Thrift Store Find: Union Pins
One of things I like best about going to thrift stores is learning about past times, stumbling upon historical artifacts and researching them.
This morning I came across union memorabilia, five pins urging union members to vote for Murray H. Finley for President of ACTWU (Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union). He was President of this union from 1972 to 1896, and was successful in pressuring the southern textile company Stevens to accept union contracts in 1980.
That must be considered a high water level for the textile union (and unions in general), for since then the rich have used the threat of moving their factories overseas to destroy the unions. Union membership has declined to a skeleton of what is once was. And the rich have still moved their factories overseas, financed state legislatures to pass laws making it far more difficult if not downright impossible for workers to unionize, and convinced a majority of the poor that their true enemies are those among their number who want to organize for better wages, safer working conditions, and adequate social services (like health care and day care). And--it goes without saying--the rich have taken a larger and larger share of the pie. It has been a total and complete victory for the rich.
Is it any wonder that today the gulf between the rich and the poor is the widest it has been since the Robber Baron days of the 1890's. And that the wages of the middle class has flat-lined since 1980, while those of the rich have increased exponentially.
(Now, of course, with the unions all but destroyed, the rich are turning their attention to the last obstacle to their total domination--the government. I wonder if the poor, working, and middle classes will stand up against this final outrage, or, as they have done in the past, kneel down, bend over, and lube up.)
This morning I came across union memorabilia, five pins urging union members to vote for Murray H. Finley for President of ACTWU (Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union). He was President of this union from 1972 to 1896, and was successful in pressuring the southern textile company Stevens to accept union contracts in 1980.
That must be considered a high water level for the textile union (and unions in general), for since then the rich have used the threat of moving their factories overseas to destroy the unions. Union membership has declined to a skeleton of what is once was. And the rich have still moved their factories overseas, financed state legislatures to pass laws making it far more difficult if not downright impossible for workers to unionize, and convinced a majority of the poor that their true enemies are those among their number who want to organize for better wages, safer working conditions, and adequate social services (like health care and day care). And--it goes without saying--the rich have taken a larger and larger share of the pie. It has been a total and complete victory for the rich.
Is it any wonder that today the gulf between the rich and the poor is the widest it has been since the Robber Baron days of the 1890's. And that the wages of the middle class has flat-lined since 1980, while those of the rich have increased exponentially.
(Now, of course, with the unions all but destroyed, the rich are turning their attention to the last obstacle to their total domination--the government. I wonder if the poor, working, and middle classes will stand up against this final outrage, or, as they have done in the past, kneel down, bend over, and lube up.)