The Evrett Citizen confuses the abuses in the Third World with Capitalism:": What do you think NAFTA and GATT are about? Boeing has a plant in China. Ever heard of "Most Favored Nation" status? Nike has factories all around the pacific rim, searching for the lowest wages. America's foreign policy has nothing to do with anything EXCEPT capitalsim! The army/marines is nothing more than gangsters for capitalists looking for new markets and/or labor camps."
But it's interesting to note that these abuses take place in the countries that do *not* have democratic freedoms, in the nations where the State has *massive* control over the individual, in the nations where people are *not* free to say "no".
The workers of the USA both those that have chosen to organize and those that have not are doing quite well. Only when the Chinese government strips basic economic freedoms from the prople are they subject to exploitation.
The freedom to keep what you earn. The freedom to refuse to work. The freedom to make contracts with others. This is Capitalism. None of these Asian swetshop economies have it.
The EC also writes:
": If steel workers are out on strike, and automobile workers use scab made steel in the assembly of auto's, you don't see this as scabbing? If teamsters strike UPS, why do other teamsters work overtime for the "competition" and get all the packages delivered while their brothers are walking the picket line? If loggers are on strike, and scabs feed the mills with scab wood, and the workers in the mill cut it into lumber, is this your idea of solidarity?"
If I work for the competition, I'm actually hurting the shareholders of UPS. I'm taking their customers, their market share (usually this is permanant damage), and making a fat overtime check in the bargin. I am punishing UPS for not paying it's workers enough. That's not scabbing.
If I am in a downstream industry (autos or lumber) consider what happens if I *refuse* the scab upstream products (steel or logs)! This means that the basic industries can hold the downstream industries hostage at any time. It also means that there is no way an 18-year old can become a steelworker...he has to wait for a union man to die of old age!
If workers wish, they can attempt to organize "One Big Union". But they won't, because they know it would be counterproductive. Several medium-sized unions are much stronger in the long run, because different industries have fundamentally different interests.
This brings us the Everett Citizen's idea of Mergers and One Big Corporation:
": With every merger and corporate aqusition, there are fewer choices. Can the unhappy boeing worker quit and work for McDonnel Douglass? Not any more. How about Kimberly-Clark paper mill employee...can he quit and take a job with Scott Paper? No since the buyout (and subsequent layoffs, and bonus to the CEO). This is fantasy, nat."
A few points here:
First, there are as many spinoffs and new companies as there are mergers. AT&T chose to split into three parts to better manage it's conflicting divisions. Sears chose to split off Discover Credit Card. It happens all the time because different business have different interests and (like unions) often do better under different roofs.
Second, a merger actually strengthens the power of labor. Small firms are harder to organize. This is why Unions did not appear until large factories did (and why farmers have never unionized). UPS was so powerful because UPS controlled over 80% of the pachage market (less in express and overnight, though). When the UPS workers struck, the whole nation had to pay attention...because a single union controlled most of the industry.
- nat
None.
