Heirs of Wobblies "Weenies?"
No, I didn't say that.
But a Sun-Times columnist did.
Comments on my original Illinoize story are 
about the Chicago City Council's big box ordinance are now up to 20. You can scroll down or you can read a reprint of them here.
One commenter took me to task, probably justifiably, because I don't know unionization law as well as he must, for saying that the signature of a hospital chain president would be enough to put the designated employees in the union. I guess I should have said that it would relieve the union of the onerous work to get enough signatures to force an election. Thanks for the correction.
And, yesterday, on page 2, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a column by David Roeder which seemed even stronger than my story.
Under the heading “Missed opportunities,” here’s the last part of his column:
Workers' desperation writes the script for a union organizer, those that are left. But most unions won't pick up the opportunities handed to them. The U.S. Labor Department says union membership of the total work force is down to 12.5 percent from about 20 percent in 1983. But if you strip out government jobs, you've got a union share in the single digits.If my original story angered union supporters, what will this do?
The public sector is among the few areas showing union growth. It figures. Access to the workers is greased with campaign contributions, and there's an easy mark, the taxpayers, on the other end of the bargaining table. So the union brass won't dirty their hands with organizing the private sector. They're more comfortable at political fund-raisers than they are with people who could use their help.
So Wal-Mart avoids a head-on fight. In Chicago, the heirs of the Wobblies are weenies.
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Abe Lincoln must not have a photo of the Blagojevich tollway signs for his post below, you can find it here.
If you would like to see a picture of 8th congressional district "Moderate Party" candidate Bill Scheurer's donkephant named, "McBeaney," you can see it at McHenry County Blog.
4 comments:
Cal,
Gee, thanks for giving me the spotlight [blush], but you got it wrong again:
"I guess I should have said that it would relieve the union of the onerous work to get enough signatures to force an election."
It doesn't do that either. The SEIU international had to bring major resources and people to Illinois to get a majority of the thousands of child care workers to sign cards agreeing to SEIU's representation.
Just to be safe, I'll repeat the key part: A majority had to be signed up. The same majority is needed to force an election, and if they had held the election, they would have to won a majority a second time.
This isn't arcane labor law. I learned this my second day on the job for a labor group. I would have known it earlier if I had been a union member (my mom was, way back, until her good paying job allowed my parents to start a small biz).
Card signatures vs. elections is a longer argument, so I'll skip that again.
Well, I was a union member in a store where the union rep never made him or herself known, so I wouldn't count on uniion membership conferring automatic knowledge of labor law.
It's clear it didn't in your case, Cal. Twice now.
My experince with signitures was jurisdictional battles between unions fighting for my dues.
Unions have failed miserabley to adjust to a non industrial economy.
Their failure, whether they could have avoided it or not, explains a good deal about the current sad state of America's left.
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