United Autoworkers Strike

[pixy0stix]

Sept 18, 2023 15:20:57 GMT -5 Michelle said:

Sept 18, 2023 11:39:37 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Michelle has a long personal history of family poverty thanks to corrupt union strikes saying offensive things and not reading the room so not surprising.

These aren't right wing talking points. This is from my lived experience. Just SOME of my lived experience with union corruption.

You were a kid, and your dad was a scab during a heated union strike. Your dad sold out and of course people were pissed. You have no idea what else was going on, just what your family told you.

This is giving me flashbacks to that one poster who claimed she was poor, but it turned out her family owned a business with employees. 

[cattledogkisses]

Sept 18, 2023 15:28:24 GMT -5 rupertpenny said:

Sept 18, 2023 15:17:45 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

I just left an industry that desperately needs unionization because it asks some really crazy things of people while grossly underpaying them and it’s a widespread problem. It’s also a white collar job that mostly requires a masters or PhD to enter, but the underpay and work conditions are shockingly difficult. 

I think most people need unions and I don’t think I’ve ever not sided with a union. The decoupling of white collar jobs from unions is exactly what allowed us to be in a place where the wealth inequality is worse than it was in the gilded age, which was what gave rise to unions to begin with.

Yes to the bolded! 

And yeah, I'm university non-tenure track faculty. We all have PhD's or some other combination of advanced degrees. We still need a union. We especially need a union since our whole job category was created to undermine protections of tenure. 

I'm so glad that adjuncts, graduate TAs/RAs, and other non-tenure track faculty are starting to unionize.  The way they're treated by universities that rely on their research, teaching, advising, and other contributions, is pretty terrible. 

[goldengirlz]

Sept 19, 2023 9:43:03 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Sept 18, 2023 12:17:04 GMT -5 goldengirlz said:

I made the comment about “doing nothing,” which was as much a dig at my ILs as anything. My FIL in particular is very peak Boomer about getting his due (god forbid anyone mentions taxing his pension), while grumbling about having to pay a nominal health insurance fee every time they go to a restaurant.

Hey, I’m glad they got their pensions so they can live in their 4000 sq ft house and collect a check that’s nearly four times the median wage in the U.S. today. If we’re lucky, that’s my kid’s inheritance. But my comment WAS in support of younger people wanting to have the same benefits. Being a teacher today is as hard as it ever was — if not harder — and we treat people as entitled for wanting the bare minimum. Meanwhile, the Boomers have totally drained our coffers. I mean, good for them, but which generation is overwhelmingly voting for anti-labor policies? Talk about pulling up the ladder behind you …

I can't believe I'm going to defend Boomers, but... there's not a lot of difference between generations and support of unions. It's divided by political party - www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-know-about-gen-zs-support-for-unions/

But that first chart still shows that overall, Boomers have the lowest mean approval rating for unions. Even if it’s divided by party, Boomers are more likely to vote Republican.

And for most of deregulation, when many of the pro-business/pro-Wall Street policies came into effect, Boomer support of unions was far below Gen X.

[carmenere]

Sept 19, 2023 8:11:54 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Sept 18, 2023 14:11:25 GMT -5 seeyalater52 said:

This is where the board’s (and GBCN’s) immense class and financial privilege really starts to show. It’s easy to be progressive and fair when your family isn’t at risk of giving anything up, but a lot of posters do seem to think they have something to lose here, and frankly a lot of it is just regurgitated right wing talking points. Board sympathy is not with blue collar workers because upper middle class white collar professionals believe they deserve more than the people who do “that kind of work.” And perhaps they do but that is not UAW’s problem to fix.

I’m not surprised but it is seriously irritating nonetheless.

This is probably one (of several) reasons the Democrats have lost support from working class white voters in the last several decades. From the days of FDR, when way more Americans worked in manufacturing and were members of unions, to now, when Democrats seem to many to be filled with out-of-touch, privileged, college-educated people. 

And yet many people forget that they only have that privilege because unions provided better wages and benefits for their parents or grandparents. My grandparents weren’t well to do, no one in the family had gone to college, but my mom and all her sisters received college scholarships from the union. So we are staunchly pro-union, even though we need to buy a car soon and we’re dreading the prices going even higher if a strike drags out.

I was recently at a family event sitting between a union laborer and a guy who is semi-retired and working for Amazon, and the subject Amazon workers unionizing came up. The guy basically said “unionizing is stupid because Amazon pays above minimum wage, I’ve got mine and I don’t care about anyone else.” Unfortunately that seems to be the prevailing attitude toward unions these days.

[msmerymac]

Sept 19, 2023 12:00:29 GMT -5 carmenere said:

Sept 19, 2023 8:11:54 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

This is probably one (of several) reasons the Democrats have lost support from working class white voters in the last several decades. From the days of FDR, when way more Americans worked in manufacturing and were members of unions, to now, when Democrats seem to many to be filled with out-of-touch, privileged, college-educated people. 

And yet many people forget that they only have that privilege because unions provided better wages and benefits for their parents or grandparents. My grandparents weren’t well to do, no one in the family had gone to college, but my mom and all her sisters received college scholarships from the union. So we are staunchly pro-union, even though we need to buy a car soon and we’re dreading the prices going even higher if a strike drags out.

I was recently at a family event sitting between a union laborer and a guy who is semi-retired and working for Amazon, and the subject Amazon workers unionizing came up. The guy basically said “unionizing is stupid because Amazon pays above minimum wage, I’ve got mine and I don’t care about anyone else.” Unfortunately that seems to be the prevailing attitude toward unions these days.

Hey, my grandfather was a steamfitter (as was his father and at least one of his brothers). He had an 11th grade education and was a member of a union. The union counted the 2.5 years he was in the navy towards his years of service while calculating his pension. After he died, my grandmother got half his pension, as well as access to very good health insurance at a low cost. Literally the first president both my grandparents voted for was FDR and they voted straight Democrat for the rest of their lives - up to Clinton for my grandfather and Gore for my grandmother. 

But I don't think we can claim the Democratic party AS A WHOLE is "staunchly" pro-union these days, and hasn't been since likely the Reagan administration, if not before. The decline of American manufacturing and the decimation of unions, plus "right to work" legislation, has made it not as appealing of a plank for the majority of Americans, I suppose. Many people want Biden to show up at the picket lines, but I doubt he will. My governor (PA, Dem) has said he will keep PA from becoming a right-to-work state in favor of unions, but the status quo only goes so far, and there are only so many union jobs left here. 

My own father admits that his dad had a great life because of the union (4 bedroom house in the suburbs, station wagon, above ground pool, a boat, 2 kids, a dog), but still votes mostly GOP. :l

[pixy0stix]

Sept 19, 2023 10:50:18 GMT -5 goldengirlz said:

Sept 19, 2023 9:43:03 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I can't believe I'm going to defend Boomers, but... there's not a lot of difference between generations and support of unions. It's divided by political party - www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-know-about-gen-zs-support-for-unions/

But that first chart still shows that overall, Boomers have the lowest mean approval rating for unions. Even if it’s divided by party, Boomers are more likely to vote Republican.

And for most of deregulation, when many of the pro-business/pro-Wall Street policies came into effect, Boomer support of unions was far below Gen X.

According to Pew Research, Boomers are pretty evenly split in their leanings - www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/compare/party-affiliation/by/region/among/generational-cohort/baby-boomer/

I think we've all gotten (aka Millennials [although I'm GenX]) really good about blaming Boomers for all our problems, but the fact is that they're on their way out. Millennials, should they choose to leverage it, could have MUCH more power than Boomers just by sheer population size. But Millennials aren't voting. They're seasoned adults now with adult voices, and they're choosing not to use them.

www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/04/03/millennials-approach-baby-boomers-as-largest-generation-in-u-s-electorate/

[pixy0stix]

Biden becomes first president to join picket line - www.politico.com/news/2023/09/26/biden-joins-striking-auto-workers-on-picket-line-00118171?cid=politico_threads

[pixy0stix]

The UAW president had some choice words to say about Trump on CNN (link to video is in the story) - www.rawstory.com/trump-auto-workers-billionaires/

Of note: "I don't think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for. He serves the billionaire class and that's what's wrong with this country."

[MrsAxilla]

Sept 26, 2023 19:04:06 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

The UAW president had some choice words to say about Trump on CNN (link to video is in the story) - www.rawstory.com/trump-auto-workers-billionaires/

Of note: "I don't think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for. He serves the billionaire class and that's what's wrong with this country."

Did you see his rally tomorrow is at a NON-union manufacturer?  Lololol!

Also - you don’t strike over safety gloves, important as they may be.  That’s a non-economic issue so the company would simply replace all those workers and move on with their profits.

[pixy0stix]

The strike expanded today - www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uaw-workers-fords-kentucky-truck-plant-strike-2023-10-11/

[fernweh]

Stellantis and Ford have reached tentative agreements with the UAW that will give employees a 25% pay increase (up to 30% with COLA) over the 4.5 year contracts.