Look for the union label here in Mount Airy? (great article on global economy)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.mtairynews.com/articles/2007/12/30/opinion/editorials/edit01.txt

Published: Sunday, December 30, 2007 12:03 AM CST
Union. Now there’s a word that definitely evokes strong emotions, especially here in the South where unions are akin to communism and believed to be an unnecessary third-party element between workers and management, often leading to production strikes and unreasonable demands that can put a company out of business.

Advocates for workers who have no job security, are paid nominal wages and lack basic health care insurance, often look to unions or other forms of collective bargaining as a means to improve their working conditions.

Increasingly, workers in production facilities and even those who harvest crops are turning up the heat on management as they watch their jobs shipped overseas or they fall ill to “green tobacco” sickness while priming tobacco.

Certainly, unions no longer carry the kind of political clout they did a half-century ago when groups like the AFL-CIO influenced not only working conditions but had tremendous political capital on Capitol Hill. But over the last two to three decades, membership in unions has dropped significantly. Part of that has to do with the excesses of some unions who did indeed grow corrupt with power and became more interested in lining their own individual pockets than in helping out the worker.

Today’s working environment is also radically different than it was in the 1950s. The federal government has addressed many, but certainly not all of the worker safety issues that unions lobbied to improve, whether it was underground mining coal or creating agencies such as OSHA to regulate and oversee a company’s worker safety program.

But that doesn’t mean that many workers are not justifiably concerned about the future and security of their jobs. Here in the Mount Airy area, more than 1,000 workers at the former Kentucky Derby Hosiery mills were weary when Gildan Activewear Inc., a Canadian-based company, acquired the manufacturing facilities in 2006. And they were right to be anxious. In less than a year, Gildan was announcing job cuts and plant closings, ultimately moving most of the production work to Honduras.


FULL story at link.