thegreekdog wrote:Juan_Bottom wrote:thegreekdog wrote:pimpdave wrote:thegreekdog wrote:
I wonder why doctors love Medicare.
By the way pimpdave - I don't have any of those things. You know why? BECAUSE I'M NOT IN A UNION! Duh, duh, duhhhhhh
You have a living wage baby boy. Also, social security. And safety controls only matter to real men with real jobs. Not sissies sitting in offices.
Yeah, but did unions give me that living wage, social security, and safety controls? Nooooooo...
Yes.
Interesting. I have some follow-up questions requiring explanation:
(1) How did unions give me a living wage? Did they take... [deep breath]... attend all my classes from kindergarten through law school, take all my tests, take my SATs and LSATs, apply for my job, work at my firm for me for upwards of 12 hours a day?
(2) How did unions give me social security? Did they take my money and give it to the social security fund, which gives my money to people already on social security, ensuring that I will not get my money back? Money, incidentally, which I could have invested on my own.
(3) Let's take one safety control. Fire alarms. Did unions proceed with cases against companies that failed to install fire alarms? Did they hire their own attorneys for those cases? Did the unions lobby state and local government to ensure that fire alarms were installed in every building?
(4) Are you being cheeky?
(1) How did George Washington give you railways?
Even up to 1933 we had 2 million child laborers in this country. In 1835 we had, I believe, the largest child-labor strike in the county's history in Paterson, New Jersey, where kids went on strike for an 11 hour work day, for 6 days a week. That was an improvement for them. Unions busted up child labor practices in this country, and unions supported child education. In fact, don't most teachers belong to Unions? So Unions taught you how to read and write.
The AFL, in their first meeting, passed a resolution to ban children under 14 from being legally employed. That was in 1881. They lead the fight all the way until 1938, when they helped get the Fair Labor Standards Act passed.
As for working 12 hour days, that's irrelevant. But congratulations, for applying for a job?
But to answer your first question, everyone knows that Unions were the ones who pushed for minimum wage laws. Do I really need to recount to you about how everyone used to work 60 hour weeks with no overtime, no benefits, and for $1.30 a day? In fact, in some places, you had to pay for an application to work, or pay a reference company. Then, for no reason, you'd get fired after a month, so you'd have to pay for the reference or application all over again. It was common practice, and I could go on and on about all this crap.
This is all assuming that you weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth.
2) Social Security has it's origin in Corporations of the late 1800s and early 1900s. They used pension and insurance plans to get the best workers to come to them. Later, Insurance Companies and Unions both hijacked the plans.
Insurance companies realized they could make more money on things like life insurance if they could get a corporation to sign all of their employees up for it, and have them all pay in.
And Unions saw retirement packages and worker's comp to be desirable for reasons that are self-evident.
But by the late 20s most of these plans had failed with the advent of the Great Depression. The ones that didn't fail were government pension plans, and that's how we got on the road to Social Security. Most of the plans that existed before the Depression favored the Corporations that offered them anyway. The Corporations weren't obligated to honor them, and they could stop paying anytime they wanted. Because of this, the pension plans sometimes had the opposite effect that the companies desired, that is, they weren't able to control their own worker's who knew the benefit's may not be honored.
Then along comes Rockefeller in the 20s who sees pensions, social insurance, ect, as his best chance to keep unions out of his businesses. His plans are successful, and businesses and Unions both learn a thing or two from him, but the Depression still wipes out most Corporate-controlled pension plans. Then some Railroad company takes away it's worker's pensions, or a portion of it (I can't remember which) and the railway workers took direct action to get them back. At that time, the AFL opposed a federal pension plan, because they were trying to work with their Corporations to keep their private pensions funded. But seeing the success of the railroad workers, they stopped blocking attempts by members to nationalize a pension plan for everyone.
Finally, the businesses that had been offering private pensions saw that it would be smart to support the National Pension Movement, because it would save them money and make the pensions more reliable for their workers, thus, win-win.
In the end Social Security had a huge "advisory panel" made up of corporation's lobbyists, labor leaders, and others. Social Security was something everyone worked for, and generally speaking, everyone supported.
3) Asch Building, at 23-29 Washington Place, now known as the Brown Building
Worker's died in factory fires because it was common practice to lock them in until they made enough sh*t for their masters. And to "keep them from stealing." This lead to fire exits and fire alarms, which Unions did fight for. It's almost offensive to me that people don't know about this... like not knowing what the Revolutionary War was about. This fire was one of the opening shots of the Labor Movement, even though it happened as late as 1911.
The one stairway between the floors filled with fire, and the women who worked at the factory tried to seek protection on the fire escape, but it was poorly built and probably broken before the fire, and at least 20 women fell 100ft to concrete when it collapsed on them.
The company responsible paid something like $20 per death, because the women were mostly immigrants and that must have meant that their lives were worth nothing.
http://todayinlaborhistory.tumblr.com/
