March 10 , 2009
No Democracy, No Decency, No Unions
Business Rules
By DAVE LINDORFF
We all grow up learning that here in America we have freedom of speech. What our teachers don’t tell us when we’re in school is that actually the First Amendment only applies to the relatively short period of time between when we wake up in the morning and the time we go through the entryway of our place of work, and to the time between when we exit the building and when we go home and go to sleep. That eight or nine-hour period of the day when we are on the job we do not have that First Amendment right to say what we are thinking. Try exercising it, and you can be fired—for cause and with no access to an unemployment check. Think about it a moment: we sleep, if we’re lucky, for eight hours, and work for another eight, so we really only get freedom of speech for a third of each day, and much of that time most of us are alone in a car, or have food in our mouths and can’t talk anyhow. Some freedom!
There is one exception to this grim picture, and that is labor unions. On jobs where there are unions, workers have a modicum of freedom from abuse--and a modicum of freedom of speech on the job. A union contract generally establishes the principle of seniority, so that employers are not free to simply let go anyone they choose during an economic slowdown. They have to let people go on the basis of seniority—the most recent hires first. This is only fair. With a contract, bosses also cannot fire anyone without cause and without due process and notice. Workers have the right to file a grievance if they are ill treated by management. Within certain bounds, expressing one’s opinion cannot be cause for being fired (though most contracts still allow termination for “insubordination”).
It is this assertion of the personhood of workers, and of their basic freedom to be fully human, as much as the simple fact that unionized workers generally earn more than their non-unionized counterparts, that makes American managers and capitalist owners so virulently anti-union.
If American workers needed a reason to back the Employee Free Choice Act (soon to be considered and voted on by Congress), which would make it easier for them to demand a union and to win a first contract with their employers, and which would finally put teeth in the penalties assessed against employers who violate worker rights, this recession should give it to them. To fully enjoy the freedoms we supposedly are granted by our Constitution, most notably the First Amendment freedom of speech, religion and assembly, to fully be human beings instead of just serfs, it is essential that every American worker be protected by a collective bargaining agreement.
It is the only way to force employers to behave decently, and to make workers truly free.
Please read the complete article at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff03102009.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
