Harry Pollard: > Their job is not to raise wages but to raise their own wages - which they > have every right to do. However, this is often done indirectly at the > expense of labor generally.
Harry, I'm sure you know that this is not how it was meant to be. Unions were once part of great movements such as the IWW, working for better pay and better working conditions for everyone. That was when there was a proletariat or working class. What seems to have disappeared from the picture is a working class, people seeing themselves as part of a great common movement opposed to the owners of capital. Now the distinctions have all faded and blurred. Now people who work own capital - i.e. shares, and they pay into pension funds, and their concern is that the value of their capital be maintained. And they want to move up the ladder into managerial positions that really count. People who are now in the situation that most people were in at the turn of the last century are no longer the working class, they're the underclass, the kind of people Barbara Ehrenreich talks about in "Nickel and Dimed". Ed Ed Weick 577 Melbourne Ave. Ottawa, ON, K2A 1W7 Canada Phone (613) 728 4630 Fax (613) 728 9382 _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
