I decided to make a longer post about labor management after a student comment on my previous post. I compared strikes to war. The commecnt was that I was a bit overboard, really?

Read about the Battle of the Overpass on how Ford 'security guards' treated Union Organizers.

Read how many people including women and children were killed in early efforts to organize the

United Mine Workers.

Apparently students are not aware that early efforts were indeed a matter of life and death. Such incidents are still prominent on union web sites. Memories die hard, just like those early strikers.

One recalls that our consitution forbids a monarchy of any kind in the USA.  If you think about it, being a subject of a King or Queen was indeed forced servictude. Consider the plight of those affected in the movie Braveheart. This is why William Wallace led a revolt by the Scotch against the King at that time, 800 yeras ago.

Six hundred years later, the Scotch were still not doing much better. Ken Follett details their plight in his historical novel A Place Called Freedom.  It may surprise you to learn that the Scotch were in servitude working in mines in England and hijacked on slave ships to do the same thing here.  This is a shocking story of brutality of man to man.

charles Dickens describes the horrors of being born into a 'workhouse' in Oliver Twist.

And so the pendulum has swung the other way in a short time from a historic standpoint.    But reading of past horors will quickly make one glad to have been born here and now.

Other important events were not only the creation of the National Labor Relations Board and the Taft Hartley Act regarding union organizaing.

Now the gains of unions are being challenged by the right to work laws of non union shop states like Alabama and Mississippi.  Alabama has snagged the Hyundai and the new Airbus plants.  The entire auto industry has moved south out of union shop states, places where workers must join a union to work. This is why Ohio and Michigan are battleground states in this election. The unions would like to turn the clock back to 1965 when they ruled the auto manufacturers. but as Nissan honda, toyota have gained power and GM Ford Chrysler have lost market share, the fortunes of the UAW have sunk also.

Actually this is a reflection of what the unions wanted, more consideration of the workers. That modern companies have recognized this necessityis actually a triumph but a biter one as companies will no longer readily locate in michigan. 

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4 responses to “More on Labor Management”

  1. Yovela Rico Avatar
    Yovela Rico

    You are right, while I have studied briefly the history of labor unions, I have not looked into the deep brutality of such strikes. I was reffering however, to current matters. I have been involved with labor unions in San Antonio and have not in my lifetime seen deaths, shooting, beatings or bombings related to strikes in the United States. Most of the rallies and meetings have been fairly peaceful from what I’ve seen. I know however, that is not the case in other parts of the world. Of course, I do see now, how a comparison to war is just. Thanks for elaborating on the subject.

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  2. Dennis Elam Avatar
    Dennis Elam

    Yovela
    THanks for going the distance and reading some of the hyperlinks.
    As you will see I enjoy history and do my best to make it come alive so to speak! I designed the blog for just this sort of exchange! Thanks again for participating, I am sure your classmates will be shortly joining the discussion…..

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  3. Cresencio Davila Avatar
    Cresencio Davila

    I think about Toyota and the fact on how well they pay their employees in San Antonio and the working conditions are okay (according to a few personal sources that work there). Also, I think about the recent layoffs, and the fact that Toyota stepped up and decided to pay their employees during this layoff, and I ask myself – Why Labor Unions? In my opinion, Labor Unions represent a distrust for the companies their workers are employed for. How can any reasonable attempt be made for companies to run the business in a reasonable manner when they have to worry about conflicts from within?

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  4. Dennis Elam Avatar
    Dennis Elam

    My opinion on the necessity of unions changed when I witnessed the collapse of the ownership of hte oil buisness in the 1980s. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs, a few people got rich off take overs. not that many years later, there was no one left to work in the industry, this is not way to run a railroad. The problem is that both sides lack a long term vision, thee kind Deming describes in TQM.
    ON the other hand as Deavid E Davis has observed, GM has laid off tens of thousands of people. THere is still little evidence that they kept the right ones….That is the problem with capitalixm, creative destruction, but attempts to control and regulate do not seem to have improved anything either.Over 60 years after WW II Russia has yet to produce a competitive consumer good, well other than vodka and AK 47s.

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