Thursday, July 27, 2017

Talking to Cadillac Man About the State of Confusion #Unions #Police #UAW #NAFTA

A union in America is likely to be called a brand by MSM but mostly because they like buzzwords which create illusions which aren't true.  That attempt to turn everything into a commodity is a symbol of their weakness rather than their lucidity.


American unions brought you the weekend and it never would have happened if corporate America had its way.  Every form of life at every level of its existence is Socialist except for corporations which are tyrannical, non-democratic monoliths so you tell me which one is unnatural.

The police union isn't Socialist but it's highly socialized and mostly because it's a shitty job so no-one else wants to do it.

Junior Woodchuck:  I would love to be a cop!

America doesn't need cops like Junior Woodchuck but rather it needs those who feel a duty to be cops and the psychos should stay home to stick to playing Grand Theft: Auto on their Playstations.


The problem with any union isn't its design or intention but rather it's just as easy to corrupt the union management as it is to do the same thing in Washington or any corporation.  Show them the money and they will follow you home no matter what your purpose.  Debate corporate morality all you like but it won't reconcile selling military weaponry to Saudi Arabia (e.g. all recent Presidents back at least to Clinton).


The police union is one of the worst since they cover their poor performers instead of purging them to ensure the overall quality of police officers in America.  The consequence is we don't trust cops because we don't know which ones are trigger-happy lunatics who can't sort their sexual problems.

In many ways, the poor performance of the police union exemplifies the corruption of the modern unions but it shouldn't be such surprise when there's such manifest corruption in America in just about any direction and all of it from grasping for more money.


The United Auto Workers has done a fairly good job of representing since a union brother / sister from the UAW should be qualified to work on automobiles in any factory.  Possibly because they do represent relatively well is why they're attacked the most frequently and almost invariably using the same stereotype of a union worker who pushes two buttons in his work shift and calls it a day.

That phony stereotype defies any kind of logic yet it was used with great success since that image stuck and CM even used it tonight in referring to a union worker.  Proof of the shallowness of the stereotype is the fact the car corporations sent those union jobs overseas or Mexico so they could employ cheaper workers and yet the prices of the cars did not go down.

Moreover, the loss of those union jobs meant many people could no longer afford to buy cars and the sales numbers show that.


U.S. car sales from 1951 to 2016 (in units)




Statista:  U.S. car sales from 1951 to 2016 (in units)


Here's a Rockhouse hat tip to Bill Clinton, NAFTA, and Neoliberals.  Good fuckin' job.


And you tell me you're seriously not concerned about the Age or Robos which will take even more jobs?  Perhaps you shouldn't be surprised if I suggest you might want to wake the fuck up.  (RT:  Trump lauds potential 13k new jobs in Wisconsin Foxconn factory, but robots may land all the gigs)


Cadillac Man is a bit to the right of me since he wasn't too much defensive of the unions and this pitch is an extension of our talk rather than any verbatim reflection of it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My father in law is one if those stereotype UAW members.
He was a "people mover" at the end of his career. That meant he transported a small crew to a location and raised them up to the work site high above the factory floor. Then waited to lower them down for lunch and return the
them after lunch. And lower them down at the end of a shift.
He at the time 25 years ago earned over $50 per hour not including benefits.
He also was allowed furlough while while awaiting the new contract so he could early retire at 55. During that furlough he was paid 75% of his hourly pay. He was on furlough for 2 years before his early retirement
I was hired at a trucking company in the 70s. I was paid $18 to unload trucks. I would get paid 8 hours to unload if there were no trucks I would be sent home but paid anyway. I was not a union member but an under 90 (if I was allowed to work more than 90 days I could join the union. Tje union would not allow me to eork more than 90 to protect tbe full time union members so at 89 days I was let go.
So with most stereotypes they are usually evolved from some basis of fact

Unknown said...

There's some basis in fact to just about everything but I don't accept the validity of the stereotype overall and one of the biggest supports for the contention only came to me last night that whacking unions really hasn't made the price of anything go down. In general the reason I have never believed it is no-one would be able to afford cars if all the union builders of it were shiftless bums.

I'm not at all personally defensive for unions but we all have stories and I do know Yevette was one of the union sisters in a different type of work and she was proud to turn out the best stuff she could. CM mentioned last night the unions have done a poor job of public relations since people such as Yevette weren't well-publicized but the stereotype of the union slacker was everywhere.

The surprise for me in this one came from the stats on the cars when I saw the drop from the start of Bill Clinton's administration to present and that brought the oh, hell no reaction.

The discussion last night wasn't much at all the context of those bad Republicans since we get it that Republicans don't want unions, regardless of whether that's valid. However, when Democrats are busting down unions as has been happening with Neoliberals / Centrists then we need the tomahawks and war paint and not for Republicans but rather for policing our own union and bringing a quality reputation back to the Democratic Party which no-one would credit to it now.