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From: gadfly@ihu1m.UUCP (Gadfly)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Are Unions made in Heaven?
Message-ID: <288@ihu1m.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 10-Feb-85 23:31:22 EST
Article-I.D.: ihu1m.288
Posted: Sun Feb 10 23:31:22 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Feb-85 06:09:01 EST
References: <509@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 29

--
> The important point to understand is that the American experience
> with labor organizations and management relations nearly always moved
> toward COMPROMISE.  In the European experience the relationship
> between labor and management was nearly always one of trying to BREAK
> the other side (along the lines of class warfare)...
> 
> Ken Arndt

That's American trade unionism in a nutshell--well said.  (Oh, Ken,
here I am agreeing with you.  I'm so sorry--I'm so ashamed.:-)
There have been, of course, indigenous labor movements that have
felt that this compromise relationship was totally co-optive.  Foremost
was the I.W.W., which pushed for "One Big Union!", and refused to
bargain for contracts because these legitimized wage slavery.

Since American society has never been permeated with real class barriers
as Europe had (and still has), the I.W.W. did not inherit a naturally
sympathetic audience.  Still, the brutal excesses of the mine and
lumber bosses surpassed the dreams of real aristocrats, and it took
the demented patriotic fervor of The Great War to put the kabosh on
the Wobblies.
-- 
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