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04.22.10 - 8:49 AM
It's A Fear Thing
Despite the deaths of 29 miners and a slew of bad press, the incorrigible Massey Energy bosses are still conducting harsh business as usual - denying time off to miners to attend friends' funerals, rejecting makeshift memorials, dismissing criticism of its horrific safety record - with the threat of job loss in an economy they essentially run. These thugs deserve to work in one of their own mines.
"When we were all union, if there was something that came up, it wasn't no problem at all to shut that mine down until everything was fixed. Non-union [workers], they ain't got that right."
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28 Comments so far
Show AllBlair Mountain redux.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
"denying time off to miners to attend friends' funerals, rejecting makeshift memorials"
Only the lowest scum would do this. While I am NOT a fan of the corrupt unions, this is a fine example where honest unions are needed.
If it weren't for unions, workers in this country would still be sub teen, work 16 hours a day, have NO vacation or sick time, get fired at the drop of a hat, and have NO protections on the job whatsoever. You wouldn't have a hope of living past the 40's, and that is just the way business wants thing to be here. Don't kid yourself, the unions aren't the enemy, no matter how loudly the business interests scream they are.
Listen to Limbaugh bitch about the union, like it's THEIR fault that a NON Union mine has safety issues. If it weren't for the union, we would have situations like they have in China, where they lose 50+ workers in every accident. If this WERE a union mine, this "accident" wouldn't have happened, or at least not to the extent that it did.
Are unions corrupt? Certainly. But no more corrupt than the companies they are trying to protect people from. And their job as a union is not to make a ton of money for themselves (which is the ONLY reason the companies exist in the first place), but to protect the workers from unscrupulous and greedy owners and managers.
This company should be shut down, it's owners and managers jailed for the rest of their lives for MURDER, which, after over 1,000 safety violations and NO attempt to fix the problems, is exactly what this is. 29 cases of murder. If ANY of US did this same thing, killed 29 people, we would get the death penalty. The corporation doesn't even get a warning that means anything.
These owners and managers are scum, pure and simple. They deserve jail time for the rest of their lives for callous indifference to human life. But thanks to corporate rules, nothing will happen. And THAT is NOT the union's fault.
WJM
Not all unions are corrupt or sell out their members. Mostly its the largest. SEIU is so corrupt its a wonder the members don't trip over it. Andy Stern looks as if he is going to bail before charges surface. The AFL-CIO sold out its members, ditto the auto workers.
Most smaller unions do a wonderful job and keep things fair and level.
"If this WERE a union mine, this "accident" wouldn't have happened, or at least not to the extent that it did."
Absolute truth. No miner should be without a union, this is an area that should have no leeway. And no cozy relationships between mine owners/management and regulators.
I lay the blame on Congress and this administration. This IS their job.
I think your blame is misplaced. You do know that the scum bag who runs this company was W's head of mine safety, right? And you do know that he set out to remove every rule that impeded his ability to profit, regardless of how many workers had to die to get it, right? And you do know that more regulations were removed during W's time than during ANY other president's time, right?
Obama was left a huge lump of shit the day he walked into the office. It dwarfs anything that any president in history has had to deal with. The fact that he didn't get to mine safety in time to keep this from happening is not his fault. He has 30 years of republican class war's effects to deal with, and you can't do EVERYTHING first. After the destruction of the last 30 years, how do you suggest he change EVERYTHING at once?
Remember, the auto workers went to the table every time and gave up benefits, wages, pensions, and damn near everything asked of them "to save the company". It was ALWAYS a matter or labor being the problem, when it was management all the time. But the unions were dealing in good faith, while the owners and managers weren't. In fact, there are those of us who believe that they were TRYING to kill off the American car industry so they could pull a WalMart on us. And they nearly did it, too.
Was giving up that much a good idea? Not really, but it was the ONLY option left to them. And it did keep people in their jobs instead of being unemployed.
The thing is that this is an us vs them situation, and without the unions (as corrupt as they may be) we are on our own. We as individuals have NO power at all in the marketplace, so it's a matter of survival that we DO unionize. In a group, we are FAR stronger than we are by ourselves. Ben Franklin said so at the founding of this country, and even Aesop had a fable about it. In unity there is strength, adn we need MORE of that, not less.
Just remember, together we negotiate, alone we grovel.
WJM
"You do know that the scum bag who runs this company was W's head of mine safety, right?"
I did not! Jesus. Shame on me! That explains a lot.
"And you do know that more regulations were removed during W's time than during ANY other president's time, right?"
Absolutely! But because Pelosi and Obama have made not one move to return the laws removed, to put those rules and regulations back, to change trade and tax policies as they said they would, after a year and a half, I blame them.
As for the auto workers, when they allowed the retirees to take the hit rather than the current workers, they lost me for good. GM won't make it anyway.
"Ben Franklin said so at the founding of this country, and even Aesop had a fable about it. In unity there is strength, and we need MORE of that, not less."
I absolutely could not agree with you more. But this Congress and this President are dividing us further and if they follow their announced course, they will divide the country to its detriment.
"Just remember, together we negotiate, alone we grovel"
All too true for the American worker. And thats who I care about, donate time and money for. Without them our country will become 2nd. rate and kids will not get the chances I got. I know its fashionable to trash the US and call it all sorts of things but the truth is, if you travel around the world it soon becomes evident what the real truth is. If a union betrays workers they are no different than a government or a company that betrays them. I don't care what label anyone sticks on something, liars talk and truth walks.
I am not in any way anti-union per se to be clear.
I just can't aggree that Obama and the democrats are anything but arrogant, selfish, opportunists. So we will just disagree on them.
Maybe Obummer could mandate them a Union, like Healthcare. Starting Monday SEIU can be the new Mine-Workers Union! They'll have the privledge of paying 5% dues. maybe give'em purple glow-lights so they can see their Purple tee-dhirts on Wednesdays.
And when they get blown-up they can call the nearest SEIU call-Center and get a grevience filed. (Maybe) as SEIU has no tracking system for grievences who would know.
The Bosses will love that, Bosses love SEIU!
>^^<
"Bosses love SEIU!"
An undeniable fact.
No tracking system for grievances? Outstanding. But are you sure. I just spoke with a friend who used to be an organizer for an SEIU affiliated union. He says that they did have a tracking system then. (Not computerized, but a system.)
Joe
With over 100,000 members only a numeric based computerized system would be of any use. And I'd always suspect an orginizer with that outfit. They trained ACORN you know! So lying isn't just easy it's a nessity.
I made the mistake of blind trust, been being retaliated on for two years now. I didn't give up on them but they surly left me up-a-creek. The system needs so many fixes I hardly know where to start. Did your Activest tell you SEIU doesn't support one member one vote! Talk about anti-democtatic!
>^^<
The FBI and other government agencies, often in cahoots with organized crime, targetted leftists in the unions and drove them out. In general, leftists were less open to corruption than others. That was a part of the decline, starting in the fifties and continuing today. The remaining union leaders, self-protective and driven by careerism, made too many deals and concessions, particularly short-changing younger workers.
The threat of jobs going overseas was the background for these capitulations. I do not know a quick and easy fix for that phenomenon, but we really needed some kind of dis-incentive. In the least, we should not have given tax breaks and taxpayer money for industries to stay and employ people, and then let the companies off the hook when they failed to produce jobs, or just up and left. In the long run, organizing workers overseas will have to make it less attractive for capital to flow there.
Joe
Good points, WJM. Thanks.
And I'll bet the "scum" sit in church on Sunday, pontificate about family and are pillars of the community.
Joe
In any organized group, whatever it be, and including the holier than thou religions, you'll find corruption. As a Union member, I've heard plenty of negativity toward Unions. All coming from right wing political party members who, while they might never have joined a Union, still got and enjoyed the benefits the same as all who did join. I never heard of any of them ever turning down those benefits. I wonder how many mine workers, or their families, are still happy the Unions no longer there to protect them? Knowing the way their minds work though, I haven't any doubt they still are.
WJM
"Ben Franklin said so at the founding of this country, and even Aesop had a fable about it. In unity there is strength, adn we need MORE of that, not less.
Just remember, together we negotiate, alone we grovel."
That is the idea. Divide the country - not of course the members of the democrats' and the republicans' Parties. They are bonded.
Divided, we the 'rabble' grovel. Refusal to be sent to murder in foreign lands.. but, rather, stay at home and have a yellow stripe of HONOUR painted on our backs - now that would inject a jab of abject fear into the veins of the rulers? A warning of things to come.
How many soldiers would be willing to paint a YELLOW strip upon their own uniform and walk away. The beginning. Unions are for the needy, quite obviously not for the greedy!
The right wing in this country has been playing divide and conquer on us all for the last 30 years. What do you think the ENTIRE republican platform has been since Reagan? He started it off, if you remember. The drug users were the whole problem in this country. And then it was the homeless (who Reagan must have liked a lot, because he helped make so many of them) who were the whole problem. Then it was the gays. Then it was (fill in your favorite minority group here). Then, my personal favorite, when he made a speech that said that it was our RIGHT to hate whoever we wanted, especially if it was our neighbor, or even a family member.
Then, in 94 when congress was swamped with republicans, they started off their reign by publicly announcing that they wouldn't even TALK to democrats for the first 90 days. And since then, it's been the Unions that are the cause of ALL labor problems, even though it's the unions that KEPT as many jobs here as we still have. What with the deregulation and the tax breaks for screwing Americans that have been passed, it's been nothing BUT divide and conquer ever since.
And since NAFTA, we have been told that we should hate and deport all the illegals, who are NOW the whole problem, just like drug users were 28 years ago. It doesn't matter that NAFTA has destroyed Mexico's economy even worse that the damage it's done to us, leaving those people NOWHERE to go but here, those people are the problem! To hell with FIXING or better yet, abolishing NAFTA. It's those horrible, non English speaking people who are the problem.
No, the REAL problem is the rich class, continuing the class war they started 3 decades ago. And I think it's time we fought back, stripped them of their ill gotten gains and kick them off shore, like to a small desert island somewhere. If God truly wants them to be rich, like so many of them seem to think, then they will be again. If they are stuck on that island, they won't hurt US any more, and neither will anyone else, assuming that we pass laws that keep the rich from doing BS like this.
It's a real drag when the worst enemy that you have is your own fellow countryman. Too bad they don't see themselves as having any allegiance to the rest of us at all.
Livestock are disposable. Chickens, hogs, steers, coal miners, farmers, engineers, there is no difference. All are costs to be remorselessly contained.
If you don't like it, fight back. You'll lose, but at least you will have gone down fighting.
Fight back. We may win. No fightback. Definitely lose.
Joe
Prayer will not help you. Corporations are the new gods, and they're not listening. They don't have to.
Have no doubt, if the workers take action and shut down the mines, the state and federal governments will side with the owners. They may pay lip service to the workers, but they support the owners. Nothing will change until we get the corporatists and corporate influence out of politics. That means pretty much a whole sale cleaning of the House, Senate, the White House and public financing of federal elections. Lip service and prayers do not protect workers.
Gee--maybe they should unionize.
over half the miners are probably anti-union. brain-washed or something.
I just remembered last night that a few years back, I was doing some research into mine subsidence for work and was reading a paper in the 1929 ASME journal. the article immediately following the one I was reading (sinkhole progression above abandoned underground iron mines)was an actuarial study on mine fatalities over the preceding decade.
table after table for every mine in every coal-producing state, strip mines and underground mines. the data was reduced to a single number in the last column of the tables: tons of coal per fatality.
thats right. how much a miner is worth to the penny at every mine operating at the time. Some were valued in the millions of tons some were in the thousands.
duplicate deleted
Joe
In general, a miner is worth less than a piece of machinery. Replacements are free.
Joe
Forget about the damn SiEU or whatever that outfit is called, working people need unions to have even a slight chance to get a level playing field with the companies. That's the real deal! We have to see this as a struggle against hierarchy of any kind, and the fight for unions is just one of them to get the parasitic power elites off the people's backs and move toward a truly egalitarian, caring and sharing society like people had over 10,000 years ago before hierarchies existed, which was for about 90 to 95 per cent of the time people were on this planet as homo sapiens. We have to reclaim traditional progressive values that allowed the human race to adapt and survive or perish from this earth.
AD
Of course, the Westboro Baptist Church will be protesting the miners' funerals, doubtless articulating their belief that the mine collapsed because god hates fags:
http://www.godhatesfags.com/schedule.html
one irony is that the USA was founded "to form a more perfect union".