This is very interesting. However, from my experience in industry UCubed
may well get all sorts of sympathy and verbal encouragement from unionists
in work but they'll get precious little by way of financial or practical help.
However, there's a stroke of genius in this. The idea of 6- person groups
harks right back to 100,000 years of man's ancestry. We're at our very
best in this size of group (maybe up to 10 adults at the most). What
then? Who knows! We're at the beginning of a recession that's going to be
far worse than the 1930s 'cos there's no new labour-intensive sector in the
offing as there was then -- cars, housing, light electrical goods -- and
there's no war coming along to save the economy as there was then.
I cannot see where new jobs are possibly going to come from. Advanced
economies have been failing since about 1985 to find a new tranche of
high-profit, high-waged consumer good/service jobs. And it's no use blaming
China because, with increasing automation, they'll be in exactly the same
boat as us in 20 years time.
The only possible strategy as I see it is for the unemployed to force their
way into the highly-protected professional job market -- health,
education, law -- as the English working man was beginning to do in the
1860s and onwards until it was subverted by the nascent nation-state by
about 1920. But the latter isn't strong enough now -- deep in debt as they
all are -- so there's a chance. But the present generation can't do it.
They're still too much imbued with notions that prosperity can somehow be
conjured out of a hat by some economist or some politician. So long as
governments maintain some minimum levels of benefit then the next
generation might start to bring about what can only be described as a
parallel economy.
But don't expect those with jobs to support those without jobs. Snowflakes
in hell and all that.
Keith
At 18:14 24/02/2010 +0530, you wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:42:31 -0500
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: The Unemployed Have Begun to Organize
The Unemployed Have Begun to Organize Their Own Union to Press Fight for
Jobs
By Harry Kelber
February 23, 2010, LaborTalk
http://www.laboreducator.org/lt100223.htm
It's been only a month that a union for the unemployed has
come into existence through an ingenious grass- roots organizing campaign.
In case you haven't heard about it, the union's name is "UR Union of the
Unemployed" or its nickname, "UCubed," because of its unique method of
organizing.
UCubed is the brain-child of the International Association of Machinists and
Aerospace Workers (IAM), whose leaders feel that the millions of unemployed
workers need a union of their own to join in the struggle for massive jobs
programs.
The idea is that if millions of jobless join together and act as an
organization, they are more likely to get Congress and the White House to
provide the jobs that are urgently needed. They can also apply pressure for
health insurance coverage, unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits and
food stamps. An unemployed worker is virtually helpless if he or she has to
act alone.
Joining a Cube is as simple as it is important. (Please check the union web
site: www.unionofunemployed.com<
http://www.unionofunemployed.com>) Six people who live in
the same zip code address can form a Ucube. Nine such UCubes make a
neighborhood. Three neighborhood UCubes form a power block that contains 162
activists. Politicians cannot easily ignore a multitude of power blocks,
nor can merchants avoid them.
The union is built from the ground up. Cube activists will select their own
leadership in each cube, neighborhood, block and higher group as well.
Jobless Union's Encouraging Progress in One Month
The UR Union of Unemployed (or UCubed) already has members in over 300 zip
code addresses and 43 states, reports Rick Sloan, acting executive director
of the union. Seventy-five cubes are up and running. For the first month,
19,998 people visited the site and viewed over 138,000 pages of content.
The union's Op-Ed article appeared in 62 newspapers, ranging from the
"Black News" to the "Mexican American Sun," and from the "Las Vegas Tribune"
to the "Senior Life of Northern Indiana." Total circulation exceeded 12
million readers.
UCubed put out three press releases last month, informing politicians in
Washington that the union of unemployed will be watching-and reacting-to
their vote on the latest job proposals of the Obama administration.
* * * *
It is to the advantage of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to encourage their
unemployed members to participate in the UCubed organizing campaign. It is
important for organized labor to display meaningful sympathy and solidarity
with those who have been without a pay check for many months. A large union
of unemployed workers can be an important ally in political campaigns and a
source of legions of volunteers. When those unemployed workers finally get
back to their jobs, we want them to have a favorable memory of how unions
stood by their side.
Let's give the unemployed the support they need to be effective in their
own defense.-Harry Kelber
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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