appointed executives in charge of these various agencies, and the resulting disregard for the pursuit of these agencies charters in favor of re-interpreting the charters to mean the exact opposite from what they were created for.
- while they caused federal and state governments to relax enforcements of federal and state laws legislated with the intent to protect workers, even in the face of absolute evidence of negligence on the part of corporations in breaking the law.
- while they have won legislation that outlaws strikes and permits firing union workers who strike.
- while they have won legislation that exempts corporations from penalties for their own deliberately unlawful actions.
- while they have driven wild speculation of their value to record levels by asserting falsehoods to the stock markets and those who rely on their economic statements of fact (e.g. quarterly and annual reports).
- while they have been demonstratively reckless with regard to workers, the environment, public health, communities, families, wildlife, and natural resources in pursuit of record profits and perks.
- while they have made the middle and lower, working class responsible for their actions while they have perpetuated irresponsibility as their chief corporate trait and time honored right for upper management.
- while they have encouraged union companies to dishonor their obligations toward their employees and customers by taking hostile positions in contract negotiations, by encouraging pilferage of company assets, and by creating an business environment conducive to criminality and free from prosecution.
- while the working class has been made to believe that it is in their best interest to realize these and many other accomplishments of corporations at the expense of workers are better for them than belonging to and supporting unions!
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Recent examples of corporate influence in New York can be found with Governor George Pataki:
New York State and its chief executive Governor Pataki have been ordered by a NYS court order to fork over billions of dollars to NYC in response to proven state legislative underfunding of NYC public schools and school children with a discriminatory and faulty state funding formula.
What has Pataki done since receiving this court order?
He hasn't forked over the money!
He has challenged the court's decision in order to delay and attempt to escape NY state's payment of the fines.
In hypocritical posturing, Pataki has responded to the Local 100 TWU strike by telling NY'ers that the strikers are breaking the law, that the strikers' actions are illegal, that the strikers are are hurting NY'ers, and that the strikers will be made to follow the law.
Pataki speaks with a forked tongue when he attacks the Local 100 TWU union while he blatantly disregards a court order to fork over billions of dollars in educational funding to NYC.
I ask you:
What is more injurious to NY'ers and society in general?
A short term transit strike in violation of a law that has been used to impose financial penalties on unions in order to protect the NYC government from having to negotiate in good faith in fear of a strike as reprisal for bad faith negotiations?
Or long term NYS legislative illegal underfunding of NYC public schools and school children that perpetuates unjust generational ignorance and impoverishment and defies court orders and the rule of law?
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I believe that those who would use public offices to assist corporations in advancing their exploitation of workers should be exposed for the corporatist, inhumane, and anti-worker politicians and judges that they are.
Feel free to add examples to this thread that could be used to assist the Local 100 TWU workers in countering the negative publicity that they are receiving from the news media, Governor George Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, and the MTA.
Certainly, those that would kick the labor movement while it is on its last knee, deserve to be exposed for what they really are!
Let us create the talking points that the Local 100 TWU workers could use to properly frame their efforts and to properly frame the issues for the American Public.
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