Forum Post: WSWS: Occupy Wall Street: The ISO promotes the unions against workers’ interests
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 28, 2011, 11:58 a.m. EST by SandyEnglish
(60)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
The American unions at present are only good for policing their members, imposing sell-out contracts, enriching their own officialdom and launching verbal and physical attacks on their critics. They are business organizations that fully identify with corporate America and subordinate workers politically to the present system through their support of the Democratic Party (and, most immediately, the 2012 Obama re-election effort).
It is this image—of complacent, well-heeled officials raking in six-figure incomes and making backroom deals with the employers and the government—that should come to mind today when the words “union” and “labor” appear in the articles and speeches of the ISO. (A look at these faces and an investigation of the incomes associated with them should help the unwary: http://aflcio.com/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/leaders/ecmembers.cfm) In the existing unions, the “left” is promoting organizations whose social interests are objectively hostile to those of the working population and that fear like death an upsurge against big business and the two-party system.
You are a liar and propagandist (intentionally or not) that is merely parroting bullshit with regards to unions. I suggest you educate yourself a bit about the history of unions and their contributions to America
Unions have been fighting and continue to fight our common enemy (those that take away the workers voice) we are not joining the fight; we are being joined in the fight. There is a re-awakening to the power of standing together
Let's exclude unions-12% of the population
Let's exclude moveon.org- huge percent
Let's exclude the tea party people-big percent
Let's exclude anti-gay rights people
Let's exclude Republicans
Let's exclude Muslim people
Let's exclude Mormon people
Oh maybe a list of who should be included would be much shorter
You don't suppose that those who want to kill the movement are using that old divide conquer trick
No one is talking about excluding the mass of workers currently in unions. Quite the contrary. But they are trapped in these decayed organizations, which are run for the benefit of a narrow layer of well-payed officials. This social stratum serves the 1%, and that is a matter of record.
Workers in and out of unions need to form new, independent organizations to conduct workplace and neighborhood occupations, strikes and most of all, a struggle against the political parties of Wall Street, the Democrats and the Republicans.
These divisions exist objectively in a class society. The 1% will always find servants. Part of the struggle redound society on the grounds of social equality is to unmask them. It cannot be avoided.
I am one of those "trapped ones" in a "decaying organization" that has been fighting and continues to fight our common enemy (those that take away the workers voice) we are not joining the fight; we are being joined in the fight.
What is going on today is the same thing that made people form unions in the past
And you are a liar and propagandist (intentionally or not) that is merely parroting bullshit with regards to unions. I suggest you educate yourself a bit about the history of unions and their contributions to America
I do agree with the rest of your post
Just what fights are the unions taking up, then? Would that be the SEIU fight to give Obama $28 million? The UAW fight to lower wages in the auto industry? Or the CWA fight to shut down the Verizon strike just as it was making an impact on the company? Or perhaps the AFL-CIO fight to sit on its hands when PATCO was being criminalized and isolated? What the unions are doing today is the very opposite of the strikes and occupations that built the CIO in the 1930s. At any rate, please give some concrete evidence of a serious struggle that the unions have engaged in since Reagan was elected.
If you want to know, open your mind and start looking. I have better things to do than waste my time convincing the brainwashed that they are brainwashed
You keep trying to demonize unions with your lies and I will keep trying to expose you and the people that keep your brain clean.
And yes union “members” do contribute to Democrats. They are the best of the two evils. And by the way another lie that is constantly being repeated by people like you is that unions use dues money for political contributions (and the members have no say). Federal law prohibits using any union money for political contributions other than money members donate on their own through a PAL fund. When members donate they understand that the money is primarily to support Democrats.
The Republicans are the anti-union party and we don’t support those that are trying to destroy us.
I've posted this in the forum directly as well. You might find it interesting.
Video: Warren, Michigan Chrysler workers speak on contract vote
On October 26th, the United Auto Workers imposed a new-four year labor agreement on 26,000 Chrysler workers despite a ‘no’ vote by skilled trades workers and widespread opposition from production workers. The deal will freeze wages for workers who have not had a raise since 2003 and extends the hated two-tier wage system that pays younger workers near poverty wages. The World Socialist Web Site spoke with auto workers from the Warren Truck plant in suburban Detroit as they were voting on the contract about the deal and the role of the UAW.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVeZtwLSGUA&feature=player_embedded
Wow! I think you believe everything you wrote.
another paranoid ,isolated individual who will sleeping in his igloo in the park until his numbers are a few dozen because of the weather.You can be part of the solution....if you build a coalition.Dispelling all of labor-instead of incl.them,is your death nell as a force.
What serious fight have the unions engaged in 30 years in the US? Look at the facts. Millions of jobs have been lost without a struggle by the unions since the 1980s. Concessions and givebacks have been the rule for union members, while the officials have lost not one penny in income.
Some of us remember PATCO and Hormel. We are watching the CWA prepare a sell-out of the Verizon workers right now. The UAW is enforcing a $14/hour wage for new hires in auto.
Millions of workers are trapped in these business organizations, and you (and groups like the ISO) choose to promote them. Not one word about the alliance with the Democratic Party, the billions of dollars consumed by the union bureaucrats in salaries and perks. These groups have nothing to do with "labor" r the great struggles of the 1930s.
If you don't know, learn:
Thirty years since the PATCO strike http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/pat1-a03.shtml
If you can't learn, then stand aside.
your deluded.
So basically your image of all unions is aflcio... You do realize that they're only one union, right? Not all industrial unions are the AFL-CIO, who are generally rejected by the left since they purged their board of left wing members. There is the Longshoremen, for example, who are radical syndicalists.