“[Strong] Unions struggled to eliminate abuses of early industrial society and improve workers’ lives by seeking higher wages and better working conditions for their members… [They] became an integral part of industrial society because they did not seek to destroy capitalism but, rather, to make employers more responsive to their employees’ needs and interests…” (Jerry H. Bentley and Herbert F. Ziegler, Traditions & Encounters).
· Strong unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28%.
· Strong unions reduce wage inequality because they raise wages more for low-and-middle-wage workers than for higher-wage workers, more for blue-collar than for white-collar workers, and more for workers who do not have a college degree.
· Strong unions set a pay standard that nonunion employers follow. For example, a high school graduate whose workplace is not unionized but whose industry is 25% unionized is paid 5% more than similar workers in less unionized industries.
· The impact of strong unions on total nonunion wages is almost as large as the impact on total union wages.
· The most sweeping advantage for unionized workers is in fringe benefits. Unionized workers are more likely than their nonunionized counterparts to receive paid leave, are approximately 18% to 28% more likely to have employer-provided health insurance, and are 23% to 54% more likely to be in employer-provided pension plans.
· Unionized workers receive more generous health benefits than nonunionized workers. They also pay 18% lower health care deductibles and a smaller share of the costs for family coverage. In retirement, unionized workers are 24% more likely to be covered by health insurance paid for by their employer.
· Unionized workers receive better pension plans. Not only are they more likely to have a guaranteed benefit in retirement, their employers contribute 28% more toward pensions.
· Unionized workers receive 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid leave (vacations and holidays).
Strong unions play a pivotal role both in securing legislated labor protections and rights such as safety and health, overtime, and family/medical leave and in enforcing those rights on the job. Because unionized workers are more informed, they are more likely to benefit from social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance and workers compensation. Unions are, thus, an intermediary institution that provides a necessary complement to legislated benefits and protections (Economic Policy Institute).
Strong unions play a pivotal role both in securing legislated labor protections and rights such as safety and health, overtime, and family/medical leave and in enforcing those rights on the job. Because unionized workers are more informed, they are more likely to benefit from social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance and workers compensation. Unions are, thus, an intermediary institution that provides a necessary complement to legislated benefits and protections (Economic Policy Institute).
The Price in the Eyes by Fred Voss
ReplyDeleteAs I entered the steel mill at age 23,
far more frightening
than the slam of the 2-ton drop hammer
down onto steel to make the concrete floor quake
and the heart jump
was the look in the eye of the man
who had squatted before it for 34 years,
the rage
and the humor
and the toughness to go on with his trembling jaw
and bloodshot eye.
Far more frightening
than the blast furnace with its white-hot flame
turning a ton of steel red-hot
as it roared and seared
the nostrils and lips
was the look in the eye at the man who tended it
for 37 years,
the pain
and the strength and the brutality and the desperation
of somehow making it through
the noise and the shock waves and the stink and the heat
of the steel mill
as his hands turned into gnarled claws
and his back bent
and his fingertips shook.
Far more frightening
than all the huge machines and cut steel and flame and poundings
between tin walls
were the eyes
of these men
who had somehow made it through
like I wanted to make it through,
who knew so many terrible
gut and heart and soul-wrenching secrets
I would have to learn.
Sweet Will by Philip Levine
ReplyDeleteThe man who stood beside me
34 years ago this night fell
on to the concrete, oily floor
of Detroit Transmission, and we
stepped carefully over him until
he wakened and went back to his press.
It was Friday night, and the others
told me that every Friday he drank
more than he could hold and fell
and he wasn’t any dumber for it
so just let him get up at his
own sweet will or he’ll hit you.
“At his own sweet will,” was just
what the old black man said to me,
and he smiled the smile of one
who is still surprised that dawn
graying the cracked and broken windows
could start us all to singing in the cold.
Stash rose and wiped the back of his head
with a crumpled handkerchief and looked
at his own blood as though it were
dirt and puzzled as to how
it got there and then wiped the ends
of his fingers carefully one at a time
the way the mother wipes the fingers
of a sleeping child, and climbed back
on his wooden soda-pop case to
his punch press and hollered at all
of us over the oceanic roar of work,
addressing us by our names and nations—
“Nigger, Kike, Hunky, River Rat,”
but he gave it a tune, an old tune,
like “America the Beautiful.” And he danced
a little two-step and smiled showing
the four stained teeth left in the front
and took another suck of cherry brandy.
In truth it was no longer Friday,
for night had turned to day as it
often does for those who are patient,
so it was Saturday in the year of ’48
in the very heart of the city of man
where your Cadillac cars get manufactured.
In truth all those people are dead,
they have gone up to heaven singing
“Time on My Hands” or “Begin the Beguine,”
and the Cadillacs have all gone back
to earth, and nothing that we made
that night is worth more than me.
And in truth I’m not worth a thing
what with my feet and my two bad eyes
and my one long nose and my breath
of old lies and my sad tales of men
who let the earth break them back,
each one, to dirty blood or bloody dirt.
Not worth a thing! Just like it was said
at my magic birth when the stars
collided and fire fell from great space
into great space, and people rose one
by one from cold beds to tend a world
that runs on and on at its own sweet will.
Quicksilver by Richard Zabransky
ReplyDeletefor Glen’s Father
He anchors it, bare-headed,
Hair dense as steel. There must be forty
Front-facing men in the photograph--
In three rows,
Bottom on one knee, elbows cocked.
Top balanced on an invisible scaffold.
He is dead center. Behind them, a brick wall
With a Hopperesque window, dead left,
Perhaps the supply building
Where meetings are also held.
One man’s hand clutches a snotty handkerchief,
Or it might be the corner of the flag.
All wear their plumbers’ proud indignity,
A few prematurely balding or graying
Beneath newspaper boy caps,
Wide-brimmed fedoras,
One in a Brooklyn Dodgers cap,
All wide-eyed, some with jutting chins.
The foreground is a parched prairie
Beneath a sky with the promise of storms.
Something brought them together,
Some indignity. A plate of spaghetti
Their lure, a shared Lucky.
A story for the wife or girlfriend.
Bragging rights count.
They are as real as a goose neck,
A drain fitting, or the hot iron
That makes the solder run quicksilver
Along the joint of copper pipe--
A sort of wedlock,
Taken for granted, yet a trust endowed
To children, the grandmother,
The embarrassing Red uncle,
Or the wayfaring aunt.
The infrastructure of life
Should last.
But as I said, he is dead center,
And like Ahab’s crew,
The others lean away from him,
Giving him room to spiralize.
I have a suspicion he has as much
To do with the photograph
As shutter or film or tripod.
Perhaps more.