Boycott companies and their UNIONS!

[Touchdown]

While I see this as a worthwhile cause, I also see, and have said so many times that boycotting companies simply because of what the corporate execs/management give to political parties is myopic when you consider the fact that some of these companies employ union labor.

Now that most companies are barred from donating soft money to parties or candidates, then you have to look at the entire makeup of the corporation, and not just the upper management. Money given by unions and their members are never on the balance sheets of the corporate donor listings. They are on the union donor listings. Only by dividing the two, can yuo come to a reasonable conclusion fo where a company (THE ENTIRE COMPANY) stands on giving to each party.

Let's take for example Telecommunications.

Many companies listed on your boycott lists are represented by the CWA (Communication Workers of America). These would include...

SBC
Verizon
AT&T
GE/NBC
BellSouth
Alltell
United Airlines
Adelphia
American Airlines
...among others.

Removing GE/NBC & the airlines and focusing on just the phone pipes that go into your houses...

CWA gave $22.6 Million. 100% of that to Dems.

Using opensecrets telecom page we have...
SBC- $2 Million
Bellsouth- $1.3 Million
Verizon- $1.2 Million
AT&T- $622,000
Alltell- $112,000
..for a total of 5,234,000 among the phone and long distance companies. Of that, SBC and Verizon's MANAGEMENT!!! were the only two who gave less than 40% to Dems, and Alltell was about even at 49%. These 5 companies count for about 500,000 of CWA's 660,000 membership. 5 companies for $3 or so Million to Repugs, compared to $22 Million from these same company's union memberships...all to Dems. Sounds like they all went blue, now didn't they?

Is this complicated? Absolutely, but you are toying with people's livelihoods when you're clear cutting American business just because of executive political contributions. Who get's laid off, who gets the axe when the revenues come in? Not those GOP donors your fighting. It's the union members who work for them. If progressive values, and living wages are important to you, then by not taking into account who works for these companies, then your cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Other union companies on your boycott list...
Safeway
Ford Motor
Chevron Texaco
UPS
Kroger
Sinclair Boradcasting
Disney
Union Pacific
General Dynamics
DaimlerChrysler
GM
Weyerhauser
Caterpillar
...and I'm sure I'm missing quite a few.

I'm not saying "don't boycott these companies" but at least take collective bargaining and the unions into account when you put these companies on a list just because of upper management's political donations, that's all. I truly wish there was a simple way to be truly effective, but unfortunately, you can't make a complex entity as a multinational corporation with thousands of employees a simple back and white issue.

Perhaps in the case of Sinclair Broadcasting, the fact that they're union doesn't trump the rw shilling their execs want out of the news, which is fine, but all I ask is to justify boycotting a union company with more than just "They gave 53% to the Repugs! They're EVIL I tell you!".

What is the ultimate goal of this buy blue cause that you want? Do you want equal opportunity, living wages, environmental responsibility, and a better workplace for everyone employed, or do you just care about how the GOP gets their money? That's a question you should have to ask yourself. It would be a true shame that in a half cocked effort to cut off the GOP's money supply, we all accelerate the race to the bottom by forcing high paying union jobs into layoffs. Then where would we all be?

[NMDemDist2]

1. i wish they'd bring back the "look for the Union label" campaign

the trouble is unions aren't respected as they once were. I was amazed at a friend of ours who is very liberal comment that "unions ruined everything"

I tried to educate her and she obviously was willing to think about my arguments, but I had to wonder where a 60 year old woman got the idea in the first place

[Deep13]

2. "...just because of executive political contributions. "

Just because?! I think legal bribery is a pretty compelling reason. These few executives exert an enormous amount of influence. Far money than the thousands of union members. These companies are buying access to the government and Dubya and the rest of them are repaying them for their support at the country's expense.

The idea is to let these companies know that there are economic reprocussions for their political decisions so that next time around they might be a little more careful where they put their cash. Also, we need to reward companies who stuck their necks out and supported us inspite of the odds.