Posted on 12/01/2017 4:29:09 PM PST by mdittmar
In his commentary "Unions ignore long history of excluding minorities from jobs," Missouri Rep. Shamed Dogan (R) highlighted past discriminatory practices in organized labor’s history as reason for implementing our state’s currently pending "right to work" law, along with other anti-worker measures such as ending prevailing wage and minimum wage requirements.
To claim that unions continue to exclude minorities and are detrimental to working people is ridiculous and erroneous in the face of the facts. The truth is, enacting right to work and other anti-worker laws would only hurt the minority communities Dogan seeks to protect, by lowering wages, reducing benefits and limiting career opportunities.
Dogan claims that right to work is the key to helping black workers and stimulating the economy. This is contradictory to the racist history of such laws, which were originally conceived by a Texas lobbyist named Vance Muse. He hated unions, claiming "white women and white men will be forced into organizations with African apes…whom they will have to call 'brother' or lose their jobs."
From the beginning, right to work was designed to weaken unions and divide workers with a goal of keeping black workers poor and weakening their fight for equality and justice.
Today, more black workers than ever are represented by a union. According to the Economic Policy Institute’s August 2017 report, roughly 10.6 million of the 16.3 million workers covered by a union contract are women and/or people of color, and 14.5% of black workers age 18-64 are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, compared with 12.5% of white workers and 10.1% of Hispanic workers.
Even with this progress, we know there is much more that has to be done. This is why you will find the Coalition for Black Trade Unionists standing up for jobs and social justice, and fighting for all workers in the union halls and in the community.
Workers formed unions to demand a fair share and to make sure they had a voice. The world’s wealthiest individuals total only 8.6% of the global population but own 85.6% of global wealth. Without unions, we will continue to see global wealth rise for a precious few CEOs and special interests, while workers’ wages drop. This is what happens when workers are denied a voice.
St. Louis’ black community knows this all too well. That’s why an overwhelming majority of us voted against right to work back in 1978, and that’s why we’re working to make sure it fails again in 2018.
The CBTU joins me in calling on Dogan to do more than attack unions and hurt our middle class. Denying workers a voice on the job is not the way to stimulate the economy, but putting money in the average working person’s pocket allows them to spend their money locally and revitalize businesses.
I’ll close with the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who understood the importance of unions, not only to the black community, but to our society as a whole:
In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as "right to work." It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone. Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.
LOL.
Union dues are designed to drain your paycheck and enrich the union bosses, and if you get laid off the union continues to assess dues without being of any use in finding you employment and income to support said dues.
Beau worked a union job for decades, rising to Project Manager. He couldn’t FIND minorities that would do the work required to get into the Trades.
It was frustrating for him.
P.S. The AFL-CIO is full of cr@p.
Cry me a river!
Liars.
Yhat is so stupid and dumb of a statent!!@!
AFL-CIO - organized thugs that have helped push US jobs over seas.
I have zero respect for ANYTHING that comes out of that corrupt organization.
Three stories about unions. My former boss worked 20 years as a teamster in California. He moved to Washington State and started his own business and when he attempted to keep the union benefits and dues going, he was told he had to start over at 0 days worked. My brother in law worked for the carpenter union and was the superintendent on high rise buildings in LA. When he moved to Washington he was told he had to get in line to make up for years of being in a different State with the same Union. He was seldom called out, because they flat out didn’t want him cashing in his retirement. He gets nothing from that union to this day. My Uncle was a member of a Laborers local in the state of Washington. When he retired he got a decent check monthly. Due to the union people in charge of his local, a lot of money went missing that was supposed to be deposited. He had his retirement cut in half. YEP, Unions are great, if you are working for the Government, they just raise the money needed with tax increases as they have the beneficiaries of donations in charge of taxation.
Just try to imagine the horror they are going through thinking they might actually be judged on how well they do thejob.
Since union leaders decided to throw their members under the bus by supporting illegal immigration that reduces available jobs and reduces wages they have zero legitimacy on this issue and their only purpose is to line their own pockets before the end comes.
...’Right to Work’ Designed to Keep Black Workers Poor...
If that’s true, then it must be a brainchild of democrats.
Got the union paperwork,ignored it,just did my job.
A couple of weeks later,two big guys walk into my bosses office and leave in about 5 minutes.
My boss comes out and tells me "You have to pay union dues"
I quit,found a non union job,been there 20 years.
Grandpa worked in the union 20 years, spent 6 months overseas when union declared big strike, came back and worked another 15. When he retired they canceled his pension, he never collected a dime till he died.
As pointed out by Dr. Thomas Sowell, before things like “prevailing wage” laws, minority unemployment was lower than that of whites.
Same old fictions. Thanks mdittmar.
Gosh - they try to posit these theories as some sort of fact and they have zero ability to come up with a rationale that comes close to working - always use a few quips/quotes that have no relevance to their argument and expect that it will be enough to sway folks into believing their crap.
Now that I think about it, factories have moved their operations to Mexico/Central/South America, Asia, etc. Can’t seem to recall what large land mass is missing from that list.
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