06-01-2009, 07:59 PM
This is a fantastic column.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19549
Don the Teamster, not Joe the "Plumber"
Corporate America | Worker's Rights
by Jaime O'Neill | January 5, 2009 - 10:30am
In the Holiday Market in Magalia, a man approaches me and asks if I'm the O'Neill who writes a column for the Paradise Post. He speaks through one of those tubes made for people who've had surgery involving the larynx, so I figure he's recovering from throat cancer, though he appears strong and in otherwise good health.
I'm not always anxious to confess my identity to strangers on this ridge. My personal politics have not made me universally loved among the right wing faction up here, and some of the wing nuts in that group seem worrisomely unstable. I've received more than a few threats, and a weekly trickle of hate mail since I started writing the column.
But I tell the man that I am the same O'Neill who writes for the Post, and I'm relieved to see a big smile cross his face as he gives me a thumbs up gesture. "Keep up the good work," he says.
His name is Don, he's a retired Teamster, and the kind of guy I've always admired, men who fought for hard-won worker's rights that have been slipping away since Reagan's binge of union busting back in the '80s. I couldn't tell Don's age exactly, but I'm guessing he was in his late '60s, just a few years older than I am. His voice sounded mechanical coming through the speaker connected to the tube he spoke into as he talked about how his father had preceded him as a labor organizer. Don, his father, and a whole lot of men and women like them fought often bloody battles back in the '30s, '40s, '50s. And, though the percentage of union members in the workforce has shrunk since the 1950s, along with the protections and the wages that once provided a foundation for a healthy middle class, committed union people continue to fight to achieve decent pay for the working people who create the nation's wealth. These union men and women are the ones we have to thank for things like the forty-hour work week, minimum wage laws, and health and safety protections for employees. The unionists knew which side their bread was buttered on, and they knew that there'd been nary a Republican who'd spoken up for workers since Teddy Roosevelt.
But American schools teach history badly, and they barely teach labor history at all, so we get generation after generation ever more readily manipulated by those who exploit them. That is part of the reason we have so many people on this ridge who side with the CEOs over the workers, and who dismiss social programs as socialism, mostly while living off their Social Security checks and disparaging the "freeloaders" among the poor they blame for the terrible state of things.
Limbaugh and his tribe spread the lie that auto workers were making $70 an hour, causing the collapse of the auto industry. Meanwhile, the auto execs who ran their companies into the ground were flying around on private jets, enjoying multi-million dollar salaries and perks, as working class people were encouraged to blame other working class people for the problems. An auto industry bridge loan that was just a tiny fraction of the amount given with no strings attached to the banking crooks and financial industry scoundrels gets haggled over while Republicans argue for conditions that would gut the UAW. President Bush comes up with the money, at long last, though it adds up to less than two months of what it costs us to be in Iraq.
So it was very heartening to spend ten minutes talking to Don the Teamster. It was good to be reminded that there are still lots of blue-collar people around, both working and retired, who "get it," and who don't fall victim to the divide-and-conquer ploys so often used by the big money people to get working people squabbling among themselves.
Nor are the battle lines so clearly drawn as they might once have been. Far too many policies supported by Democrats have helped erode the power of unions, and far too many Democrats have joined with business interests to export American jobs by the hundreds of thousands, pitting American workers against workers in countries where environmental laws are lax, or where government-provided health insurance frees companies of that production expense.
But Republican attitudes and Republican allies remain the main culprits in exporting American jobs and gutting American towns and small businesses while turning Wal-Mart into a symbol of all that's gone wrong˜imported goods, non-union Wal-Mart workers, and huge government subsidies for the services the employer doesn't have to provide. Next time you're in a Wal-Mart, or a K-Mart, or one of those other low-pay, no- benefits stores, take a look at the person waiting on you. They often don't look very healthy because they put off elective health care visits, and they neglect their dental health because they can't afford such "discretionary" spending. They eat too much processed food, or fast food, because they're stressed out and busy beyond belief.
The right-wing pundits hurl the charge of "class warfare" whenever anyone brings up the war that has been conducted against working people, as more and more money found its way into the hands of the richest 1% of Americans. Meanwhile, over-compensated CEOs gild their already golden parachutes and are granted ever-bigger bonuses by Boards of Directors who've bought the scam that management must be compensated lavishly, and without much relation to performance.
Working people have really gotten the shaft so far this century. We can only hope that will change under Obama, and this will become a country where the ideas and attitudes of Don the Teamster take precedence over the idiocies of a right-wing stooge and opportunist like Joe the Plumber.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19549
Don the Teamster, not Joe the "Plumber"
Corporate America | Worker's Rights
by Jaime O'Neill | January 5, 2009 - 10:30am
In the Holiday Market in Magalia, a man approaches me and asks if I'm the O'Neill who writes a column for the Paradise Post. He speaks through one of those tubes made for people who've had surgery involving the larynx, so I figure he's recovering from throat cancer, though he appears strong and in otherwise good health.
I'm not always anxious to confess my identity to strangers on this ridge. My personal politics have not made me universally loved among the right wing faction up here, and some of the wing nuts in that group seem worrisomely unstable. I've received more than a few threats, and a weekly trickle of hate mail since I started writing the column.
But I tell the man that I am the same O'Neill who writes for the Post, and I'm relieved to see a big smile cross his face as he gives me a thumbs up gesture. "Keep up the good work," he says.
His name is Don, he's a retired Teamster, and the kind of guy I've always admired, men who fought for hard-won worker's rights that have been slipping away since Reagan's binge of union busting back in the '80s. I couldn't tell Don's age exactly, but I'm guessing he was in his late '60s, just a few years older than I am. His voice sounded mechanical coming through the speaker connected to the tube he spoke into as he talked about how his father had preceded him as a labor organizer. Don, his father, and a whole lot of men and women like them fought often bloody battles back in the '30s, '40s, '50s. And, though the percentage of union members in the workforce has shrunk since the 1950s, along with the protections and the wages that once provided a foundation for a healthy middle class, committed union people continue to fight to achieve decent pay for the working people who create the nation's wealth. These union men and women are the ones we have to thank for things like the forty-hour work week, minimum wage laws, and health and safety protections for employees. The unionists knew which side their bread was buttered on, and they knew that there'd been nary a Republican who'd spoken up for workers since Teddy Roosevelt.
But American schools teach history badly, and they barely teach labor history at all, so we get generation after generation ever more readily manipulated by those who exploit them. That is part of the reason we have so many people on this ridge who side with the CEOs over the workers, and who dismiss social programs as socialism, mostly while living off their Social Security checks and disparaging the "freeloaders" among the poor they blame for the terrible state of things.
Limbaugh and his tribe spread the lie that auto workers were making $70 an hour, causing the collapse of the auto industry. Meanwhile, the auto execs who ran their companies into the ground were flying around on private jets, enjoying multi-million dollar salaries and perks, as working class people were encouraged to blame other working class people for the problems. An auto industry bridge loan that was just a tiny fraction of the amount given with no strings attached to the banking crooks and financial industry scoundrels gets haggled over while Republicans argue for conditions that would gut the UAW. President Bush comes up with the money, at long last, though it adds up to less than two months of what it costs us to be in Iraq.
So it was very heartening to spend ten minutes talking to Don the Teamster. It was good to be reminded that there are still lots of blue-collar people around, both working and retired, who "get it," and who don't fall victim to the divide-and-conquer ploys so often used by the big money people to get working people squabbling among themselves.
Nor are the battle lines so clearly drawn as they might once have been. Far too many policies supported by Democrats have helped erode the power of unions, and far too many Democrats have joined with business interests to export American jobs by the hundreds of thousands, pitting American workers against workers in countries where environmental laws are lax, or where government-provided health insurance frees companies of that production expense.
But Republican attitudes and Republican allies remain the main culprits in exporting American jobs and gutting American towns and small businesses while turning Wal-Mart into a symbol of all that's gone wrong˜imported goods, non-union Wal-Mart workers, and huge government subsidies for the services the employer doesn't have to provide. Next time you're in a Wal-Mart, or a K-Mart, or one of those other low-pay, no- benefits stores, take a look at the person waiting on you. They often don't look very healthy because they put off elective health care visits, and they neglect their dental health because they can't afford such "discretionary" spending. They eat too much processed food, or fast food, because they're stressed out and busy beyond belief.
The right-wing pundits hurl the charge of "class warfare" whenever anyone brings up the war that has been conducted against working people, as more and more money found its way into the hands of the richest 1% of Americans. Meanwhile, over-compensated CEOs gild their already golden parachutes and are granted ever-bigger bonuses by Boards of Directors who've bought the scam that management must be compensated lavishly, and without much relation to performance.
Working people have really gotten the shaft so far this century. We can only hope that will change under Obama, and this will become a country where the ideas and attitudes of Don the Teamster take precedence over the idiocies of a right-wing stooge and opportunist like Joe the Plumber.
