Tapsearch Com EditorUnions and the Life Ideal
January 11th 2012 17:52
The private sector production workers unions have been virtually gone for years but they are still being blamed for our economic crisis.
Ray Tapajna
Resource Tapsearch Com Unions
Now, Conservative Republicans and some of the media are pushing for Right to Work laws. This surrounds the problem of workers having to pay union dues if they work in a union shop.
Political leaders and the media still blur the issue since most of the major unions like the AFL CIO primarily consist of public sector government workers and not production workers. It is obvious that even when unions were strong and arrogant, all workers were better off including non-union workers.
Unions still represent one of the best channels in the pursuit of the life ideal and the proper balancing of human nature in a very competitive economic
world. It is about bringing Sunday worship into the work week and about doing unto others as you would have them do to you. If you separate these things and put them in separate categories, we will never evolve into communities the way they should be.
The private sector production workers unions are virtually gone. They have been wiped out by selfish interests with the production middle class workers
being wiped out for the sake of financial and investment entities that do not
know how to connect to fair play and the life ideal for all in a society.
Pope Leo's Rerum Novarum encyclical about owners and workers stood the
test of time for more than a hundred years. It endorses the the gathering of workers as one for the sake of seeking the life ideal for all as one
This would include the payment of union dues as one. The current drive for the so called Right to Work laws just is another way to degrade the value of workers, labor and human dignity.
Free trade came and smashed this into pieces. The Republican conservatives played a major role in this devastation of human dignity in the workday.
I do not trust Republican conservatives when they start talking about
unions. They pursue the order of things in a confused state especially when they do the talk without ever doing the walk.
Here are some essential points to consider before talking about the so
called right to work.
1. The private sector production union workers are virtually gone. They
have been wiped out by the surge of free trade which has nothing to do with fair play or the enhancement of human dignity in the workplace. Free trade has deflated and degraded the value of workers and labor down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child labor. It can be described as our slave trade of our times. It is beyond my comprehension how someone can go to Saturday or Sunday worship and the let this happen during the work week.
2. It is obvious that no matter how arrogant unions were in the past, our economy was much better off than it is now.
3. In the past, the money changers even used unions to knock out small business. This was just another tool for radical Capitalists to capture markets. Another tool big companies used were spending years selling products under costs to capture market share. Many companies make the value of their stock the main priority of their business venture rather than making money by a reasonable mark up on the products they make or sell.
Fair trade laws have been on the books for years but our court systems
do not even know how to used them or enforce them. There is an unnatural environment on how business ethics and what their basic mission should be. The basic mission is based on pursuing the life ideal for all in society.
If you partition these things in a a sophist way for utilitarian good, we will
continue to have an economic mess on our hands and growing working poor class.
4. The mixing of the meaning of unions into the government workers sector is part of the problem. The private sector union workers represent a distinct
element and can not be put under same umbrella with the public sector workers unions. This major distinction is rarely made in the discussion of unions in general. Only about 15 percent of the AFL-CIO are private sector production workers. About 50 percent or more are public sector government workers. It is improper to speak about major unions like the AFL-CIO in any given thought process as one union of workers. Added to this shoddy thinking is the fact that about 25 percent of the AFL-CIO are retail and service workers who definitely are left out of the American Dream with many needing government subsidies to survive. Employers like Walmart has carried the betrayal of workers to even lower level. They represent the worst case scenario in the degradation of workers and labor
President Roosevelt altered the face of our economy when he ushered in
ceiling prices during World War 2, This launched a "lost leader" economy where the markup of individual products became a collage of confusion. Before any discussions in our economic world we need to fist clear this confusion. Republican conservatives were one of the first to take advantage of the confusion for their selfish interest outside the common good of the people.
I grew up in a family business and found out about unions and unfair trade this at a very early age . I had more than twenty years of experience in the food business before I was thirty. I also serviced the last of the large family supermarkets where I saw all the tricks of big money chains taking out real fair play enterprises. I worked in several factories while going to college and saw the deep void between the college classroom and the factory floors. Neither side understood what the other side was thinking. I had some of the best Jesuits ever teaching me philosophy and ethics but most of them
just didn't get it when it came to what was happening in the workplace
and the value of workers and labor.
I saw the activities of unions from this perspective and later on from
the perspective of management. We drove through tough strike lines to keep utilities like the phone and gas companies going. I was part of a negotiating managing team when workers tried to unionize for the first time. I had a burning 2 x 4 waved at my head by workers who very jobs I was trying to save. After all of these experiences, I know unions are more in tune with human dignity in the workday than the owners and money changers that
control our corporations. Corporations are treated as if they are more important than the dignity of workers.
A vice president once told me he made the same spiritual retreats
as I did but I had to face facts about the real world in the workday and how our economic system plays out. His life was a contradiction that I could not live.
We need to break down all these partitions and start discussions on every
level about the pursuit of the life ideal. The discussion about the so called Right to Work laws is a good place to start. We need to stop making workers commodities in a global economic arena where they are put on a global trading block to compete with one another for the same jobs down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child labor.
Political leaders and the media still blur the issue since most of the major unions like the AFL CIO primarily consist of public sector government workers and not production workers. It is obvious that even when unions were strong and arrogant, all workers were better off including non-union workers.
Unions still represent one of the best channels in the pursuit of the life ideal and the proper balancing of human nature in a very competitive economic
world. It is about bringing Sunday worship into the work week and about doing unto others as you would have them do to you. If you separate these things and put them in separate categories, we will never evolve into communities the way they should be.
The private sector production workers unions are virtually gone. They have been wiped out by selfish interests with the production middle class workers
being wiped out for the sake of financial and investment entities that do not
know how to connect to fair play and the life ideal for all in a society.
Pope Leo's Rerum Novarum encyclical about owners and workers stood the
test of time for more than a hundred years. It endorses the the gathering of workers as one for the sake of seeking the life ideal for all as one
This would include the payment of union dues as one. The current drive for the so called Right to Work laws just is another way to degrade the value of workers, labor and human dignity.
Free trade came and smashed this into pieces. The Republican conservatives played a major role in this devastation of human dignity in the workday.
I do not trust Republican conservatives when they start talking about
unions. They pursue the order of things in a confused state especially when they do the talk without ever doing the walk.
Here are some essential points to consider before talking about the so
called right to work.
1. The private sector production union workers are virtually gone. They
have been wiped out by the surge of free trade which has nothing to do with fair play or the enhancement of human dignity in the workplace. Free trade has deflated and degraded the value of workers and labor down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child labor. It can be described as our slave trade of our times. It is beyond my comprehension how someone can go to Saturday or Sunday worship and the let this happen during the work week.
2. It is obvious that no matter how arrogant unions were in the past, our economy was much better off than it is now.
3. In the past, the money changers even used unions to knock out small business. This was just another tool for radical Capitalists to capture markets. Another tool big companies used were spending years selling products under costs to capture market share. Many companies make the value of their stock the main priority of their business venture rather than making money by a reasonable mark up on the products they make or sell.
Fair trade laws have been on the books for years but our court systems
do not even know how to used them or enforce them. There is an unnatural environment on how business ethics and what their basic mission should be. The basic mission is based on pursuing the life ideal for all in society.
If you partition these things in a a sophist way for utilitarian good, we will
continue to have an economic mess on our hands and growing working poor class.
4. The mixing of the meaning of unions into the government workers sector is part of the problem. The private sector union workers represent a distinct
element and can not be put under same umbrella with the public sector workers unions. This major distinction is rarely made in the discussion of unions in general. Only about 15 percent of the AFL-CIO are private sector production workers. About 50 percent or more are public sector government workers. It is improper to speak about major unions like the AFL-CIO in any given thought process as one union of workers. Added to this shoddy thinking is the fact that about 25 percent of the AFL-CIO are retail and service workers who definitely are left out of the American Dream with many needing government subsidies to survive. Employers like Walmart has carried the betrayal of workers to even lower level. They represent the worst case scenario in the degradation of workers and labor
President Roosevelt altered the face of our economy when he ushered in
ceiling prices during World War 2, This launched a "lost leader" economy where the markup of individual products became a collage of confusion. Before any discussions in our economic world we need to fist clear this confusion. Republican conservatives were one of the first to take advantage of the confusion for their selfish interest outside the common good of the people.
I grew up in a family business and found out about unions and unfair trade this at a very early age . I had more than twenty years of experience in the food business before I was thirty. I also serviced the last of the large family supermarkets where I saw all the tricks of big money chains taking out real fair play enterprises. I worked in several factories while going to college and saw the deep void between the college classroom and the factory floors. Neither side understood what the other side was thinking. I had some of the best Jesuits ever teaching me philosophy and ethics but most of them
just didn't get it when it came to what was happening in the workplace
and the value of workers and labor.
I saw the activities of unions from this perspective and later on from
the perspective of management. We drove through tough strike lines to keep utilities like the phone and gas companies going. I was part of a negotiating managing team when workers tried to unionize for the first time. I had a burning 2 x 4 waved at my head by workers who very jobs I was trying to save. After all of these experiences, I know unions are more in tune with human dignity in the workday than the owners and money changers that
control our corporations. Corporations are treated as if they are more important than the dignity of workers.
A vice president once told me he made the same spiritual retreats
as I did but I had to face facts about the real world in the workday and how our economic system plays out. His life was a contradiction that I could not live.
We need to break down all these partitions and start discussions on every
level about the pursuit of the life ideal. The discussion about the so called Right to Work laws is a good place to start. We need to stop making workers commodities in a global economic arena where they are put on a global trading block to compete with one another for the same jobs down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child labor.
Ray Tapajna
Resource Tapsearch Com Unions
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