UNIONS?

[Hubert Flottz]

Before...



After...

[Hubert Flottz]

1. Before...

After...

[Riley18]

2. This picture needs to be in every teacher's lounge in the country!

Our district has around 78% of the teachers in the union. I wonder how many states are "Right to Work?" It used to be you couldn't work if you weren't part of the union. Is that still true in some places?

[SCantiGOP]

3. i think...

..that it's about 17 states that are right to work. In all of the others, if a company organizes everyone must join the union.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

31. 22...

Please excuse the source for this map: NRTW (FOR LESS) Legal Defense Foundation :puke: It was the only one I could find.

Must be purely co-ink-ee-dink, but the above map looks a lot like this one...

[Hubert Flottz]

4. The pictures at this link below is how it was when there were no

unions with any power to protect people. It could be like that again, if the unions fold and are put out of action in America. We needed unions THEN and we still need them now.

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/

Look at China and India...they still exploit children. And we buy their products.

[LeftishBrit]

5. Thanks for posting. We must all remember this...

And never let the corporations-firsters and right-libertarians the power to take us all back to the first picture.

[Hubert Flottz]

7. Take a look at the stats sometime on mining fatalities...

look at the number of mining deaths before the mines were unionized and the numbers after. Do you think that the federal government put those laws to try and make the mines a safer place to work into place because the coal barons insisted upon it? I don't think so.

[Debi]

6. Thank you ... after what's going on in the Iowa Legislature right now

I needed this!

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009902220345

[Hubert Flottz]

8. Those fools are playing right with the GOP unionbusting...

playbook. We need to kick fools like that out of the democratic party.

[Debi]

9. I hear ya.

:applause:

[malaise]

10. K & R

Workers of the world unite

[hootinholler]

11. UNION YES! n/t

[druidity33]

12. K&R for Unions! nt.

[Hubert Flottz]

13. I'd like to thank everyone for the Ks and Rs...

I hope the unions can gain back some of the ground they have lost since Reagan started the all out GOP attack on them.

[davsand]

14. Workplace safety before unions: ***WARNING*** Graphic

Triangle Shirtwaist workshop




They were locked in and many jumped to their death to escape the fire


And the one that just kills me to this day:

http://cfs7.tistory.com/image/34/tistory/2008/05/28/03/54/483c58c986961

The morgue.

Make no mistake, without unions the attitude of corporate America could lead to this again very quickly. Folks, without unions there would BE no OSHA and those laws are just about all that stand between us and a return to the conditions at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.


Laura

[ColbertWatcher]

19. Well said. n/t

[fishwax]

15. k/r -- great!

:kick:

[pnorman]

16. "The golf links lie so near the mill...

.....That almost every day, The laboring children can look out, And watch the men at play"
Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn quotes (American Writer, 1876-1959)



pnorman

[GrantDem]

17. But... but... Unions are outdated....

:sarcasm:


UNION YES!!!!

[ColbertWatcher]

18. Before? Hundreds die in mining accidents.

After? People are outraged when anyone is trapped in a mining accident.

I find China gives us the best arguments for unions every time they have one of their mining accidents.

[davsand]

20. Countries without a union presence give us our best examples of why unions are needed.

China, Central America, India, Pakistan--name a place where there is no union and you will find human suffering. The labor movement saved us from that same fate.

It is no longer just "Union Yes" for me. It is "Union--HELL YES!"


Laura

[ColbertWatcher]

21. True.

I only mentioned China because they seem to have mining accidents as often as the French have a protest.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

32. "Union--HELL YES!"

:fistbump: :applause: :patriot:

[Hubert Flottz]

22. Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster

Silica

During the construction of the tunnel, workers found the mineral silica and were asked to mine it for use in electroprocessing steel. The workers were not given any masks or breathing equipment to use while mining, despite the fact that management wore such equipment during inspection visit. As a result of the exposure to silica dust, many workers developed silicosis, a debilitating lung disease. A large number of the workers eventually died from the silicosis, in some cases as quickly as within a year.

There are no definitive statistics as to the death toll from the Hawks Nest disaster. According a historical marker on site, there were 109 admitted deaths. A Congressional hearing placed the death toll at 476.<2> Other sources range from 700 to over 1,000 deaths amongst the 3,000 workers.<3> Many of the workers at the site were African-Americans from the southern United States who returned home or left the region after becoming sick, making it difficult to calculate an accurate total. MORE...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawk's_Nest_incident

The Hawk's Nest Incident: America`s Worst Industrial Disaster

http://www.amazon.com/Hawks-Nest-Incident-America%60s-Industrial/dp/0300044852

[madokie]

25. Silicosis is a terrible way to die

I knew a guy who worked in the foundry that I worked at for 12 years making cores and pretty much refusing to wear his mask 'cause I was always seeing him with it off. I guess he was crazy and should have been removed from that work station cause it was dusty. He finally was removed from the area while at the ripe ole age of 36 straight to the grave by way of a few months of missery. Sad but true.

[TBF]

23. In solidarity. K&R

[madokie]

24. UNIONS are the best thing to ever happen to America,

bar none. Without the unions we'd never have gotten where we had made it too, hopefully to one day get back too.

[madokie]

26. 1st through the 7th grade that last picture could have been our school

40 some students in a big one room divided by a folding vinyl curtain that opened to the side that acted as a wall. For a year there of those 40 some odd students 5 of them were from my own family. The first couple years our desk were our lunch tables. Our bathrooms were outside and down the front porch to the right. The old outhouses remained in place for a few years after that out there in the school yard. The School building, new for my first year replaced a truly one room school that did not have indoor plumbing, not even in the kitchen so we were stepping up. Anyways it had a slopped roof like what I refer to like an old chicken house roof with the high side pointing to the south. There were windows up above the shed roof that was slopping the other way over the 8 ft wide porch with the light from these windows being reflected from the slopping ceiling onto our desk. We had a big ass map of the USA on that south wall high up above the chalkboard. I still until today, damn near 61 yo btw, have a problem with maps. For instance if I say I am going to california I will unconsciencely point over to the east, every time, north and south same thing. Our teachers were a husband and wife team and then in the forth grade their daughter came to teach the middle grades of 4 and 5. She bless her heart is a polio victim who had it in her right leg and it was about the size of her arm. This girl would get out there and play soft ball with us, she was great. We all loved her, she never let on like she had a disability at all. The husband of the team was a splitting image of President Kennedy and it was always a little disconcerting with him standing there and over there on the wall was a picture of our President and that could have been a picture of our Teacher.

Best I remember there were 181 little holes in each of those ceiling tiles too:-)

Memories, I love those memories of my childhood

[Hubert Flottz]

28. I spent my first 9 years in a "Coal Camp" going to a 4 room

school with 2 grades in each of three rooms. The fourth room was the lunch/music/supply room. The Doctor and the preacher worked for the coal company. The store was owned by the company. The houses we lived in were owned by the company. The money we spent at the Company Store was even made and issued by the company. The coal we burned to heat and cook with we bought from the company. The water we carried from the company owned wells and springs came from Gawd!

If you got on the company's shit list, you were in one hell of a fix! When the mine shut down at the end of the 50s our world turned from shit, to total wall to wall shit, as far as the eye could see.

The Coal company owners and operators moved on to another county 75 miles away(Logan)and started a new coal camp to go with their new mine and the out of work miners from the old operation went from poor to unbelievably poor. It was about that time that my dad was able to get a job that had nothing more to do with coal mining.

My new school was far better. It had running water and inside bathrooms. Each grade had two rooms and two teachers. Our new home had running water too. I'll never forget how I loved JFK, dad's jobs working out of the Ironworker's hall and not being cold and hungry anymore. It was nice to be able to go to a real doctor when you were sick too.

It was about the time I turned ten I guess, that I realized that I too would grow up to be a "Union Man" and I have been one ever since!

[madokie]

34. No doubt those early years shaped both our lives

The thing I like about the memories is the hunger I felt back then isn't present in them today. That pain is gone.

[Hubert Flottz]

35. Growing Up on Cabin Creek

An Interview with Arnold Miller

BY MICHAEL KLINE.

Snip...

When l first knew Arnold Miller some ten years ago he was involved in an awesome campaign for the presidency of the United Mine Workers of America, against the entrenched establishment of Tony Boyle. In those days, if you could get a word with Arnold, it usually had to do with some strategic detail of the hectic race. But I caught enough sketchy anecdotes about his past to realize that his life had been forged in struggle, that this controversial would be president was in many ways the embodiment of coalfield experience, and I resolved to find time someday to hear the whole story.

When I visited with Mr. Miller at his apartment on Ruffnet Avenue in Charleston last September I found him relaxed and reflective. We spent a whole afternoon talking about his early life, and I asked him to concentrate on those details of the story which preceded his presidency. Excerpts from that taped interview have been pulled together in this article.

Arnold Miller was born in Leewood, on Cabin Creek in Kanawha County on April 25, 1923, just two years after The Battle of Blair Mountain, which broke the union effort in southern West Virginia until 1933. But union spirit and determination ran deep in his family psyche on both sides. He began by telling about his father.

Arnold Miller: My daddy was born in Bell County, in Pineville in East Kentucky, and was forced to migrate out of Kentucky to West Virginia at the age of 14, ostensibly for his organizing activity. He was a veteran miner at the age of 14, had five years in the mines. It's not common for people to understand today that years ago they worked children in the mines. I had a group picture I could show you somewhere here in Charleston. Showed about 30 miners, only two of which were adults. It's odious from looking at the picture that children did work in the mines in the early days. They worked them like slaves. They didn't pay them but damn little, and they dogged them around. Mining is far different today than it was then. Read More...

http://www.wvgenweb.org/wvcoal/miller.html

The story of a very poor little boy who grew up to be president, of the UMWA. A great read.

[madokie]

36. I'll make a point to read that

I grew up believing in the American dream knowing full well I could be anything I wanted to be that I was smart enough to learn about. I like that feeling and want to make sure my grand daughter can live that dream. A dream that pretty much was stolen from many of us in our age group. I want to see the changes made that will ensure that this can never happen again, ever. If a few men can make this country to begin with the least we can do is work to make it a better place. I believe our constitution is fine and would serve us many more centurys but I also think we could make a couple ammendments or whatever it takes to make sure, like I said earlier, this shit can never happen again.

[ipfilter]

27. I owe my standard of living

to my union and those before me who made it possible.

[Hubert Flottz]

29. "I owe my standard of living"

98% of America owes the standard of living we have enjoyed to "those before me who made it possible."

People today don't realize what it took to get to where we are! The Blood, Sweat and Tears of the working people before us is what made America the greatest country in the world to live in for the many, instead of just the super wealthy "entitled" few.

I think the "American Dream" for most Americans, has been to hand our children and grandchildren a better world than the world that was handed down to us. I hope that dream never dies.

[BlooInBloo]

30. you forgot the toil.

[davsand]

37. If you like your 40 hour work week--thank the unions.

If you like your health benefits--thank the unions.

If you like having a weekend--thank the unions.

If you like your paid vacation--thank the unions.

If you like being safe in your workplace--thank the unions.

If you like the idea of keeping kids on playgrounds and in schools rather than working in factories and mines--thank the unions.



Men and women bled and died for the right to organize in this country. Seems like too many have forgotten the debt we owe the brothers and sisters that came before us. They did what they did because they understood on a personal level WHY a union is so vital to our workers. Maybe we owe the unions a bit more than one lousy day a year.



Laura

[Earth Bound Misfit]

33. Hubert Flottz.....

:toast: :fistbump:

GREAT post. Bookmarked, K'd & R'd

:patriot:

[blondeatlast]

38. YES!

Always.

Great thread and some great contributions from thiose who responded, too.

Union, AB-SO-Effing-LUTELY! (from one who resides in a "Right To Be Screwed" state, Arizona.

[Name removed]

39. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hubert Flottz]

40. Maybe not, but you can bet that a lot of people paid for your

right to work for a decent wage, under safer working conditions.