Thank a Union: 36 Ways Unions Have Improved Your Life

[ttosca]

Let's get one thing straight...

Employers and Corporations did not feel generous and decide to give you two days off every week to have a social/personal life. (We now call them weekends). Corporations did not just feel like being nice one day and give their employees paid vacations. CEOs didn't get together in a board room and say "Let's give our employees more rights at work" or "Maybe there should be laws to limit our power over an employee".

Virtually ALL the benefits you have at work, whether you work in the public or private sector, all of the benefits and rights you enjoy everyday are there because unions fought hard and long for them against big business who did everything they could to prevent giving you your rights. Many union leaders and members even lost their lives for things we take for granted today.

The right-wing attack on unions is nothing more than ignorance, lack of education, and propaganda.

If republicans would rather support corporations instead of organized groups of workers working to secure a fair work environment A.K.A a union, I ask them to walk the walk as well. Give up every benefit and right that you use that unions are responsible for.

Complete trust and submit yourself to the corporate agenda you fight for. Play by their rules with no influence from democrats or labor unions to try to force rights among the workers of this country. Dedicate your life to their life goal of making your company more money than the year before. Just understand that this may mean sacrificing the union fought rights you enjoy everyday. I mean, you don't want to be a hypocrite, do you? Like bashing unions on your union fought lunch break? Which means if you practice what you preach, you don't get a lunch break.

Corporations use to work employees 80+ hours a week, offer no breaks, hire children, offer horrid, unsanitary work conditions, paid literally next to nothing, and even murder. Not murder with a pen like they do today, but actual murder. They basically did whatever they wanted.

This is what they were like before unions. Don't take my word for it, look it up. (Links at bottom of page). If we rid the world of unions tomorrow, who is to say that they won't go right back to the way they were merely 70 years ago? The GOP governor of Maine signed a bill to repeal child labor laws this year, maybe they are going back to their roots whether we have unions or not.

So conservatives, please practice what you preach and give up all these rights and leave the umbrella of these laws for they were brought to you by unions...

36 Reasons Why You Should Thank a Union

Weekends
All Breaks at Work, including your Lunch Breaks
Paid Vacation
FMLA
Sick Leave
Social Security
Minimum Wage
Civil Rights Act/Title VII (Prohibits Employer Discrimination)
8-Hour Work Day
Overtime Pay
Child Labor Laws
Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
40 Hour Work Week
Worker's Compensation (Worker's Comp)
Unemployment Insurance
Pensions
Workplace Safety Standards and Regulations
Employer Health Care Insurance
Collective Bargaining Rights for Employees
Wrongful Termination Laws
Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
Whistleblower Protection Laws
Employee Polygraph Protect Act (Prohibits Employer from using a lie detector test on an employee)
Veteran's Employment and Training Services (VETS)
Compensation increases and Evaluations (Raises)
Sexual Harassment Laws
Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) 
Holiday Pay
Employer Dental, Life, and Vision Insurance
Privacy Rights
Pregnancy and Parental Leave
Military Leave
The Right to Strike
Public Education for Children
Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011 (Requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work)
Laws Ending Sweatshops in the United States

So will conservatives give up all 36 of these union fought rights? Will they stand by their rhetoric that unions are thugs and refuse to take benefits from these "thugs" or will they hypocritically carry on the diatribe that unions are ruining this country while enjoying their weekends and paid vacations?

Or...

Maybe they could just admit that while not perfect, like anything else, unions have done great things for working people that they use and benefit from everyday of their lives?

Maybe a conservative union-hating family got to have some of the best moments of their lives while on vacation from work, and they still got to come to a job still there waiting for them, because of unions?

Maybe a conservative can't wait for their lunch break at work so they can turn on the radio and listen to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Back talk about how horrible unions are?

If you don't want to give up all your union fought rights and benefits at work, I understand. I don't want to either, that's why I'm pro-union and vote Democrat.

But maybe you could just admit that unions are not demons spawned from hell, and admit the FACT that they have improved your life in more ways than one?

Or am I asking too much?

Sources and Information:
AFSCME
Dept of Labor
Timeline
Wikipedia.org
Child Labor Public Education Project
AFL-CIO
SEIU

bigcorporationusa.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/thank-union-35-ways-unions-have.html

niceguy, I think that you do have a point in raising the much more co-operative approach in Germany and also, I believe, in the Scandinavian countries.

Where I'd differ is in putting all the blame for the difference on the unions - I think that there are complex historical reasons for the much more combative approach in Britain, and that employers are equally likely to take an 'us and them' approach.

The 100 million dollar question has to be how to address this (which of course the various tripartite meetings of the 70s tried and failed to do). Current high levels of inequality don't help, IMO, and neither do punitive anti union laws - nor the current situation in which the main aim for most UK companies has to be maximising shareholder value.

It seems to me that both left and right would be happy if we could reach a situation where we had a solid industrial base (a 'mittelstand' if you like) of businesses working in partnership with their employees to achieve high productivity and a long term sustainable prosperity for the firm, with the results shared in reasonable balance between investors and workers. The question is, how do we get there?!

Takver, Your last paragraph I totally agree with. Like most things, it's not the principle. I think we can all agree on that. It's how to implement which is the killer.

For me the current union leadership is ultra left wing whom are hopelessly out of touch now with the modern world. I think if the leaders were more in the centre ground then that would be a good start.

I don't think all unions have ultra left wing leadership. eg the BMA and BALPA, the pilots' union, to name but two. I would be unbelievably surprised if they were very left wing. I think a lot of people forget that unions do still represent a very wide range of people. I also agree with Takver that the combative approach is on both sides of the coin (very much a "he started it, " "no, you started it," playground approach to negotiation). Only people as deluded as MrPants could possibly view unions existing solely to protect the incompetent from their noble and efficient masters.

My union's 'leadership is remarkably mild and accommodating.

I suspect MrPants only experience of unions is what he reads in the Torygraph.

Each of the points I made are easily verifiable with a little bit of digging on the internet - like always, I stand behind my comments 100%. I am no friend of the unions, this is true, and I believe that they are a corrosive influence on our society. It was the unions, and not those dastardly capitalists, who held back women from the workplace. It was they who ignored the gender pay gap for donkey?s years. It was they who destroyed British manufacturing. It is they who are responsible for the ongoing poverty within our old post-industrialist towns dotted across the North of Britain.

They did some good in the 19th and early 20th century, an awful lot of bad in the 60's and 70's and, these days, serve only to guarantee the ongoing employment of the stupid, dishonest and lazy amongst their membership.

If I am so wrong, what great causes are the unions pushing for these days?