These positions also attract people who couldn’t get a job somewhere else.

Our kids deserve better.

This year, I work daily with children who have nonverbal learning disabilities, depression, Tourettes syndrome, autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, anxiety disorders and more. Their needs are staggering, yet in my classroom the administration has taken away an instructional assistant’s position. I used to have a period a day to prepare material for the kids, and that too has been taken away.

Special education costs money, and the money that was promised when special education was mandated has never shown up. Our neediest children are serviced by people in my position who have not been trained adequately.

We can be fired at will for any reason or no reason at all. And so we have no voice. We are silenced by the lack of a union.

The collision of our neediest children with an underfunded, overburdoned educational system is a dirty secret which must be talked about.

The talking will not happen until people who are working on the front lines of children’s mental health/education are given the protection of a union.

If I were in charge, I would then begin to educate the people in my position who work every period of every day with the kids who need help the most.

White collar workers often either see themselves as a part of management- or wish to become a part of management- so they have an aversion to unionizing.

Speaking from the 23-year old perspective, alot of younger people see unions only in economic terms, and i think most organizors are still promoting unionization only in those terms, and yet many of these white collar workers are hopelessly exploited working insane hours, never can see their families, and what for? like you said, a shot at management- it’s the same reason most people vote for business and the free market. in the short term, most of the people voting are LOSING in that vote, but they know someday theyll benefit, RIGHT?;)

We have a similar situation, that and modern unions don’t have a tendency to embrace the younger generation, I know im working on it, but I also know how busy everyone is actually serving the members than to bother with media outreach- just a team of graphic designers, database programmers, videographers, and flash programmers would completely overhaul the entire movement, but “we’ve always done it a certain way” ;)

I know the EFCA won’t make it past the president, but it will next president, and I can only hope we as a movement are READY to embrace new brothers and sisters who for years we condemned as scared scabs

I think that was somewhat coherent- theres alot at work in the current movement, but Paul’s right, at the base, its a political issue

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
That, kids, is everyday life at Army Times and all the other Gannett slave ships across this wonderful worker’s paradise of a country of ours.

George Seldes* view was: While all societies have leaders, in a failed society the
wrong persons are chosen and/or accepted to be the leaders; those wrong
leaders are more precisely the mis-leaders, as the prefix “mis-” aptly
denotes. This view of a basic problem, from which so many other problems
grow, got Seldes’ attention and he postulated the brilliant handling of it.

How Do You Tell The Leaders From The Mis-leaders? Seldes found just one
answer to that question. He said so in a speech and I have a copy to hand;
it is from his 1953 book “Tell The Truth And Run” p.118-119, extracted below.

[BEGIN EXTRACT] “…Is there a simple way by which an intelligent but
confused people can test men and parties, a sure way? I do not know if I
have the right answer, but about Christmas time,1944, when Clifton Fadiman
for the Writers War Board asked me [among scores of others] to write a radio
address to the Germans [which our Army later broadcast to the civilian
population from transmitters along the front], I sent the following:

People of Germany:
I hear you say the same words today I heard on December 13, 1918,when I
marched into Coblenz with the First Division of the American Army.

You shouted then and you shout today: “Wir waren belogen und betrogen.” You
cry out that you were “lied to” and “betrayed” by your leaders. In 1918 it
was the Kaiser and the Junkers who had fooled you into a commercial war;
today it is the Nazi crowd of politicians, cartel businessmen,
landowner-Junkers—practically the same outfit.

You had your eyes opened suddenly in November, 1918, when the men of the
fleet and a few labor leaders with their armbands reading “Arbeiter and
Soldaten Rat” [Workers and Soldiers Committees] came to the cities and
overthrew the monarchy, and you had your eyes opened the other day when from
the underground the real leaders of the people of Germany suddenly appeared
and overthrew Fascism.

I saw you in 1918 raise your fists to the sky and shout “Nie Wieder
Krieg”—”No more war”. I hear you shout “no more war” today.

But I also hear someone who is not being carried away by the great elation
and the great emotion of this great day. I hear a man call out: “But we will
be betrayed again–and again– unless we , the common people, find a way to
tell our friends from our enemies. How can we tell who are the real leaders,
who are the misleaders? Hitler promised us everything good. How can we tell
when false leaders arise and make promises?”

I think I can answer that. Let me ask you, first, what did Hitler do about
labor–about the labor unions? Remember, he never had the backing of labor.
He fought labor. He was anti-union.He had been a scab and a labor spy. And
the first thing he did when he seized power was to smash the unions by
confiscating union treasuries.

And Mussolini? He gave the people what he called a “Labor Charter”. But it
was a slave charter.. He organized labor-management committees, but the
employers named the labor men on them as well as their own.

It is so in all Fascist countries. Labor is the bulwark of democracy. Labor
is the people. So this is your answer for the future: Judge and test every
man, every leader, by his words and actions regarding labor. If the Italian
people, who knew Mussolini was a labor-faker, and the German people, who
knew in 1922 that Hitler was a tramp who had never done honest work and
always hated the unions, had fought these two men on their labor records; if
they had gotten the middle class and the intellectuals and the liberals and
all anti-Fascists to work together, they would never have been betrayed.

There was a way of telling. The test was labor. And in the future, you
people of all nations, you can tell your true leaders fom the Fascists, or
the misleaders, by their record on labor. It is the only real test I know
of. And if you use it rightly you will have a democracy instead of
Fascism–and war–and death. [END EXTACT]
*George Seldes was an American journalist of highest integrity and
credibility, as he wrote mostly from his own, actual observations an
experiences. He died about 10 years ago at age 104, in Vermont. For example,
he uniquely interviewed Gen.[later President] Paul von Hindenburg just after the WWl
Armistice [and was nearly shot for breaking US Army rules to do it]; he
learned firsthand and tried to break the story in the 1920′ s of Benito
Mussolini’s direct involvement in the murder of his popular rival Matteoti;
he broke virtually the whole, basic story just after WWll of the tobacco
industry’s addiction and health debacle. And of course Seldes’ works were
actively suppressed.

The decline of unions is probably the single biggest factor in why American per capita income, adjusted for inflation, peaked in 1970 and has been dropping ever since. This impoverishment of America was masked for a time by the entrance of women into the work force, but it’s got so bad now that a typical two-income family will likely not be as well off as their one-income parents were thirty-five years ago.

I sent a link to my brother at the steel workers and Marcy’s doing a great job!

I hope they’re planning a little sedition, sign some cards and unionize this place.

Before running off I must thank you for your warm support and good thoughts. It helps me so very much. You’re one of the prime examples of why I love this community so much.

Thanks for that info! Even if it doesn’t help us personally (we have an older home), it may help some of our neighbors.

Seriously, you guys are fighting with BOTH hands tied behind your backs if you can’t get your mitts on a large MEGAPHONE to educate the American public on what’s going on, what the reality truly is.

Because the blogs have had some success at forcing mass media to address some issues (kicking and screaming the whole way, of course), it seems to me that labor activism PLUS blogosphere power is the only chance we have to get our hands on a MEGAPHONE.

God bless you for all you do!

Twisted Martini –

Thanks for that drink — I really REALLY needed it. Invincible ignorance has that effect on me.

Now I’m off to make dinner. Will look back in on the discussion later. These issues are so very important — and they can pave the way for a newly invigorated progressive Democratic party (not that this is the PURPOSE of following these labor issues, but for those who don’t think labor problems have a direct effect on their lives, at least they should be pragmatic enough to understand the helpfulness of labor alliances).