#american labor

[spacenoirdetective]

George Rozen, cover for "Argosy" magazine, Feb 1939

I genuinely love the point of view of this cover so much. You have to put yourself in this time period when there was no television or CGI. Coming up with this perspective, angle and shot to showcase a construction worker swinging from a crane is a thing of pure genius. One more reason to love pulp art.

[doingthebesticanlol]

[pearlsofblacks-blog]

TikTok - Make Your Day

[lordnot]

I am irritated and annoyed that American labor unions have been pretty much universal in voicing support for Israeli apartheid... but not exactly surprised.

You have to remember that these same labor unions continued to support the Democratic Party decades after Bill Clinton and his cronies spit in their collective faces. Hell, most of them refused to support Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary. Their decisions, or at least the decisions of leadership, can often be shortsighted and flat out wrong.

But I think it's important to once again remind everyone that Solidarity does not mean friendship. It does not mean liking the other party. It means recognizing you and the other parties have a shared interest in a certain set of goals, and benefit by cooperating to work towards achieving those goals.

You can absolutely have solidarity with someone on certain goals and be ready to rip their throats out over different goals.

[nouvelleman-blog]

The Restructuring of American Labor. Goodbye truckers.

As Elon Musk, Uber and Google all race for the autonomous car, no one quite yet is thinking about what the vertical integration consequences will be. An entire fleet of truck drivers will be out on their ass, with no formal education, little transferrable skills and a tidal wave of resentment. The age of Trump is just beginning. Our labor force needs to reconcile with the fact that we are woefully unprepared as a society in a way that’s not being talked about. 

A tectonic shift is coming in 5-10 years. 

That’s it. 5-10 years. That’s a college degree worth of time.

A real degree, maybe a trade skill not the University of fuck you Phoenix worth of pickpocketing. The idea of universal income is being tossed around quietly, although it is nothing new, but we as a country can’t even get universal health care. Why not? Well duh, it’s socialist of course. A scheme for the Russian Reds to take over... oh wait.  When butterflies die out of an ecosystem, the insects that prey on them die out, then the rodents that prey on them and the birds that prey on the rodents and on and on and on until the entire ecosystem is destined for dust. We have to come around as a society to the realization that in order to survive, in order for capitalism to survive and for democracy to survive, that we we have to help one another. Automation is going to hit the manual labor sector hard and they don’t see it coming. If they do, they’re going to blame it on the immigrants, or the liberals. It’s dangerous and it prevents a real conversation of taking place and thus stunting, well, progress. What this country needs to understand is that it is okay to take a little help once in a while, it is what keeps us human. 

The only person publicly talking about preventing this flood of unemployment is Andrew Yang. He is a long shot for the 2020 election that he just submitted for but regardless of winning, he intends to inject this issue into the public consciousness. It's time we talk to one another. 

[revpauljbern]

(via AFL-CIO Declares Independence from Two-Party Political System)  another monumental event took place this past week this equals the significance of Donna Brazile's new book about the 2016 elections -- the labor unions have collectively told the 2 mainstream political parties where to go, and exactly how to get there!!

[transcribinghistory]

Imported English Glassblowers

Pittsburgh, April 19 -- Nothing for many months has created such a stir in Pittsburgh labor organizations as the arrival several days ago of twenty-six English glassblowers to work in the new glass plant of Chambers, McKee & Co. at Jeannette, Westmoreland County, not far from here. How the men were secured without apparently violating the law regarding the importation of labor is interesting.

For some time past there has been no surplus of skilled labor in the window-glass trade, and long before Chambers, McKee & Co. were ready to operate their new tank factory at Jeannette they knew that they would have trouble in securing men. They therefore placed an advertisement in the official labor organ of the trade. The men in this country did not care to work on a tank until they were satisfied that that system would be a success. Papers containing the advertisement for men were accordingly sent to Europe, and in a short time the Secretaries of the preceptories there wrote to their superior officers on this side to learn if the advertisement had the sanction of the Window-Glass Workers’ Association. They were told that it had. Then another difficulty arose. There were men who were willing to come here thinking that they could better their condition, but they could not raise enough money to pay the large fee ($100 each) required before being permitted to start to work. This was overcome by the labor officials agreeing to grant them time to pay it. The men then came on, and there is no window-glass blower who has attended the meetings of his preceptory regularly that did not know they were coming here and were going to work at Jeannette.

(The New York Times, April 20, 1889)

[transcribinghistory]

Just Too Wide

A little boy of very vivid imagination came home to say that he had seen a very large snake. His mother inquired as to its size and the little boy held his hands about eight inches apart.

“Only that long?” asked the mother.

“Oh, very much longer,” said the little boy, “it was that wide.”

Let us make is clear immediately that we are not intimating that Mr. William Green or his contemporaries in the American Federation of Labor are seeing snakes. But we would like to say that they are seeing the public reaction to the Taft-Hartley Act out of all proportion.

Last summer this act was to “enslave labor.” The other day Mr. Green said that it would cause a sharp increase in the number of strikes during the next few months, and that the fewer strikes which had taken place since enactment were an illusion.

It seems to us that the American public, including the rank and file of union labor, has accepted the Taft-Hartley Act. The chances that it will be a major issue of the 1948 campaign are very small and the chances that it will be changed as a result of the November elections are equally small.

Things are not growing as wide as Mr. Green is seeing them.

(The Wall Street Journal, February 2, 1948)

--

The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act ensured that laborers could refuse to join unions or “participate in mutual aid activities” if they wanted, although their “condition of employment” could require them to join a union. 

(nlrb.gov, “1947 Taft-Hartley Substantive Provisions”)