We’re All on the Same Side
Posted on August 5th, 2008 | by A Worker |So it looks like we have avoided a strike at Verizon. Both The Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have extended the current contract while they continue to discuss the issues.
The scuttlebutt is that we’re looking at a four-year contract and maybe a 3 or 3.5 percent raise per year, but we might loose our cost of living adjustment. Health benefits and everything else are still up in the air. It’s hard to get information. The union leaders are all tight lipped.
It’s really pointless to discuss the details until we can actually get some.
I have to say that I don’t get these people who say things like “Unions are greedy and I have to pay for my benefits so you should too.†They say, “Be glad you have a job.†Then they defend exorbitant CEO salaries. They blame unions for the bad economy.
One of the big problems in this country is that we don’t have enough union jobs. Union jobs pay better are safer and provide workers with better benefits. Unions don’t hurt production. That’s just a lie. It’s the CEO’s and Wall Streeters who have been robbing us blind (See Bear Stearns: The Weapons of Mass Destruction.)
Anti-union propaganda would have you believe that unions mean lower rates of production. In the US Union membership has declined significantly since 1979, down to about 14 percent, but when we compare productivity rates with countries in Europe with much more union density we can see that more unions do not mean less production. Between 1979 and 2005 workers in Belgium, France and Sweden, where they have 90 percent unionization, produced more per hour than in the US.
Unions don’t make companies less productive. But unions do probably force them to share the wealth a tiny bit more, and that’s why MOTUTs hate unions so much. Unions cut into their million and billion dollar life styles. So all you other workers who blame unions for so many evils or who buy into the propaganda that unions are bad for the economy need to stop pointing the finger at union workers. We’re your allies. We think you should be able to join a union and even if you don’t want to join a union we think you should at the very least get good wages, benefits, a secure retirement and safe workplace. We’re all on the same side. Let’s learn to work together.
