Celebrate Real American Labor and Ignore Class Warfare Rhetoric of the Hypocrites Playing at Union

The labor movement doesn't have much to celebrate this Labor Day. Congress first established the national holiday in 1894 at unions' behest. Since then, the American labor movement's fortunes rose to their zenith in 1956, when more than three-in-10 workers were union members, only to decline each year after. Today, only 12 percent of workers hold union cards. And if you discount union members who are public employees, barely 7 percent of private-sector workers are union members.

So why has labor unions' membership declined so far in the last 54 years? Some of it has to do with the changing work trends in the United States. We've moved from large-scale industry to service and white-collar jobs, from big employers to small business, and from lifetime tenure to job insecurity and frequent career changes -- all of which makes union organizing more difficult. But the biggest problem for unions has been their own leadership, which has grown increasingly out of touch with the very people those unions hope to represent. - Linda Chavez

I wrote this in 2007 -

This Labor Day - try and rememember that thousands of people struggled and many died for the right to form Unions. These Unions of skilled trades and industrial workers moved America's poor in to the great middle class that created the standard of living enjoyed by no other Nation in History.

Let's not be fooled by the enemies of that standard of living on the political radical Right or the Left. 'Redistribution of Wealth' strategies are the latest phoney labor Ponzi scams - stay true to genuine Labor Unions. Real Labor gives people the skills to move to the next economic level and engages in collective bargaining to protect workers rights, health and welfare and above all safety on the job. Labor is not merely a lobbying tool for slick politcal agendas.


Most of all let's remember the people who stood on the picket lines and suffered the lock-outs to make the American Dream come true.

God Bless the Working Woman and Man! Honor Labor!

With the Last Kennedy Asleep in God's Peace, Perhaps the Democratic Party Will Snap Out of It!

When it came to the white ethnic working class from which his father came, Kennedy just plain didn’t get it. Whether it was court-ordered busing in Boston in the 1970s, or the affirmative action policies that stymied the careers of so many of his family’s traditional voters, Kennedy never grasped the depth of the blue-collar frustration as he veered left. And what infuriated them even more was that so many of them had grown up in homes where on one side of the mantel was a faded photo of the martyred JFK, and on the other the pope, with a dried-up palm frond given out at Mass on Palm Sunday between them.

Howie Carr Boston Herald

The last Kennedy of the Camelot Myth has gone to meet God. The goofballs are doing a Michael Jackson on Ted Kennedy.

As a Democrat, as Catholic, as an Irish Catholic Ted Kennedy was far from my cup of tea. He was huge, he was powerful and he was a presence in American politics, but more so he seemed to command the tiller of Democratic National Party and all the worst elements within it - Planned Parenthood, Identity Politics, Third World Apologists and Cultural Elitists. Those forces allowed Ted Kennedy to amass power and retain it and it was okay with Ted Kennedy. Now he is gone.

The Democratic Party might just snap out of it and return to the principles that JFK and RFK adhered to, but their rudderless younger brother sailed away from.

Real Labor and real working class Americans need leaders in the Democratic Party. Locally, I know many such women and men, but Nationally (Judicial/Executive/Legislative Branches) they do not exist.

PACS -ACORN/SEIU/ACLU and Planned Parenthood control who gets to step on the National stage as a Democrat.

The Media takes its orders from the PACs and Corporations in bed with them. However, now that the last Plantagenet/Kennedy has returned to the mythopoeic fogs and the Democratic Party is spiralling out of control due to the amateurism of the falconers ( Obama/Pelosi/Reed/Dodd/Gore and their masters) in this debate on Health Care Reform, perhaps a leader with genuine principles - A Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, or a Muslim, might rank an offering from Planned Parenthood, SEIU, ACLU,ACORN or GE as beneath her dignity and refuse to parse their lies as truths.

Perhaps, I will get a starting nod from Lovie Smith at the QB spot for the Bears Opener against Green Bay on September 13th. Perhaps.

Why Skilled and Industrial Trades Languish at 12-19% UnEmployment - Read Joel Kotkin's Real Teachable Moment

My family is comprised of very skilled trades workers ( men and women) who voted for Barack Obama. I am the only Hickey to back McCain. I did so because I did not and do not believe that Barack Obama was up to the job as President and that he had some very dicey people pouring poisonous ideas into his very willing ears.

I am a school teacher. I read and my relations work with their hands, heads and hearts. They are stationary engineers, electricians, carpenters, plumbers and pipefitters. Even the Hickey's( Brennans, Walshs, Winters, & etc.)with law degrees hold union cards.

When I work with tools bad things happen - to me and others. Hence, there is an ideological Mason/Dixon line drawn between me and my kin folk born of an inability and avoidance of genuine work on my part.

Hickeys are union people. I am as well - real unions. Politically, the skilled trades unions have historically made pacts with the devil in order to advance the prospects for workers to live with dignity and in safety.

In last forty years, politics betrayed the workers more than any Pinkerton agent or capitalist goon. Political Action Cadres (PACs) masquerading as Labor have co-opted Labor with sheer numbers.

Skilled Trades and Industrial Trades became enthralled by and to tax-payer salaried unions most notably Services Employee International Union (SEIU) which dictates policy to the National Democratic Committee ( Howard Dean) and the White House ( President Obama).

Our economic turmoil is not some glitch, but a planned operation - witness the recent remarks on Health Care by the daffy dimwitted Rep. Jan Schakowsky -

SCHAKOWSKY: “I know many of you here today are single payer advocates and so am I … and those of us who are pushing for a public health insurance don’t disagree with this goal. This is not a principled fight. This is a fight about strategy for getting there and I believe we will.” ( Emphasis my own -You got that right, Jan.)

Single payer ( The Government) Health Reform is the stated end game.

Likewise, One Big Union is the end game for SEIU. Skilled Trades will lose all autonomy and influence, as the jobs continue to disappear. Joel Kotkin a Social Demographer who trained under Michael Harrington and learned the dangers of creeping socialism has long been a critic of the economics of modern Progressives.

His article in Politico is a must read for all Labor People. Click my post title for the full article. Here is a bit of it.

This is Kotkin's genuine teachable moment. Real Labor might learn something.

As a recent New America Foundation report makes clear, precious little has gone to the productive side of the economy that determines the country’s competitiveness and creates many high-paying blue-collar jobs. Infrastructure, a critical component of any productivity-enhancing strategy, has accounted for barely 10 percent of the package.


The results have not been pretty for the productive sectors of the economy. Construction workers now have higher than 19 percent unemployment; jobs in this sector have fallen during the past year in 333 out of 352 metropolitan areas, with more than 200 plunging by double digits. Meanwhile, the hard-pressed manufacturing sector suffers more than 12 percent unemployment.


Why this disinclination to fund the tangible parts of the economy? One reason may be that those working in construction and manufacturing — both blue-collar workers and white-collar professionals — do not wield the same influence in this law review administration as college professors, Service Employees International Union-organized workers or unionized teachers.


One also senses that some militant environmentalists in the administration may be less than enthusiastic about anything associated with the entire carbon-creating part of the economy. Certainly, new factories, natural gas facilities, roads, ports and waterways don’t fit the professed passion of the president’s own science adviser, John Holdren, for the gradual “de-development” of the U.S. and other advanced economies.

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Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25636.html#ixzz0MqRrJpSt

SEIU's Progress Illinois Has Got NUTHIN on U. of C. Strikers - Too Busy Preening about Republic Windows and Squealing to the Feds?

Too bad this guy's union does not respect him,. . . or anyone else. Teamster Local 743 is doing all the heavy-lifting here. Doesn't SEIU have employees affected by the lay-offs at UCMC?

Have SEIU rank & file gotten dumped by University of Chicago Medical Center? NBC Website is all over it. Progress Illinois - ZERO!''

SEIU is a PAC. It uses union dues to buy politica hacks - SEIU bought Blago and recenty purchased Sara Feigenholz for 5th Congressional District. Thus,

SEIU was an early supporter of Blagojevich and his biggest campaign contributor. But Balanoff said he was not involved in any wrongdoing and does not fear the investigation into alleged corruption in state government.

“I am not a target. I am not a subject. I’m not worried one bit,” he said.

Inspiring words from a Leader, those.

However, if SEIU rank and file workers laid off by UCMC with Local 743 want to see some coverage they need to go - not to their paid for site, but NBC

Here's the Post Listing for Progress Illinois during this strike's first day!- SEIU's Marxist Mickey Mouse Club.

IL-5: Feigenholtz Says Daley Should Release Full Wishlist, Quigley Touts Republic Windows Stand
The Most Important Chart You'll Read All Day
Around The Horn
Durbin Recommends Callahan For U.S. Agriculture Post
The Stimulus Czar
IL-5: SEIU Endorses Feigenholtz, Quigley Wants More Transit, Nurses Support Geoghegan
The Fight For School Construction Funds
Facebook Petition Takes Aim At Daley's "Great Chicago Sell-Off"
The Early Bird: February 10, 2009
On Fox Chicago, Roskam Repeats Debunked Anti-Stimulus Argument

They have an answer to everything - racism, sexism, gay & lesbianism, new historicism, classism.

Too bad they never seem to have an answer to exactly what in the hell their membership gets for their dues.

John Fritchey Earns Support and SEIU Set To Buy Feigenholz

John Fritchey tells Mike Madigan, 'SEIU will give Sara about this much money - Yeah, about Mike Quigley's height. It's not much, but it's something.'


SEIU is a PAC disguised as a union. SEIU is largest membership of unskilled and low skilled workers organized to to provide dues used to buy political hacks.

I believe that SEIU is a danger to the American Standard of Living. SEIU depends upon tax-levies to raise the salaries of its tax-salaried employees. Those taxes are paid by pipe-fitters, fire fighters, police officers, nurses ( who manage to avoid SEIU), teachers, engineers, carpenters, mill-wrights, plumbers and electricians. Trades workers stand in danger of losing their autonomy and apprenticeship programs, if they play ball with SEIU.

N.B. Read Chicago Daily Oberserver's many columns about this -

http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/coercion-in-the-name-of-free-choice,2715

John Fritchey wins endorsements. Sara Feigenholz is beholden to SEIU - the class warriors opposed to the American Middle Class.

Organized labor is splitting its vote in the race to succeed Rahm Emanuel in Congress.

AFSCME, the big government workers' union, quietly endorsed state Rep. John Fritchey, D-Chicago, over the weekend, according to Henry Bayer, who heads the union's Chicago regional unit.
[...]
But another labor group which also represents such workers, SEIU, is leaning heavily toward Ms. Feigenholtz, with an announcement scheduled as soon as later this week, according to sources who should know.