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A comment on PG on Unions. Parent comment

Re:PG on Unions by owinebar on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @09:05PM (#20923)
It seemed as though pg was talking about the unions of the 1950's. Those unions weren't heroic. The heroism was in the union movement of the late 1800s/early 1900s. Companies/capitalists of that gilded age were often enough a law unto themselves, and workers organizing to have their legal rights respected were in very real danger.
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Re:PG on Unions by BrandonM on Thursday May 10, 2007 @10:58AM (#21054)
It's a good thing that union organizers are in no real danger anymore, and companies allow a fair negotiation process between workers and the corporate offices who determines their pay.

Oh, wait...

http://killercoke.org/crimes.htm

http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/facts/#anti-union

An article about the double standard applied to unions vs. corpoartions:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/sep/24/biased_anti_union_reporting

Sure, in a field where there is a high demand for workers, unions are unnecessary, because any deficiencies in pay will be punished. In manufacturing and retail, however, where the demand is not as high, there has to be someone out there establishing a minimum standard for their employees to receive in compensation for their work. Since minimum wage in the U.S. is not enough to live on, the only other groups with the possibility to enforce such standards are unions.

I think that the recent trend (as in the last couple decades) of discounting the importance of unions is in large part due to comparing dissimilar organizations. Manufacturing and retail is a completely different beast from the service industry, and to lump them all into one "unions fight for overcompensation" group is shameful.

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