Where are You, Sam Walton?

Would it kill you to buy American? 
--Gran Torino (2008) 

___________________

Unions were a hot topic in Ranger's corner of Northwest Florida last month as residents were anxious for the National Football League owners to settle with the Referee Union.  Though they supported the settlement (the game must go on), the main drift was to disparage the faults and excesses of unions, which is an easy thing to do if you lead your entire white life in the South suppressing labor rights. (You can substitute "negro" for "labor" and get the same result.)

As a child, Ranger recalls the United Mine Workers' (UMW) John L. Lewis struggling to bring coal miners to a living wage with concurrent safety measures to ensure a tolerable life for miners.  "Miner" meant his father, grandfather and various uncles and other relatives.  He had skin in the game, which Southerners do not comprehend.

The same was true of the United Auto Workers (UAW). The life of the now-Rust Belt was the automobile, the union and management.  There were excesses and corruption on both ends, but what was good for GM was good for America, and that meant it was good for the unions, too.  Of course, that is no longer the formula.

Today, "[T]here are the same number of manufacturing jobs nationwide as there were in 1941, when the country was just more than one-third its current population. For much of the 20th century — and especially in the boom decades of the ’50s and ’60s, when U.S. factories had little global competition — manufacturing provided something that simply doesn’t exist anymore: a job for anyone willing to put in a hard day’s work" (Out the Amtrak Window).  It's not that our production is down, it's just that our machinery can do much of the work unmanned.  Precise mechanical skill sets are no longer in demand, and the new service sector hires largely interchangeable units of the lowest pay grade.

Southerners love their Right to Work, non-union status, which confers upon them the right to work for minimum wage at just under a 40-hour week, allowing their employer overlords to deny them any of the ancillary provisions which make the life of a working person tolerable.  In addition, there is no promise your job will continue to be yours next year. Mean and lean is the new watchword, and there is no place for loyalty in that equation.

In the bargain, we consume cheap, non-union garbage from overseas sweatshops; not seeing the exploitation makes it more palatable.  We reason, they are happy to get the jobs anyway, as it's better than they might have had.  Like the colonials, we reason (justify) that we are providing them employment they might not have had.  Meantime, in the search for the profit margin, our industries failed to concern themselves with the livelihoods of their stateside crew, many of whose homes are now being used as grow houses or being boarded up before being razed, at the rust belt city's expense.

Noblesse oblige is gone -- Mitt Romney is the poster boy of the new money man.  Buy-sell-offshore your profits.

Happy voting.

Union Made

Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die
--Union Maid, Woody Guthrie

Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start
--Romeo and Juliet, Dire Straits

You've gotta have heart
All you really need is heart
When the odds are sayin' you'll never win
That's when the grin should start
--Heart (Damn Yankees)
___________________

Life in America lately is contradictory and painful.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters represent a popular agitation with the powers who have bribed bought the privilege to profit out of proportion to their risk, and yet they lack cohesive representation or platform. They are not getting the respect from much of the media or anyone else because they lack cohesion of purpose.

This is what collective bargaining units or unions used to provide for the worker. It was a way for the common man to speak to power and have a seat at the same table. Sans unions, it is easy to conjure an image of Dickensian sweat shops exploiting the lean lives of its workers. Ranger grew up in the 50's and 60's amidst United Mine Workers (UMW) and United Auto Workers (UAW) who were able to live solidly middle-class lives due to their union representation.

The unions have been marginalized today, and foreign companies are moving their manufacturing here as the U.S. is now the cheap labor pool of choice if a company wishes to produce a product with quality control. Remember Ford's Quality is Job 1? You might not have believed it if you drove a Fiesta, but America does know how to produce a product with consistent tolerances, something which cannot be said of the multitudinous amounts of Chinese junk that we buy.

Our priorities are such a mish-mash. NBA players in bargaining last month staged a two-week preemption of season due to salary disputes; these players are far from hurting financially. When was the last time you saw a McDonald's closed for two weeks due to the minimum wage earners staging a collective bargaining event? Yet, most of us who care us just upset that the game is suspended, not outraged at the display.

Why do the wealthy rejoice at the disappearance of unions? The immediate losers are the American workers, that fast-dying breed that used to be the foundation of our national wealth and health. But without those contributors, you have a sick society. Do the wealthy think they can be safe from their countryman's misery behind the gates of their communities? That sounds like feudalism to us.

Recent reports are verifying the idea that America is no longer the great land of opportunity for its native inhabitants, and it ranks 23rd among industrial nations in terms of upward mobility, despite what Rep. Paul Ryan (R) and his ilk claim (The Downward Path of Upward Mobility.)

The people are learning the game is fixed, and their country is becoming a meaner and harsher place. The mean-spirited say to the struggling, "Quit yer bitchin' -- be glad you were weren't born in Bangladesh. Get out and work for it if you want more."

Only, the jobs aren't there, and we have forgotten how to organize.

Who represents the common man today?

Granfalloons

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
--Sixteen Tons, Tennessee Ernie Ford

The union has made me wise
To the lies of the company spies
And I don't get fooled by the factory rules
'cause I always read between the lines
--Part of the Union, Strawbs
________________

Call Ranger weak-minded, but he can't resolve an issue which issued from yesterday's post documenting the gallantry of the Marines during the breakout to Haguru-ri ("Fox News").

While the same praise must be extended to our soldiers fighting, suffering and dying in Afghanistan (there is no absence of valor and dedication in either scenario), we are told that the fighting in whichever war was and is necessary to defend freedom and our way of life. But is it really so?

In December 1950 young Ranger lived in a coal company house, and his father and grandfather worked the mines to provide a subsistence-level existence. Ranger's father mined until the recessions killed the industry. More correctly -- until the Japanese and Germans killed the steel industry (another story.)

All the while, good men were fighting and dying, but it wasn't for America's freedom and prosperity. Those goods passed his house on its road march to the better neighborhoods of America; his family was free to be poor. Coal miners in '50 and '51 were struggling for unionized living wages, but the fighting Marines didn't do a thing to improve their lives.

Americans allow their corporations to bond together (see the insurance and petroleum oligarchies) but are against union organization, against their better interests. Still, they are never against war, as that would be unpatriotic. How did any American benefit from the sacrifices of those Marines in Korea?

What is different in 2009? Our soldiers follow orders, yet what does this have to do with our daily freedom and security? We think John Lennon said it best in his classic interview with Dick Cavett: The media works hard to distract us from the un-necessity of war with a multitude of red herrings. As a result of our easy distraction, we are becoming a nation of Granfalloons, missing the import of the vital issues, failing to make the connections.

Contrary to what Obama or any leader says, there is no correlation between the battlefield and freedom. All freedoms are won or lost in our backyards. The Civil War oversaw the emancipation of slaves, but it was politics, not war, that made the former slaves and miners free men.

The unions helped, too.