Thanks for your patience with this belated edition of our weekly roundup; after moving 700 miles with an infant, I am ready to get back to our regularly-programmed Thursday schedule. And double thanks to those of you who filled out the reader survey; lots of good feedback I plan to experiment with implementing in the coming weeks!
On Trumka..... the day I found out he died, I was sitting in my office - with about two dozen union members on my floor, and another 150+ union members on the other floors in the building (plus another 200 or so folks working remotely from home) and I realized... out of all these union members, I am probably the only person here who even knows who Richard Trumka was!
Now, I'm old enough to remember when union leaders were public figures - when I was a kid, people like Walter Reuther, Jimmy Hoffa, Cesar Chavez, Al Shanker and Victor Gotbaum were household names - major public figures and celebrities of a sort
Why?
Because they represented millions of workers, had the power to make the economy scream with a few picket signs and they (and, more importantly, their members) actually mattered
Rich Trumka and his generation of labor (mis)leaders presided over the collapse of all of that
Trumka and them succeeded in making labor....irrelevant to the lives of American workers, a toothless paper tiger that had no power over capital
I hear the same stories about union leaders in the 90s in Romania (I organize here) and how their names were known by everyone. If you were to say Hossu, Costin, Mitrea, etc., everyone knew that maybe a protest was coming up, or that they were ready to kick some director out if they were against the workers.
Lovely times, even though some of the leaders ended up selling parts of the labor movement, and maybe the same can be said about Hoffa. Those mistakes were amplified by the press who vilified a movement based on a couple of its “rotten” elements.
Here in the 'states, labor leaders stopped being public figures because unions stopped being a major part of American life
They surrendered picket signs and strikes for "team concept" and donating money to Democratic Party politicians - at the same historical moment that the Fortune 500 and the Business Roundtable launched a national offensive to destroy the labor movement and make American workers into at will employees with no rights that they were bound to respect
Trumka was a big part of that - so was Thomas Geoghegan, to be honest - and thanks to their misleadership (and the outright gangsterism in much of the American labor movement - including my old union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters - that's why only 6% of private sector workers are unionized here.
When George Meany died, it was front page headline news
When his successor (and Trumka's predessor) Lane Kirkland died... it was page 3 news
When Trumka died, it was page 30 news.... with the weather forecast, the horoscopes and the crossword puzzle
When Trumka became president of the UMWA in 1982, his union had around 200,000 members, most American coal miners were union, and miners had the 8 hour day and Saturday and Sunday as days off (having Sundays off is a big deal in coal country cause most miners are devout Christians who go to church every Sunday)
When he became "president emeritus" of the UMWA and ascended to power in the AFL-CIO in 1995, they paid per capita on a very likley grossly inflated 80,0000 members, most American coal miners were non union, and most miners (including most UNION miners) worked 12 hours a day and 7 days a week (forcing these very religous workers to violate their beliefs and work on the Sabbath, the lord's day, Sunday)
Things are even worse in coal country today
The same decay has happened througout the American labor movement, to the point where we can hardly call it a "labor movement" at all anymore
Thank you for the thoughtful comment. Unfortunately in my 22 years of life, union leaders haven’t showed up much on tv and since I have moved to the United States, I have barely encountered them. To be fair, I found out about Hoffa and Trumka from the right-wingers more often than from the lefties.
It seems that unions have turned their back to rank and file unionism and very strong activism to become a sort of corporatized entity. Am I right?
Additionally, we should remember that Reagan was endorsed by Teamsters, if I am not mistaken!
The air traffic controlers endorsed Reagan too - and then he turned around, broke their union and fired every single one of them
and you are right, the union leadership in this country have largely turned their back on strikes and fighting for power on the shop floor - and instead they give money to Democratic Party politicians
the staff of the Texas AFL-CIO might believe in the fairy tale of "just transition" (or might have their own cynical reasons for pretending to).... but I wonder how many oil field, refinery and industrial maintenace workers are gullible enough to fall for that?
On Trumka..... the day I found out he died, I was sitting in my office - with about two dozen union members on my floor, and another 150+ union members on the other floors in the building (plus another 200 or so folks working remotely from home) and I realized... out of all these union members, I am probably the only person here who even knows who Richard Trumka was!
Now, I'm old enough to remember when union leaders were public figures - when I was a kid, people like Walter Reuther, Jimmy Hoffa, Cesar Chavez, Al Shanker and Victor Gotbaum were household names - major public figures and celebrities of a sort
Why?
Because they represented millions of workers, had the power to make the economy scream with a few picket signs and they (and, more importantly, their members) actually mattered
Rich Trumka and his generation of labor (mis)leaders presided over the collapse of all of that
Trumka and them succeeded in making labor....irrelevant to the lives of American workers, a toothless paper tiger that had no power over capital
That's his legacy....and it's kinda pathetic, TBH
I hear the same stories about union leaders in the 90s in Romania (I organize here) and how their names were known by everyone. If you were to say Hossu, Costin, Mitrea, etc., everyone knew that maybe a protest was coming up, or that they were ready to kick some director out if they were against the workers.
Lovely times, even though some of the leaders ended up selling parts of the labor movement, and maybe the same can be said about Hoffa. Those mistakes were amplified by the press who vilified a movement based on a couple of its “rotten” elements.
Here in the 'states, labor leaders stopped being public figures because unions stopped being a major part of American life
They surrendered picket signs and strikes for "team concept" and donating money to Democratic Party politicians - at the same historical moment that the Fortune 500 and the Business Roundtable launched a national offensive to destroy the labor movement and make American workers into at will employees with no rights that they were bound to respect
Trumka was a big part of that - so was Thomas Geoghegan, to be honest - and thanks to their misleadership (and the outright gangsterism in much of the American labor movement - including my old union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters - that's why only 6% of private sector workers are unionized here.
When George Meany died, it was front page headline news
When his successor (and Trumka's predessor) Lane Kirkland died... it was page 3 news
When Trumka died, it was page 30 news.... with the weather forecast, the horoscopes and the crossword puzzle
When Trumka became president of the UMWA in 1982, his union had around 200,000 members, most American coal miners were union, and miners had the 8 hour day and Saturday and Sunday as days off (having Sundays off is a big deal in coal country cause most miners are devout Christians who go to church every Sunday)
When he became "president emeritus" of the UMWA and ascended to power in the AFL-CIO in 1995, they paid per capita on a very likley grossly inflated 80,0000 members, most American coal miners were non union, and most miners (including most UNION miners) worked 12 hours a day and 7 days a week (forcing these very religous workers to violate their beliefs and work on the Sabbath, the lord's day, Sunday)
Things are even worse in coal country today
The same decay has happened througout the American labor movement, to the point where we can hardly call it a "labor movement" at all anymore
Thank you for the thoughtful comment. Unfortunately in my 22 years of life, union leaders haven’t showed up much on tv and since I have moved to the United States, I have barely encountered them. To be fair, I found out about Hoffa and Trumka from the right-wingers more often than from the lefties.
It seems that unions have turned their back to rank and file unionism and very strong activism to become a sort of corporatized entity. Am I right?
Additionally, we should remember that Reagan was endorsed by Teamsters, if I am not mistaken!
Indded he was
The air traffic controlers endorsed Reagan too - and then he turned around, broke their union and fired every single one of them
and you are right, the union leadership in this country have largely turned their back on strikes and fighting for power on the shop floor - and instead they give money to Democratic Party politicians
the staff of the Texas AFL-CIO might believe in the fairy tale of "just transition" (or might have their own cynical reasons for pretending to).... but I wonder how many oil field, refinery and industrial maintenace workers are gullible enough to fall for that?