An arguement for Unions

You can never make everybody happy, no matter what you do. In the world of activism that is certainly the case. The world revolves around, or at least for me around a careful set of compromises that attempt to negociate the precariousness of everyday life. In activism, is always a group that you are "fighting" against. Generally these sorts of people aren't exactly your best bud drinking buddy kind of types. When unions start challenging your 'bottom line' your bound to not be on the same page with them. Money is not only money, but power and much of the time it is power or lack of it that can oftentimes be more threating than the loss of monetary wealth.

The purpose of the union is to take power/money (however you see it) from the rich and give it to the poor. The union is the Robin Hood of the modern capitalist society, an insitution that ensures that democracy continue to be upheld. In the way that our governmental structure is set up, we have a system of checks and balances that seeks to limit the amounts of power that each governmental balance has. It was Milton Friedman, author of Captialism and Freedom, was one of the largest proponents of free market economics said that "The great threat to freedom is the concentration of power." Yet laizee-faire capitalism without unions creates just that; unions provide the democracy and checks and balances system in the structure of the free market that check the concentration of power.

Unions provide democracy for the free market. They diffuse the power that is so willingly taken up by the what C Wright Mills calls "the power elite." So there you go, unions are not only inherantly a democratic method of checking power, but they respect the dignity of the people that are powerless.

In my last post, I talked about the workers who were trying to organize here in Milwaukee. Without monetary sway and power to speak up about the conditions of their workplace, within the microcosm of the workplace, they had no voice. The union gives collective bargining power and allows all the workers at the plant to combine their power/monetary resources and take a stand for themselves.

Sure there are corrupt unions out there who aren't really out there in the best intrest of every man woman and child, I will not argue that unions are the perfect solution for bringing about a idealistic/utopian world, but given the pragmatic nature of the economic structure that we have in place, its the best solution that we have at our disposal.

Peace Always,

Jon