Family ties to labor unions loosened by new era (also an audio version for vision impared)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.middletownjournal.com/hp/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/03/24/mj032407unions.html

Family ties to labor unions loosened by new era
Younger generation sometimes see unions as protecting lazy workers.
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By Terry Kinney

Associated Press

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Audio here or at link: http://www.middletownjournal.com/hp/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/03/24/mj032407unions.html#


MIDDLETOWN — Marvin Bailey remembers his father being tired and stressed out from work in the mill and as a union official. It was enough to propel him away from becoming a third-generation steel mill worker.

"When I woke up in the morning to go to school, my father had already gone," Bailey said. "When I came home from basketball practice, or whatever, he was already in bed, just from being worn out from the day's work.

"That was probably what helped me with my decision," said Bailey, 27, who is studying commercial art design at the Cincinnati Art Academy.

That attitude was typical of the 26-to-42 age group that turned away from steel, auto and other struggling domestic industries, cutting family ties to their unions along the way.

"Unionism and generational dynamics are a pretty strong mixture," said Chuck Underwood, founder of The Generational Imperative Inc., a Cincinnati-based consulting firm.

While baby boomers (ages 43 to 61) tended to be pro-union, their children were more likely to see unions as wanting too much and protecting nonproductive workers.

"They came of age
reading bumper stickers that said, 'He who dies with the most toys wins.' They tended to be self-sufficient and self-reliant, and less sympathetic to a union's protection and support," Underwood said.

Marvin Bailey's father, the Rev. Michael Bailey, 52, was a laborer in the Middletown mill of AK Steel Corp. for 20 years, when the company was known as Armco Steel. Then he spent 10 years as a leader of the Armco Employees Independent Federation, the union that represented about 7,200 hourly production and maintenance employees in the 1970s.

Some plant operations were discontinued and others modernized since then, reducing membership to about 2,600 by early 2006. Retirements and resignations during a lockout that lasted more than a year cut membership to about 1,750 and further diminished the clout of the union that gave up its independence last year by affiliating with the International Association of Machinists.

FULL story at link.

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1. Note: kids go to college on the backs of union workers

who could not have afforded to go to college if they were the kids of Walmart workers.

Good wages of working class folk gave them a chance to get out of blue collar jobs