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The message that most American workers are failing to understand is that they should not be envious of or hateful toward unions and their members, because it is through the union framework that the quality of life for most workers has historically progressed (e.g. 40 hour work week, enough pay in 40 hours for a husband, wife, or significant other to support their family, superior employment conditions, paid vacations and benefits, and pensions.)
It is outside of those union protections that such hard fought workers' gains have deteriorated and become available to a minority of American workers.
For example, while the US Department of Labor(USDOL) has as its charter a direct order from Congress to to advocate on behalf of and to protect American workers, the current USDOL actually is demonstratively more considerate and deliberate of business and corporate needs than those of workers. In recent years, actions of this USDOL have clearly demonstrated that workers have become disenfranchised by the government agency designed and legislated by Congress to protect workers, while corporations have gladly taken on the role on behalf of workers by influencing the actions of such a government agency and by getting their own advocates politically appointed to run this agency.
Another fine example would be the National Labor Relations Board, which has become so politicized and detached from its charter of protecting workers that it functions as a advocate against workers that finds solutions to problems in ways that favor business interests to the detriment of workers.
Average Americans need to realize that America's resources are being exploited for profits by businesses, as an economic system of capitalism allows and encourages. As industry seeks to profit off of those resources, workers CAN and SHOULD unite and unionize to ensure that they are afforded JUST compensation, JUST working conditions, and JUST standards of living in that process. In fact, if they fail to do so, it is at their own peril.
The business community has an economic and profit interest in convincing American workers to cooperate with them on terms that may and routinely are below the minimum standards that should and could, as demonstrated by history, be available to most, if not all, workers.
When one sees a union member driving a new car, or on vacation, or having their wife or husband at home to raise their family, which is not as prevalent today as it once was in the US - even amongst union members, they should sign off on a union card and join the ranks INSTEAD OF perpetuating one's disadvantages and harboring resentment and envy toward the union member and their family by voting for politicians who will weaken workers legislated rights to unionize and/or carry out union activities.
By doing so, business would be forced to recognize a VERY IMPORTANT concept that you won't learn much about in public school: ********TRUE COST!*********
"True cost" for business would be such cost considerations that DO NOT UNDERVALUE workers wages, standards of living, a 40 hour work week, paid benefits of sick days, family leave, medical care, and pensions, protections from employer negligence, better training, safer work environments, and other benefits in order to artificially keep businesses costs low, profits high, and workers from living a better life.
"True cost" also is a great force against bad, irresponsible, and un-responsible company management, because it increases costs for workers and, thus, product and services that businesses use and/or sell, and leaves less room for business owners to compensate for profits from savings arrived at by denial of those "true costs" and, thus, requires business owners to arrive at profits in other ways, such as good planning, good training, good quality control, good management, and general competence in business practice.
Even managers would be well advised to join unions.
The notion that managers shouldn't be unionized is deeply related to the denial of "true costs" in business decisions. By cooperating with unionized "management workers" a business does not deny itself profitability, instead, it denies workers, including those "management workers," the benefit of charging that business the "true cost" for producing its products.
To be sure, when a business is anti-union, it is anti-worker!
While there are many companies in the US that offer good pay and benefits to their workers, each and every one of them is using a business model that is designed to prevent their workers from having truly organized power to negotiate wages, benefits, and working conditions that are reflective of "TRUE COST."
Even in seemingly fair-minded businesses, there is a profit motive for using such a business model, otherwise a business would not have a preference to use non-union workers over union workers in the long run.
Businesses left to themselves to seek to maximize their profits have demonstrated over the past 40 years that they sought to petition the US Supreme Court for Constitutional protections for businesses and reductions of Constitutional protections for people in order to maximize their profits using a business model that completely ignores "true Costs" for people.
The truth, again, is that when businesses can deny the existence of or avoid having to pay "true costs" they do! They then appreciate the profits from their savings while their workers feel the cost of those savings in varying degrees and even extremes, in terms of lower wages, fewer benefits, and worse working conditions.
They react even more inhumanely by consolidating such profits until a majority of the people, worldwide, are servants to business interests that are few in number and massive in size of revenues, owned by a comparatively minuscule number of people, and these businesses are able to peddle influence over and ultimately place their agents in prominent positions within the peoples' government over their own affairs and then use their influence over such agents to legislate their own political business agenda and to deny people their own self rule.
In the end, so long as workers see each other, especially seeing union members, as enemies instead of allies, and see businesses as worker-benefactors rather than as consumers of workers' labor and services, and see businesses selfishly and advantageously dictate terms of workers' employment to workers' disadvantage, the union movement will not have succeeded.
Humans are not on this Earth to serve commerce, but instead to use commerce to their advantage, globally!
A political system such as capitalism is not a higher order than a political system such as Democracy. Rather Capitalism is a tool of Democracy!
If Democracy should become a tool of Capitalism, then, in fact, Democracy shall have become a totalitarian state.
When your job requires you to work 90 hour work weeks, to have another person raise your child, to prevent you from being able to live in a comfortable and respectable lifestyle and accommodations, then don't blame unions ... join one!
When businesses are made to pay "true costs" for the labor and services of workers, the cost of products and services will surely be higher, but, globally, those products and services will be more affordable to people, because "true Cost" will be built-into the pricing for those products and services and there will be more potential consumers with ample money to afford those products and services.
Products and services that are in demand will flourish and businesses that invest in their workers will succeed. All other products and services and businesses will become irrelevant and obsolete when "true cost" is factored into commerce.
Business may try to move elsewhere in order to avoid "true costs," but ultimately, business will have no place to run to when workers are globally united and insistent on charging businesses "true costs" for labor and services that they sell to these businesses - even in Ethiopia or other presently poor nations.
If every business took off for another land, workers could take advantage of the resources left behind to create businesses that provide labor and services as demanded, while keeping out products from other nations that are produced by means that deny "true costs."
Eventually, businesses would have no choice but to consider the "true costs" of doing business, irrespective of where such business operates.
In time, global balance in costs would be reached. Businesses would no longer be able to migrate to avoid "true costs."
Unions are for the benefit of all.
They are the framework that encourages businesses toward the ultimate recognition of the true costs for the products and services they produce, and that offers workers a historically proven method for achieving a superior lives by giving workers substantial personal time, money, benefits, and protections that they have historically been denied despite all of their hard work.
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