On, Wisconsin!
I am an employee of the state of Tennessee. Unlike state employees in many other states around the country, I am not a member of a union. This is because Tennessee is a so-called right-to-work state, and furthermore denies its employees the right to organize in a union. We have a state employees' association, which has lobbying rights, such as they are. So while the actions state employees in Wisconsin, and also in Indiana and Ohio will have a broad effect on the fate of unions in the United States (a fact which does not escape either side in the conflict in these states), it does not directly effect me.
Or does it? Virtually every right workers have in the United States (and if you are an employee rather than an employer, think very carefully before you declare that you are not a worker) was gained through the actions of the labor unions. Without continual pressure from the unions, most federal and state regulations concerning compensation, overtime, working conditions and safety, unemployment and workers' compensation benefits would not exist. Certainly few employers were anxious to extend any concessions in these areas without pressure, and the efforts of individual workers to lobby the government for change were straws in the balance against the weight that business could bring to bear opposing them. We honor and respect the service and sacrifices of members of the US military, to the point that we, as a nation, are often accused of fetishizing military service, but we are all too often inclined to dismiss the sacrifices made by workers in the effort to protect the interests of all of us who work for our livings. Few of these things were bought without bloodshed. Blair Mountain is as important in our history as Iwo Jima, but only one of these has a monument in Washington*.
Therefore, in honor of my fellow staties and their efforts to preserve the right to collective bargaining, I am starting a series of posts about US labor history. Feel free to comment and add information about the various topics that come by, if you can, and please do not discount the issue as if it has no significance in your life. I've heard people say that the place of unions in American life has passed, that everything the unions could reasonably expect to obtain for workers has been enshrined in law. Laws can be changed. Governments can choose not to enforce them. Every right workers have in the country was conceded after great effort, and every single one can be taken away.
Abraham Lincoln was not the last Republican politician to grant favorable consideration to labor, although it sometimes seems that way; before his presidency, he made these remarks to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society**, on September 30, 1859:
They hold that labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed; that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior - greatly the superior - of capital.
(The complete address is here; it's an examination of the difference between free and slave labor, but the points Lincoln raises about the relationship between labor and capital are not diminished by the end of chattel slavery in the United States.)
This is a basic point many would like us to forget: without the results of labor, no surplus of wealth could ever accrue to become capital. Not only can capital not get anything done without labor, it can't even come into being.
In closing, and in honor of my landlords, a union man and a union wife,
Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie performing Woody Guthrie's "The Union Maid".
*Okay, it's the Marine Corps Monument, but the moment the Corps chose to represent its history to the world was the the flag-raising on Iwo Jima.
**This is what is called "a happy coincidence".
Or does it? Virtually every right workers have in the United States (and if you are an employee rather than an employer, think very carefully before you declare that you are not a worker) was gained through the actions of the labor unions. Without continual pressure from the unions, most federal and state regulations concerning compensation, overtime, working conditions and safety, unemployment and workers' compensation benefits would not exist. Certainly few employers were anxious to extend any concessions in these areas without pressure, and the efforts of individual workers to lobby the government for change were straws in the balance against the weight that business could bring to bear opposing them. We honor and respect the service and sacrifices of members of the US military, to the point that we, as a nation, are often accused of fetishizing military service, but we are all too often inclined to dismiss the sacrifices made by workers in the effort to protect the interests of all of us who work for our livings. Few of these things were bought without bloodshed. Blair Mountain is as important in our history as Iwo Jima, but only one of these has a monument in Washington*.
Therefore, in honor of my fellow staties and their efforts to preserve the right to collective bargaining, I am starting a series of posts about US labor history. Feel free to comment and add information about the various topics that come by, if you can, and please do not discount the issue as if it has no significance in your life. I've heard people say that the place of unions in American life has passed, that everything the unions could reasonably expect to obtain for workers has been enshrined in law. Laws can be changed. Governments can choose not to enforce them. Every right workers have in the country was conceded after great effort, and every single one can be taken away.
Abraham Lincoln was not the last Republican politician to grant favorable consideration to labor, although it sometimes seems that way; before his presidency, he made these remarks to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society**, on September 30, 1859:
They hold that labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed; that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior - greatly the superior - of capital.
(The complete address is here; it's an examination of the difference between free and slave labor, but the points Lincoln raises about the relationship between labor and capital are not diminished by the end of chattel slavery in the United States.)
This is a basic point many would like us to forget: without the results of labor, no surplus of wealth could ever accrue to become capital. Not only can capital not get anything done without labor, it can't even come into being.
In closing, and in honor of my landlords, a union man and a union wife,
Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie performing Woody Guthrie's "The Union Maid".
Click to view*Okay, it's the Marine Corps Monument, but the moment the Corps chose to represent its history to the world was the the flag-raising on Iwo Jima.
**This is what is called "a happy coincidence".