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Amazingly, the reality is that technological invention and innovation is intensely utilized in the manufacturer of vehicles, yet the workers and their union representative advocates fail to realize that what they should be organizing and fighting for is OWNERSHIP in the future non-human productive capital assets of their companies. IF THEY DON'T, they will eventually, sooner than later, be replaced by more of the machines in the picture and the invisible digital computerized processes that run them.
While VW's investment of about $7 billion in North America over the next five years represents a lot of job creation, it also is a LOT of productive capital investment represented by new plant and equipment. Unless the workers organize their union to be an Ownership Producers Union, they will not have a chance of sharing, as employees in the ownership of this new economic growth, and instead will end up bargaining for serf wages and servitude, while constantly being faced with the threat of losing their jobs to further super-automation and robotic tools that lower costs of production and increase profits to the present owners of VW.
If the workers and their representatives were smart, they would organize as an Ownership Producers Union and demand not increased wages and benefits but full-dividend payout and full voting-rights employee ownership participation.
Wow how Un American. To have a vote to decide whether you are going to be in a union. let's get back to the good old days when you didn't Have a choice. everybody knows the Unions care about you that you do.
It was one employee one vote. It was not 1% of anything it was more than 50%.
don't forget that same union fought like hell to block that plant from being there in the first place.
There is this bogus "libertarianism" saying that things like universal health care or union representation interfere with people's freedom when the opposite is true. The opponents of Obamacare or proponants of "right to work" act as though there are people who would rather not have decent health care when they need it or would rather not be paid a good wage or work under decent conditions. Such libertarians are only defending abstract, putative freedoms that have no relevance to anything in the real world, that only exist because their defenders concocted them for the purpose of a fraudulent campaign to enslave people.
What is wrong with the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board)? This should be brought to their attention if it hasn't already. Perhaps they are ignoring the enforcement of the labor laws. On construction utilizing Federal money, we are required to have a bulletin board with all kinds of posters - perhaps 20 - threatening enforcement of every law you can imagine that protects the workers. Where have they been since Saint Raygun screwed the pooch?
This just goes to show you that the Repugs hate the working class. I happen to be a retired Union member. My wife and I are retired for the Teamsters Union still young enough to enjoy live. This all come from the early eighties. As we wacthed the war on uions declared one company after other fell as we could not stop bayne capital in my state. I and not socked that the vote did not pass so many people are frighten for there jobs that they won't rock the boat. Better luck next time
The problem is letting the voters know what has transpired! The Republicans exercise a great deal of influence over what is allowed to be diseminated and how it is portrayed.
Government interference at it's best. Using the peoples tax money to threaten the people.
Wow Marc, great strategy! Not bad for such a peace lovin' dude. That's what I like about you, Marc. You're all about peace, love an' grooviness but you're no pushover, and you're nobody's doormat. My kinda guy! - AIW
claudiatobin -- The 1% reply will be what does "enough" mean? I do not think they have ever heard that word. The 99% have to realize that a super-majority in the house and senate will bring us card check. We were just one vote short in 2009.
I agree that Corker should be required to reveal his source - if not in public then to an unbiased person or persons who could then investigate this whole debacle. I have never really been a union person but living in a right to work state will change that in a hurry. Also, VW, if they have someone in their employee who has helped to foil this vote should be ferreted out and made to pay with his;/her job. A financial background check perhaps? Good forensic accounting?
The workers at VW should be able to have the TRUTH told to them and then be allowed to hold a new vote because I believe that if they had not been in fear of losint their work they would have voted FOR the union - they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing so but being imtimidated I truly believe they were would do the job.
Corker is not the least bit interested in thos employees - he is only looking out for his big money backers and his own pocketbook. Bought and paid for by the corporate world without a doubt.
Let's see a REAL INVESTIGATION into the REAL cause of this and then see what happens.
The corporations keep winning. The people keep voting against their own interest. In Washington State Boeing told the workers they would look elsewhere to build their planes if the union members didn't accept a bad contract. The company won. In Tennessee the politicians told the employees if they voted for a union they wouldn't give tax breaks to the company implying that their jobs would be lost. The corporation won. My father was head of UAW 400 in Detroit in the 50's. The unions worked very hard to give employees dignity, breaks, 40 hour work week, vacation, seniority rights, etc. It was thought that once good work rules were the norm then perhaps there would no longer be a need for a union. The opposite has happened. As soon as the unions were demonized and went away the companies began taking advantage of workers and continue lowering pay and taking away benefits and people are so afraid of not having a job they believe unions are bad. What a shame, profits for corporations rise and employee pay and benefits keep getting worse. I ask the 1% how much is enough?
Aliceinwonderland ~ I say jump out of the pot and try to trick the Chef into jumping in for us. Hey, it worked for Hansel and Gretel.
Hello, new to the Thom Hartmann program. First off, let me say that I've been a union man for over forty years. It's worked well for me. I gladly pay my union dues without hesistation. I thought this story deserved more attention. While I understand the politics of it, I think the UAW bosses should hang their heads in shame. I've read the Ford contract; and I don't see how people can survive in a two tier system. UAW is now a "company union" like of old days which isn't going to do much for these workers except collect dues. When the workers understood there was a "neutrality agreement", I think many were intelligent enough to realise they were getting a bad deal. I wouldn't want the UAW taking money out of my paycheck to support the lifestyles of union bosses. I never thought I would say that. But, the plain truth is that the union sold-out their workers. It would take two people working at a Ford plant to support a family.
Just keeps growing uglier, ever so slowly as the water gradually heats up. So my fellow peons and wage slaves, shall we jump out or just sit until we boil to death? - AIW
Actions like these need to made aware of to the people. This is pure harassment and intimidation by elected officials and there are laws prohipiting this. It is no different them sitting at a voting precinct intimidating voters as they enter to vote or intimidation and harassment in the workplace.
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Just to address your remarks on how whites are seen by African-Americans:
I lived in the south for many years, Georgia, Alabama, No. Carolina and Tennessee, and racism is very much alive and well in those states. I will say this though; it seemed to run very deep on both sides of the tracks. And while one side, the White side was portrayed as being wrong; the African-American side was almost always being portrayed as being justified.
I also remember very vividly walking into a bar on the south side of Chattanooga one evening and being told by one of the exclusively African-American gentlemen customers that it wouldn't be good for my continued health if my "White Ass" (his words) stayed.
Racism is alive and well Thom, but to almost exclusively relegate it to the White population and not recognize it at all in the other ethnic communities is unfair and does nothing to heal the situation.
I have an idea though... Lets put "American" first in our "delegations" of race and or ethnicity in our country. Where we now say "African-American" let's change it to "American-African", or "Latin-American" to "American-Latin" or even "Native-American" to American-Native". I think if we start adopting a "cultural” based on being American first we might be able to see each other in a different light.
Just my take…
Hopefully these actions will be remembered in the next election.
The actual purposes of the current type of Stand Your Ground laws, especially those which simply require you to say you were afraid, and especially those promoted by ALEC, are about a number of things, but I don't think they're only about legalizing some white racist killings of non-whites. I think their main purpose is much broader: to try to legitimize the whole mindset that wants to be allowed to react with violence towards fears, distastes, supposed threats to property, etc., as a pushback to authority, much of our rule of law, and common decency. Because these laws are so heavily promoted by ALEC, I suspect this is an attempt to exploit the whole "sovereign individual" mentality not just to empower individuals, but to try to legitimize, by logical extension, a larger corporate "stand your ground" mentality in which corporations can claim to be under threat from regulators, people suing them for damages from shoddy products (and even mere criticism), etc. Stand Your Ground tries to foster this whole mindset from the ground up, in an attempt to gain enough voters who will support it and thus be less of a threat to corporate "free will".
THIS is just another gop stunt - while in OHIO romney claimed JEEP was gonna pull outta TOLEDO - and JEEP denied his claim.
THERE needs to be an investigation demanding corker to name his VW contact - asking VW to investigate if any top official had such a conversation with corker - asking the workers if the claim influenced their votes.
THERE is no doubt that republican governor bill haslam pressured the workers - is there any worse job killer than threatening to withhold state tax incentives?
IS there anything more shameful than an elected official - with hundreds of jobs on the line - being less than truthful with the workers and the people of TENNESSEE?
THE gop wants to keep the UAW outta the south because workers might just realize that unions do more good than harm - realize that the gop has lied to them all these years - and start voting democratic.
This definetly shows that their governor doesn't work for the people but for the 1% and big money.
Loren, you're one cool dude! I love how you think and how you write. The more I learn about you, the more interesting you become.
"Dancer Resurrected" actually sounds familiar. Maybe a year ago I read something like that on your blog. Very dreamy, etherial images come to mind. Wasn't that based on an actual experience you had?
More recently I checked out your blog again (which I've done from time to time) and read about your ordeal in Seattle. Had me scratching my head in disbelief. I'd already known there to be some antagonism towards Californians and ex-Californians (according to a close friend who's lived in Seattle over twenty years). But prior to reading of your experience there, I'd had no idea how intense the xenophobia is towards anyone of anyplace of origin outside Seattle. Seems kinda pathetic for such a small-town mentality to prevail in a city that large. I don't get it.
Anyway Loren, I'm not currently with Linkedin. But should your subconscious come up with any clever ways around this security issue, by all means let me know. - Aliceinwonderland
Was hoping you'd check back, Alice, and very glad you did. I'd love to hear your music, and back in the day, numbered several musicians amongst my friends. I also have the sense we have rather a bit to say to one another, not the least about matters that are surely relevant to changes in consciousness but might seem otherwise in the nominally materialistic context of Mr. Hartmann's website. Apropos mixed sensory phenomena, the first time I saw a Mark Rothko painting, this c. 1965 in the Modern: I could literally hear it (probably not really, but that's surely how it felt, as if I were somehow seeing the interacting colors of a raga). Ditto some Clyfford Still painting later that same (very wonderful) year. Yes, I'm happiest creating, these days mostly with words, but in the past also with photography, painting and music -- old bohemian to the bitter end. (For a good look at my relationship with music -- not so much as a folk musician but as a semioticist with a subtle ear for meaning -- check out my blog piece entitled "Dancer Resurrected": it's way too long, 22,000-something words in dire need of a competent editor, but I suspect it makes a number of points with which you can relate.) Apropos connections, if you're a member of LinkedIn, we maybe could get in touch via that medium. Otherwise I don't have an immediate solition, but I'll file the problem away so my subconscious can work on it, a process I as a writer have come to trust absolutely. Sometimes the response is quick, other times it takes a while, but it's rather like Robert Graves says of the Goddess in the poem "To Juan at the Winter Solstice": "nothing promised that is not performed."
By the way, speaking of hearing things: out in the Pacific Northwest back country, far away from the madding crowds and their maddening noise, you can actually hear the Northern Lights, just as Jack London described in some of his writing. They crackle and hiss in time with their motion, low and softly as they wane, louder as they surge and flare, always rather like static on old-time radios...
We are ignored by so many media and not only this. we are far from so many things and media is playing with us I see.
Loren, I've worked with a few vocalists and am familiar with what you speak of. A vocalist's need to pick the key in any arrangement is a given. Everyone's got a vocal range most hospitable to certain keys; it goes with the territory.
Sounds like you too have a musical background. This both delights and frustrates me, the latter due to security issues associated with blogging. Because nothing would please me more than to share some of my music with you. The way you describe nature's music brings to mind a piece I composed almost thirty years ago, titled Sequoia. It virtually named itself. When I hear it played back to me I get a vivid mental picture of a shady redwood grove pierced by a translucent beam of sunlight. This image only intensifies as those last notes sustain at the end of the piece. It's of an impressionistic classical genre, reminiscent of Debussy.
It's funny how seemingly unrelated sensory phenomena can parallel or interconnect. Simple triad chords, like you hear in country music, remind me of primary colors.
Anyway Loren, I hope your weekend has been productive as well as rejuvenating. You sound like someone who's happiest in creative mode. Join the club. - Aliceinwonderland
Alice, I think Robeson dropped the key from A to D most likely to accommodate his own vocal range. Long ago, when I was a folk singer of some local renown, singing only traditional British and Appalachian ballads (especially those with obviously pagan roots), I often switched keys for the same reason, though I never changed a minor or modal-keyed song into majors, as that I considered real sacrilege. (To me there is a unique resonance evoked by minor and especially modal chord-sequences, a musical aura that suggests a choreography of shadows in moonlit meadows or the slow slow slowly darkening dance of blue midsummer twilight at latitudes north of about 45 degrees or how clear and troutly rivers sometimes murmur with distinctly female voices, and above all else, the magick of how such chords become like brush-strokes of color, as if some phantom painter were disclosing the exquisiteness implicit in the face of a lover, a woman rightfully an incarnation of the Muse.) But as you say, such is the freedom within traditional music. Quoth Taliesin, "I have been in an uneasy chair..." Hence Thanks and Blessed Be to you.