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With Fair Chance, Workers Choose Unions
Writing in Health Leaders Media, John Commins takes a look at the recent successes nurses have had in winning a voice on the job with National Nurses United (NNU) and finds that, once again, when workers are given a fair opportunity to join a union, they do.
Union supporters believe that more U.S. workers would join unions if they could. They don’t, the explanation goes, because these workers haven’t the leverage to bargain with management, especially in a weak economy plagued by high unemployment.
But because of the high demand for skilled nurses, nurses know “they don’t have to tolerate a dysfunctional workplace.”
They can vote with their feet and find a new job elsewhere, or they can vote to organize. NNU’s success suggests that when workers are given the chance to organize, usually they will. That annoys a lot of people who want to believe that unions are no longer needed in this era of enlightened management.
Read more here.
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19 Comments
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Yes, it is true that… “With Fair Chance, Workers Choose Unions”… and employers have always known that.
And why haven’t the employers learned how to meet the needs of their workers by treating their workers decently and fairly as “members of the team” that the management always says workers must think of themselves?
The managements themselves need to look to the way employment is conducted itself, for the way things are in this world where workers are not even considered to be natizens once they cross the property line!
The ideology of “free-will hiring and working and firing or quitting” is not the same as treating workers decently as members of the team, because the present attitude uses that abusive term “human resources” as if employees are things… don’t like a typewriter – get rid of it. Don’t like an employee – fire him or her! Want more profit – fire some employees and make the other employees do the same work they have to do plus the work the fired employees once did!
Who is to blame for the current anti-capitalism undercurrent in societies around the world? It is the peole who made capitalism be a dirty word who are causing that populist reaction! Who is it who made being loyal to one’s occupation and employer be a tort against everyone in the working class? It is the business owners and their managers who regard people as being “things” and who regard decent livable wages as being extortion to their multiple-millions of individual personal salaries and perks and bonuses.
How can anyone be so stupid as to be astonished when they see that WORKING PEOPLE want to ORGANIZE to DEFEND THEMSELVES and to PROTECT THEMSELVES against the tyranny of the power of business owner economic exploitation and abuse.
As my protest sign that I have carried several times, in Keokuk Iowa and in Iowa City at various times, says:
LABOR SOLIDARITY
UNITING TO END
ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION
AND END ABUSE
AS WE DEFEND
DEMOCRACY !
If you have a secret election with workers allowed to vote for a union or not they will not vote for a union. WHY?
Because they are not allowed to vote even though the company unwillingly obeys the law to let them vote… but the law cannot stop the employer from creating false reasons for firing those workers. Look what is happening at Mal-Wart SweartoStupidity !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know alot of people who want to join unions, but corporations use strong arm tactics and fear to stop them. The laws have went against labor for to long. Sweartogod you fuel doubt and question so much on here on everything..you hate unions then give back everything unions have fought for, go join a tea beggars party see how far the Koch brothers take you.
I belong to a union. I do not believe in communist tactics or Socialism. yOU ARE BEING CONNED BY tHE SOCIALIST PRESIDENT WHO IS DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY. 4 MORE YEARS OF THIS CRAP AND WE ARE DOOMED.
The ones that don’t vote for unions , have been brainwashed into believing all the lies about unions. That , and the fact that most of the jobs today , are warehouse jobs where they just move Chinese products around. The companies can move their warehouses to the next county , or next state, just to get lower wages , and no benefits etc.
after reading these comments for several months now – I am convinced that sweartogod has BROWN
after reading these comments for several months now – I am convinced that sweartogod has BROWN EYES
Yes I do. and I also have a mind that was not brainwashed by marxist ideas or policies like you have.
Retaliation against whistleblowers. All the more reason to join a union. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-05/workers-report-pressure-to-break-ethics-rules-retaliation-rises.html?cmpid=yhoo
Is it just a coincidence that all the anti-union rhetoric/propaganda (originating from Wall St) came around the same time that BigCorporate started laying off workers, forcing others into early retirement, taking away pensions, etc? Things that make you go hmmm…
TammiD: I also wondered why the apparent anti-union rhetoric almost in lockstep by the Limbaugh, Hannity, Kudlow, Stossel, Beck, Varney crowd until I found out many of them have attended events affiliated with the billionaire Koch brothers. After that it becomes clear who the Gov. Walkers & Christies of our country really owe their allegiance to. We will continue to see anti-union legislation until the bought & paid for Murdoch controlled media, the politicians and yes even the (swearto) shills who mindlessly regurgitate Fox “News”? talking points.
who mindlessly regurgitate Fox “News”? talking points ARE EXPOSED!
…We demand of L. Fides, to what extent are ” working people “,
different, from ” non-working people ” ?. Around here it’s said,
” if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
Mr. LF, you may be old enough to remember these times. When I graduated HS in 52 I immedately went to work in a Union bakery. I was making helper wages, but they were the same wages that helpers with much more time than I had were making. I worked for that bakery for 32 years, got married, bought a house, raised two kids and helped them through college using mostly my wages. There was another bakery a few blocks away. They paid about 10 cents an hour for the same work. Why? The answer is simple. In those days you paid close to union wages in order to retain experienced help. When the union boats rose, so did the boats of the scabs. Everyone benefitted from unions, not just the members. By the way, most of the really good government programs and social safety nets come from some union involvement and urging.
I LOVE it! Corporate butt-kiss, Swearto, is no longer even pretending to be a “union guy.” Now he even speaks out, for his corporate masters, against the very concept of unions!
I will tell who is deceived..it’s the people who believe we are now in a socialist society. Do people realize that the Bush administration caused this downfall, eight year of deception and lies. Worst recession in history with major job lost. Six million manufacturing jobs to China and deficit record high gas prices. Tax breaks for the rich…bailouts for banks. How do you really expect Obama to fix eight years of bad decisions. Don’t you see the war against labor by the Republican party and the tea beggars. Sweartogod you say you are union you better check your heart and where it lays. Every post I have seen here you are against. Really…go join the tea beggars and give up all your union rights and privileges. You don’t have union pride or heart. Shame on you
@sweartogod..when the corporations are running this country you will see who is socialist. Your rights will be gone..don’t want what you wish for..you might get it. Tell me what corporations have done for you..they didn’t give you what you have because they wanted too..it’s called collective bargaining.
Swearto—you are a unionist only in the sense that those hopeless scum that crossed picket lines when we all joined together to fight for our rights. That is a SCAB!! They got this name because they are the scum that stopped the boss from bleeding when we have to withdraw our labor. You oppose every single issue, even the most basic right of workers to join a union and have that union recognized.
Redbaiting, as Swearto is always ready to do, along with racism, are the stock & trade of your type of SCABS! You the rest of us, socialist ideas were at the center of the early, tough union drives, with left wing organizers being some of the most courageous in fighting against difficult odds for worker’s rights. Left, Socialist & yes, Communist workers played heroic roles in the history of our labor movement. One central effort that always caractorized the left leaders were that when racist idea ruled, and African American, Asian workers were banned from the early craft unions, these folks fought for the principle of unity of all workers, against racism. Left leaders also fought, as well, for industrial organization, for all workers at any shop being organized, to be brought into the union, instead of dividing workers up by crafts. The left, as well, fought for the rights of women workers. After WWII, when the McCarthy Era developed in our nation, these folks were pushed out of the labor movement & Taft-Hartley, which banned most solidarity actions, was passed. Years later, a new generation of left, socialist, communist and radical unionists fought to organize rank & file movements that brought a new level of fighting democracy to our labor movement. When someone jumps off attacking left ideas, without knowledge of the role of the left in our working class labor history, we need to let them know these facts.
(Swearto, as a SCAB and corporate butt-wipe, doesn”t qualify)!