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Sean BrodyHamilton Nolan
5/17/16 10:57am
I did get a shock reading that last night. First scan of the headline and I thought that the unions wouldn’t work with Steyer because he was a climate change denier.
Then the penny dropped and it was more than a little disheartening.

ETA, there’s an ongoing union picket at the Verizon next to my house. I’m wondering what the proper etiquette for showing support is. Motorists beep their horns, but I bike to work.
I have been giving them the Huey Newton fist of solidarity, but I’m not sure it’s proper.

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  It takes a nation of millions to elect the corruptSean Brody
  5/17/16 10:59am
  This is just more evidence of the complete collapse of the left and their relationship to the worker. There is simply no way that voting for another Clinton will help this at all.
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  Sean BrodyIt takes a nation of millions to elect the corrupt
  5/17/16 11:01am
  This is just more evidence of the complete collapse of the left and their relationship to the worker. There is simply no way that voting for another Clinton will help this at all.
  
  Will a Trump help?
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BobbySeriousHamilton Nolan
5/17/16 10:56am
“It is the equivalent of construction workers demanding jobs building their own gallows, from which they will be hung at completion.”

GIF

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  It takes a nation of millions to elect the corruptBobbySerious
  5/17/16 10:58am
  I don’t think that was what Marx meant by “they will create their own gravediggers.”
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  SlickWillieBobbySerious
  5/17/16 11:04am
  When he’s not ripping bong hits and thinking about yogurt for hours at a time, this fucking guy can write some dangerously great lines.
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ReburnsABurningReturnsHamilton Nolan
5/17/16 11:14am
If Donald Trump had a shred of decency he would promise to help coal workers, rather than the coal industry. And if union leaders had good sense they would focus on getting a safety net in place for their workers and steering them into the industries that will actually exist a few decades in the future, rather than pretending that inevitable change is not coming.

That’s awfully easy to say when you are not the one being asked to give up your job “for the greater good”.

Very few adults who have had a job and worked for a living like the feeling of being unable to do so.

Now, the obvious response from most progressives on this front is “THAT’S BECAUSE THE RETHUGLICANS HAVE STIGMATIZED GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE AND IT’S TERRIBLE AND AWFUL THAT THEY’VE DONE THIS!” while beating off to all of the “+1s” they get from a bunch of other people who aren’t the ones being asked to just accept that their entire life needs to be radically altered in order for the country to move forward.

I don’t disagree with the underlying sentiment, but the attitude behind it and pedestal from which it is delivered are just so fucking far removed from the reality you are asking other people to live, that I can understand why people might be attracted to the lure of someone saying they want to Make America Great Again by bolstering that person’s employment sector, as destructive as that will be to our future.

You are not the one being asked to voluntarily vote for politicians who will put you out of a job. You are not the one being asked to hope that America will decide to reject hundreds of years of cultural norms with respect to attitudes about unemployment & welfare. You are not the one being asked to rely on other people being willing to continue to pay a relatively higher tax burden in order to support you.

I’m not saying I disagree with the bulk of what you are saying here Hamilton, but I feel like you’re just saying “Don’t be ruled by fear” without ever having actually experienced the real life hardships of, to give an example, being poor and unemployed in Appalachia that some workers in the coal industry are understandably hesitant to embrace again.
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  LauraNorderReburnsABurningReturns
  5/17/16 11:26am
  You are not the one being asked to voluntarily vote for politicians who will put you out of a job. You are not the one being asked to hope that America will decide to reject hundreds of years of cultural norms with respect to attitudes about unemployment & welfare. You are not the one being asked to rely on other people being willing to continue to pay a relatively higher tax burden in order to support you.
  
  We are the ones rejecting cultural norms about welfare. We are the ones willing to pay a higher tax burden to support all people. The only way people will be willing to vote for politicians that will “put them out of a job” is if we demonstrate - reliably and stridently - that there will be something there to cushion their fall. That’s the whole point behind the long-neglected leftist notion of solidarity.
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  XYPReburnsABurningReturns
  5/17/16 11:35am
  I agree with everything you’re saying. But, seriously, though. How do you reconcile the fact that coal is poisoning our country - through cancer and other respiratory illnesses, not to mention the environment - and the need to keep people employed?
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IskaralPustHamilton Nolan
5/17/16 10:55am
Climate change is just the earth negotiating a bad deal with the atmosphere. Trump will negotiate a better deal, and he will make the clouds pay for it.
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  BobbySeriousIskaralPust
  5/17/16 11:00am
  Humans never win anymore, it’s pathetic!
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  Chamomiles DavisBobbySerious
  5/17/16 11:24am
  Sad, even!
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benjaminalloverHamilton Nolan
5/17/16 11:02am
The solution is for unions to use their political clout to help develop the clean energy industry of the future, and ensure that the jobs in that industry are unionized.

The unions are not powerful or united enough any longer to push for this on their own; industry leaders and policy makers must meet them half way, and the public should be demanding this. I just don’t think that this is where we exist culturally now, after so many years of propaganda from the fossil fuel industry and erosion of labor power.
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  Mouth Siren Copbenjaminallover
  5/17/16 11:16am
  This is the result of shrugging the shoulders and keeping quiet when assholes throw the word “liberal” around like its a slur. You actually have to stand up for your own side once in awhile. The liberal yen for “everybody just getting along” leads to our viewpoint being demonized
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  Sonic Reducer 151benjaminallover
  5/17/16 11:16am
  Uh. Through unfortunate experience I’ve been forced to face the facts that union leaders are dumb, union workers are dumb, corporate management is dumb, Trump is dumb, the entire DNC is dumb, the RNC even dumber. I now only like about a dozen people in the entire world and I’m pretty sure half of them are actually well dressed dogs.
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CanyouseriouslynotHamilton Nolan
5/17/16 10:55am
In my experience Union guys are very conservative but are first to vote Democrat for job security “I’ll give up my guns before I give up my job.” Is something I’ve heard many times in my career. Now that it’s becoming increasingly evident that the Unions can’t save your job from simply being shipped overseas they’ve lost faith in it and saying fuck it and turning to Trump. Misguided? Sure. But that’s the reality.
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  EvenBaggierTrousers4Canyouseriouslynot
  5/17/16 10:58am
  “Offscreen, hundreds of current and former Trump Organization employees have accused the company of being less than fair and more than tough. Multiple lawsuits have targeted Trump’s businesses over the years with allegations ranging from anti-union intimidation to hiring undocumented workers. In one case, the Trump Organization paid $475,000 to settle a claim with nearly 300 Los Angeles golf club employees in a class-action suit alleging unpaid wages and age discrimination, among other offenses.
  
  “In another instance, in 1999, the Trump Organization settled for an unknown sum more than 15 years after unionized workers first accused the company of employing undocumented Polish immigrants at a New York demolition site. The workers allegedly “were paid $5 an hour or less when they were paid at all,” and “worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week with no overtime,” according to the Daily Beast.”
  
  http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capi…
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  CanyouseriouslynotEvenBaggierTrousers4
  5/17/16 11:00am
  Never said I supported him, I’m well aware of his lies. Just stating my experience.
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WhatthefoxsaysHamilton Nolan
5/17/16 10:59am
The sad thing is that no matter what, there will be union members who vote for Trump. And not an insignificant number.
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Jerry-NetherlandHamilton Nolan
5/17/16 11:14am
“Fear can make people do dumb things. Donald Trump has promised to revive the US coal industry. He won’t! It is an industry that is on a permanent decline, because it is poison.”

In 1978, then-President Jimmy Carter’s EPA passed new CAFE standards which would have required automakers to meet 35mpg for their fleets by 1990. GM, Ford and Chrysler scrambled to put things like turbo 4s in the pipeline for new models (and did raise their CAFE numbers substantially).

When Reagan came in, he got rid of the elevated CAFE standards and fuel economy went down for over a decade! Furthermore, SUVs were classified as “Light Trucks” and thus excluded from the standards for cars altogether. SUVs were then marketed as the new station wagon, and fuel efficiency plunged even further.

Moral: never discount the potential damage that can yet be done!
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SoapBoxcarWillieHamilton Nolan
5/17/16 12:50pm
Unions need to stay on message—and that message is compensation and safe working conditions. Not “safe working conditions” as a way to require that every job is ridiculously overstaffed, or by making someone hire a union foreman at 3x the price for something that a union laborer can do (like at the Philadelphia Convention Center, which will be getting some use this summer, where any ethernet cable that is plugged in must be done by an IBEW shop foreman, and anything involving a ladder of any height must be done by a carpenters’ union shop foreman).

Getting involved in disputes over something like the Keystone Pipeline, will only be counterproductive to their cause, and will lose them even more support within the Democratic party (which they’re not going to somehow find in the Republican party either) which is increasingly run by business elites and academics with more liberal tendencies. These people, however, are not big fans of unions. Nor am I. I understand the important role unions have played in our country, but anytime I’ve had to deal with union construction (small jobs only) it’s been unpleasant to say the least. The quality of their work has not been better, they have not completed work more quickly and they’ve been considerably more expensive. When I managed a restaurant in a union hotel—there was very little teamwork, anybody could refuse to do anything by claiming “that’s not my job”. And once again, it’s not like people were more skilled or harder working than non-union places—they just got paid more and knew that nothing could get them fired (even the guy who was caught on video stealing from a cash register).

There’s a role for unions, but it’s a smaller and more focused one than they’re currently playing (and not exactly winning).
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LeNoceurHamilton Nolan
5/17/16 11:26am
“Unions” are not monolithic and never have been. The creation of the AFL-CIO itself was a tremendously monumental achievement, but it papered over longstanding tensions between skilled tradesmen (AFL) and industrial workers (CIO). These tensions have only increased in latter decades as industrial unions have declined precipitously due to the offshoring of manufacturing, coupled with the concomitant rise of service unions like SEIU and UFCW and public sector unions like AFSCME. The skilled trades view themselves as the kings of the mountain because, while their actual membership numbers may not be huge compared to the others, union density in the construction industry (particularly in large metros) is stratospherically high compared to the others. Trade unions usually have fairly substantial political clout on a local level; service unions do not. Trade unions also typically (although not universally) have much better success at actually getting their members out to vote. Trade unions are also rightly much more focused exclusively on jobs, because their members are much more highly susceptible to economic fluctuations—the world will always need janitors and nurses and municipal employees and retail workers, in good times and bad. When the economy goes south, construction workers don’t work. So their unions have a relentless focus on generating jobs, whether it’s in the short term or the long term, because you never know when a third of your membership is going to be out of work for six months or a year. You work as much as you can for as long as you can.
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