IVIV (1) There Will be Computers for This

[Michael Bailey]

alice wrote:
>> So, the skill and
>> respect (tradition of craft labor ) is compromised thus weakening
>> workers, empowering owners (kartlels), and manufacturing consumers.

this was Gaddis's lifelong theme too, right?

>> workers, these consumers, having bought into the manufactured virtues
>> (Speed and Productivity--the Law of Deminishing Return) are quick to
>> dismember the Unions and Organized Labor, discredit the tradition of
>> craft labor.

In that David Mitchell book, _Black Swan Green_, a character states,
"you're giving up unions that your grandfathers died to build"
Poignant.  I wonder, though, rather than the workers themselves
dismembering and discrediting,
isn't it more like legislation, private security forces, mass media
owned by antiunion folk, and professional unionbusting
lawyer firms, continually exerting pressure from without, not to mention
temptation corrupting union organizations from within, and competing
demands for workers' attention as well as
unrealistic expectations on the workers' part as to what
representation can or can't do...
-- a union-as-entity isn't terribly different from a business in
respect of how many difficulties it naturally encounters,
and 90% of new businesses go broke every year, don't they?

I'm just sayin' - hey, we still have some unions even in this
"scabland garrison state", they haven't all gone away by any means...
Long may they run!



-- 
"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the
revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world
declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism." -
Martin Luther King