Archives‎ > ‎

Labor Unions: Defeat is Victory, by Ray Zwarich

I just read the Labor Notes interview with lead Amazon Bessemer warehouse organizer, Joshua Brewer, conducted by Labor Notes writer Luis Feliz Leon. Mr Brewer is clearly a highly spirited and courageous leader. I admire him a GREAT deal. But courage and spirit alone cannot overcome the raw power his foolishly misguided 'movement' is confronting. 

Mr. Feliz Leon is clearly a supportive writer, lobbing fat softball questions. The result is foolishly misguided propaganda, not honest analysis. It is especially distressing to see that both these people seem to actually believe their own propaganda. They thus apparently think that American working people will believe it too, no matter how much hard evidence, (like a crushing landslide vote against them), screams out otherwise. 

In other words, (harsher, harder, more realistic words), Mr. Brewer and Mr. Feliz Leon are willfully delusional, and clearly believe that their delusions can prevail over reality. Mr. Brewer claims victory in the face of what any sober and reasoning person can see is a crushing defeat.     

We all surely know the definition of 'insanity' that is commonly attributed to Einstein: doing the same thing over and over again, but always expecting a different outcome. "It didn't work before, so we just gotta do the same thing s'more". That is the essence of Mr. Brewer's foolishly misguided 'analysis'. Making delusional excuses in defeat is not a formula for victory next time. It is a perfect recipe for continued defeat. 

The official count was 1798 to 738. That's considerably over 2-1 against. Even giving the pro-union drive the benefit of every 'challenged' vote that Mr. Brewer claims, to 'rig' the vote to a theoretical 1900-1100, as Mr. Brewer does, it seems very misguided to me to draw encouragement when the vote goes 3-2 against. (A 60% majority would be considered a 'landslide' vote, and a powerful 'mandate', in any presidential election).

Let's see ... 1798 (against) +738 (in favor) + 505 (challenged votes uncounted) = 3041 votes cast, (even accepting all 505 challenged votes as 'legitimate' votes). 3041 votes divided by 5800 workers in the plant = .524. Only 52.4% of workers at the plant even bothered to vote? Hmm ... And even shining the most favorable light on the actual '2-1 against' vote count, the 52% that even cared enough to vote voted 3-2 against? Even in that most favorable light, (1100 votes that Mr. Brewer claims in favor, rather than the actual 738 counted), only less than 1 in 5 workers at the plant voted in favor of a union. (Only 1 in 8 by the actual vote count). 

And Mr. Brewer thinks that pretending to draw delusional encouragement from this obvious complete disaster is somehow beneficial? And Mr. Feliz Leon thinks that producing tissue thin propaganda is somehow more beneficial in the long run than a realistic analysis that confronts the reality of the degree of power that American working people are confronting?

Mr Feliz Leon never asks THE most relevant questions. Why did so many workers not vote? And why did those who did vote cast their votes so overwhelmingly against? Why? Why did this happen, and why did Mr. Feliz Leon never ask those questions? Does he think living and operating in a delusionally contrived fantasy world is going to defeat the most powerful person, who owns the most powerful corporation, among the most powerful power structure that likely has ever existed in all of Human History?

Mr. Brewer mentions the critical article in 'The Nation' magazine, by 'labor scholar' Dr. Jane McAlevey. Her article is perhaps at least somewhat helpful, going into specific detail criticizing the tactical mistakes she thinks the organizers made, but it misses the bullseye by a good long ways, assuming our objective is to actually understand why American Organized Labor has been reduced to politically and socially functional irrelevance. Does she really think the outcome would have been different had all her suggestions been followed. Does she really hold American working people in such a spectacular degree of contempt? 

Most of Dr. McAlevey's analysis suggests better ways of dealing with workers' fear of reprisals, their fear of losing their jobs if they are 'caught' favoring a union. Most of the 'better' organizing tactics she suggests consist of manipulating workers, by using various organizing 'tricks', into ignoring their fears. She wants labor organizers to develop their skills at 'tricking' workers into risking their livelihoods. Like Mr. Ferliz Leon, she does not confront the 'elephant in the room' question: When working people do a cost/risk/benefit analysis in their own minds, why should they conclude that risking their jobs by favoring a union, and then paying expensive union dues if they are successful, is worth it? Should they look at the pathetic, morally corrupt, and obviously failed 'labor movement' for inspiration?    

A much less detailed but more cogent article in 'The Hill' cuts much deeper and closer to the actual heart of the matter, even though it inexplicably contradicts itself in its title. Like Mr. Brewer, the article claims a resounding victory in its title, in the face of the crushing defeat it describes in the article itself. (Does biting sarcasm really work in a title?) The article explains that American Organized Labor is a sick corrupted edifice that American working people no longer trust. From the article:

"Perhaps nothing better demonstrates left wing activists and politicians’ growing disconnect with working Americans than their paternalistic view that employees want and need unions to represent them in the workplace."

And: 

"This clear union rebuke suggests that the economic policy goal of progressives to expand and facilitate unionization is not shared by the workers who are the supposed beneficiaries. But do not expect this humbling defeat to derail Biden’s aggressive labor agenda. Why let what employees want get in the way of what union bosses need?"  

(The brilliant sarcasm in the last sentence works much better than that apparently in the article's title).

With the nation's top 'union bosses', wealthy labor executives like AFL-CIO Big Honcho Richard Trumka, and SEIU Red Queen Mary Kay Henry, earning salaries that put them comfortably in the 'top 1%', (right up there with the corporate executives with whom they schmooze over business luncheons in the fanciest restaurants, on their generous expense accounts on $15/hour union workers' dimes), American working people can see that these labor executives' primary interest is increasing union revenues through collection of dues from more workers. 

They don't care about the nation's suffering working people. They just want to grow their businesses, so they can get richer. They are making ZERO effort, (ZERO!), to organize anything resembling an authentic social/political 'movement' to challenge the status quo power structure. Why should they? These wealthy labor executives are obviously an intrinsic part of the status quo power structure. They have much more in common with other wealthy business executives than with working people. Why would they challenge what they are a part of? Why would they bite the hand that feeds them?

These union executives are business entrepreneurs running lucrative 'labor agency' business enterprises. American working people can see that quite perfectly well. American working people can see what is obviously completely occluded from the vision of 'labor scholars', (like Dr. McAlevey), who themselves are, of course, (like the highly paid labor executives), an intrinsic part of the status quo power structure. (What is Dr. McAlevey's salary, one can't help but wonder?)

Mary Kay Henry's SEIU actually BOASTS about winning sub-living wages for the people her lucrative 'labor agency business' represents. If not for her own moral corruption, she would surely be profusely apologizing for not doing better for the people she pretends to represent. How many people at SEIU earn 6 figure salaries

At the same time that Ms. Henry so cunningly (she thinks) claims her 'throne' as a heroine of American working people, she whole-heartedly supports de facto Open Borders. She clearly thinks American working people are so stupid that we can't figure out that the importation of destitute immigrants by the teeming tens of millions, as a steady supply of excess labor, (aka 'scabs' in common union paralance), dramatically suppresses American wages across the board. She views these desperate powerless immigrants as easy 'marks' to organize, to pay union dues, to increase SEIU revenues, to raise her own salary, and pay out more six-figure salaries, to entrench herself more deeply in her personal fiefdom on the Ruling Elites' hill.  

SEIU's much vaunted "LA Janitors", (mostly recent immigrants who pay dues to SEIU), make less than $15/hour. As anyone can see in the Union Facts link, janitors and maids who actually work for SEIU, euphemistically called "night cleaners", the maids/janitors that clean Mary Kay's office and toilet every night, earn about $15/hour). The LA Janitors that SEIU actually boasts about representing, that SEIU actually boasts about helping, earn about $1700/month after taxes. Rents alone in LA's six cheapest neighborhoods average $1428 per month, for 800 sq ft. (In LA as a whole, rents average $2368 for that average 800 sq ft). Imagine how miserable those folks lives would be if wealthy labor executive Mary Kay Henry, and her legions of six-figure minions, were not their 'heroes'. (Look how wonderful we are. You may be miserable, but you'd be even more miserable if not for us. That seems to be SEIU's argument). 

When unions establish themselves in a 'shop', they want it to be a closed shop. 'Right to work' laws are anathema to unions. When union workers strike, they immediately establish a picket line, and they deride, demonize, and dehumanize (as "scabs") the poor desperate jobless people who cross their picket line to 'steal' their jobs. 

Ahh ... But when they see these poor desperate immigrants crossing the border they just see dollar signs. They see desperate gullible people who can be 'organized'. They see a new lucrative 'market'. They see dues pouring in to expand their businesses. They see more six-figure salaries. They see more wealth, and greater power, and deeper entrenchment for themselves. 

In their micro-environments they want 'closed shops', and 'scabs' crossing their picket line are regarded as lowly demonized scum, (despite simply being poor desperate people, desperate to survive, desperate to feed their own families). But they favor a macro-environment that is a giant 'open shop', where working people are forbidden from establishing a border as a picket line. They want to obliterate the 'picket line' that a nation's border comprises. They continue to demonize 'scabs', but their hearts bleed for the desperate 'scabs' pouring by the teeming millions across the border. 

Yea ... That's sure going to completely bamboozle American working people into rushing to sign up to pay union dues, so union executives can give themselves and their minions generous raises and increase their already generous expense accounts and pensions. 

But the wealthy labor executives, and the 'progressive left' that supports the morally corrupt and pathetically weak 'labor movement', are willfully blind to this hundred thousand watt glaring contradiction, and they obviously hold American working people in complete contempt, in their obvious belief that us workin' folks are too stupid to see through their wet tissue thin prentenses and delusions. Why would any rational Amazon employee want to pay out dues, betting that the morally corrupt and pathetically weak edifice of Organized Labor can defeat a man with almost a quarter TRILLION dollars worth or raw power? 

The article in 'The Hill' actually asks at least some of the questions that Mr. Feliz Leon fails to ask Joshua Brewer. Why did only one in eight workers at the Amazon Alabama warehouse vote to join a union? WHY??

From the article:

“We don’t need anybody there to speak for us and take our money,” said one Amazon employee named Cori Jennings to the Wall Street Journal. Lavonette Stokes, who is a part time labor organizer in addition to working at Amazon, opposed the RWDSU, saying that the union took several years to negotiate raises at other workplaces. Her husband, who also works at the warehouse, said, “Everything that this union is offering, we can do ourselves.” Another employee, Thomas Eady, told Business Insider that he opposed unionization after experiencing a union at his prior workplace valuing seniority over employee performance and “just collecting money and overpaying themselves.”

The "union bid'ness", like the morally corrupt edifice of the entire incorporated Progressive Left Activism Industry, has fully transformed itself into an inherent and crucially intrinsic element of the Status Quo Power Structure.   

The American Left is just spilling with its own delusions. I just read an article in the same issue of 'Portside' that sent me this Labor Notes article, reporting on the increasingly brazen nature of the giant corrupt system of legalized bribery we like to call our precious 'democracy' (all genuflect). And the American Left is so delusional that it thinks this corrupt sewage scum swamp system of legalized bribery is going to pass laws to help American working people? 

Okey doke, then ... Such irrational idiocy in such intelligent people just staggers the reasoning mind.  

And the band plays on ... (And on. And on. And on. And on). The duped dizzy Marionette Left, its head spinning from dancing pirouettes on the ends of the Ruling Elites' strings, to the music the Ruling Elites play, continues to overtly demonize and dehumanize the nation's largest faction (by FAR!) of American working people, even as it promotes its staggeringly delusional fantasies of revitalizing the moribund and morally corrupt edifice of organized labor, which is firmly under the giant thumb of wealthy and heavily entrenched labor executives. 

This spinning dizzy Marionette Left, dancing these ridiculous pirouettes, on the ends of their OWN Enemy's strings, to their OWN Enemy's tune, continues to overtly function as the crucial primary skirmish line shock troops for the Syndicate of Elite Forces that rule over our nation. The Marionette Left continues to prevent a genuine Left from forming itself into a credible political front. It continues to stupidly but effectively support the obviously corrupt Democratic Party Machine, which, as the Left itself knows perfectly well, is obviously controlled by the Ruling Elites. The Marionette Left continues to dutifully promote an idiotic and entirely counterproductive Race War at its OWN Enemy's behest, and with its OWN Enemy's full and enthusiastic support, to divide American working people into mutually hateful factions, while clownishly advocating that American working people should 'unite', should form 'unions'.

Yessirree Bob! Lets help the Ruling Elites get all the nation's Common People hating each other with increasingly violent passion, and that'll help us unite them into unions. And Dr. Jane McAlevey has some very good ideas about how to trick working people into falling for this colossal Idiot's Ruse. 

It would be hilariously funny if it weren't so deadly tragic. How long before the blood begins to flow like water? We're long gone deep into our Orwellian nightmare. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength". Race War will unite us. Hating each other will help us form strong unions. Wealthy labor executives are our heroes. Labor scholars, (who never had a callous on their soft hands, or ever soiled their soft clothes), can help us trick working folks. This crushing defeat in Alabama is a resounding victory. (And so on ... and so on ... and so on ... and so on ...).

The American Left is long gone dingbat insane, and American working people, of every race, can see that VERY clearly. But like the pink bunny clapping its cymbals, their ever ready ding-'battery' never seems to wear down. (And when it does, the Ruling Elites simply insert new ones, so their loyal pink bunny can keep clapping its idiotic cymbals).

I do admire Joshua Brewer's courage and spirit. I REALLY do. I believe that people like him will awaken from their dingbat insane Orwellian 'wokeness'. Didn't it ever occur to him that even if he WON the vote, Bezos would just shut down that 'shop' and re-open it one state, or even just one town, over? Does he not understand how much raw power is in that evil man's nearly quarter of a TRILLION dollar fortune? 

Defeat is Victory? Mr. Brewer is far too intelligent and courageous to continue being so stupid.  

Caliban

R Zwarich
Bent Birch Farm
63 Webber Rd
Brookfield, MA 01506
774 449-8030