dagblog - Comments for "Labor Day Link: The Bread and Roses Strike, 100 Years Later"

Perfect. But I'll keep my

Ramona — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 12:39:40 +0000

In reply to Go, sister, go!

Perfect. But I'll keep my shirt on, thanks.

Go, sister, go!

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 05:05:42 +0000

In reply to Thanks for this, Doc. (And

Go, sister, go!

Thanks for this, Doc. (And

Ramona — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 23:31:32 +0000

In reply to Labor Day Link: The Bread and Roses Strike, 100 Years Later

Thanks for this, Doc. (And for including my link.) I discovered the Bread and Roses Centennial committee on Facebook and the story is so compelling. But so many of the early stories of terrible working conditions and necessary union formations and devastating strikes are almost unbelievable when you realize the conditions and the agonies these people had to go through.

If I get preachy, it's because I think there would be no greater dishonor to those people than to let these stories die. And if we have to use mallets to hit people over the head to get them to understand, that's okay with me. I've handled a mallet before.

Putting this together with

Peter Schwartz — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 19:02:30 +0000

In reply to Labor Day Link: The Bread and Roses Strike, 100 Years Later

Putting this together with Destor's upstream, you see an argument that's repeated today.

Workers don't need unions because of the enlightened paternalism of the owners. "See? Ford upped wages to $5 an hour without being forced to."

There were true company towns back then. In fact, I believe Ford had an entire city in the jungles of Brazil centered around the production of rubber for tires.

Ultimately, the argument says, "The owners own the country," and everyone else has to live in their world.

Now there's an added screw which didn't exist back then: Much cheaper foreign labor that does just as good a job and is happy to work for less.

So the owners have somewhere to go if the workers become unwilling to work for X. We see it here, too, in Boeing's move from Washington to SC.

Some of this is beginning to crack with things like the Foxconn strike. Inevitably, the workers, at first happy to work for anything, become ambitious to enjoy the fruits of their labor and want "more."