Labor History and Coercion

[grandpa]

Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, "Labor history in the US is treated like pornography."
While it may not literally be wrapped in plastic and hidden on the shelf, it's certainly not often discussed honestly. In contemporary discussions, for example, there is this unusual desire for people to pretend harsh working conditions had nothing to do with hierarchy and the capitalist system.

There has also been a bizarre desire to pretend the legal protection racket of capitalism is not significantly coercive, that it simply springs forth naturally like a flower in suitable soil.

So here are two related questions:

1. What's your take on labor history?

2. Would most people follow the rules behind banking, rent, property taxes and copyright protections if the legal system didn't coerce us into obedience?

Grandpa h.

[Century 25]

The racket of capitalism is like a flower all right.. a cannibal plant..

They really fluff over the rotten history of it all.. horrors like slavery.. child labor.. still going strong in India.. Vietnam.. etc..

Capitalism is a giant pyramid scam.. business must forever expand or the whole thing unravels..

[grandpa]

The racket of capitalism is like a flower all right..
a cannibal plant..

History has made one thing clear:
The best way to assure everyone has relatively equal market access is to become less capitalistic.

Grandpa h.

[PatrickHenry]

I don't think that the US educational system is doing right by its children.

Labor history isn't more than a mention of Samuel Gompers and the AFL in most high schools.

Students are unaware of how much pain and struggle went into creating the modest levels of worker protections and rights enjoyed by US folks.

It's a function of state-supported education and their desire to leave us all ignorant of how our system came to be, the better to exploit us in the future...

Parents need to educate their children better than they themselves were educated. But how to accomplish this?

[Gods_Mercenary]

I was well educated, labor history was a part of other history courses that I took, a part of the other social considerations we learned about.

[PatrickHenry]

An incredible resource.
Labor History Weblinks

[fushigi]

1. What's your take on labor history?

Well, we can't be too happy about all our labor laws. After all, they drove the cost of doing business up to the point that manufacturing in the US is now unfeasible. I find it ironic that the same people who complain about all our jobs going overseas are the same ones who are so pro-union.

[PatrickHenry]

Other nations allow workers to be mistreated and corporations profit.

Good wages for workers is what created the consumer market in the US.

Anyone find that either one of those objectionable?

[fushigi]

Good wages for workers is what created the consumer market in the US.

True, the old Ford $5-a-day policy worked miracles on the US economy. But I'm not just talking about wages. It's everything: the draconian regulations on benefits, time off, overtime, maternity leave, workers' comp, etc. It's just too damned expensive to build stuff in the US anymore.

Of course that doesn't matter much to people like me in third sector jobs, but it just drives me nuts that my family - especially my mom's side, blue collar working heroes from Detroit - can't see the relationship between overly strict labor laws and losing jobs.* They think we need higher tariffs and government protectionism to solve the problem. I say we need less government, not more, to get the economy rolling.

*Michigan's gross state product has been slipping rapidly since the mid-90s, along with all the manufacturing-centered economies in the Midwest. Last year the state's GSP growth was 49th - right in front of Louisiana.

[grandpa]

I don't think that the US educational system is doing
right by its children.
Labor history isn't more than a mention of Samuel Gompers
and the AFL in most high schools.

The public school system is hardly rational, at least from a radical perspective.
From a mainstream perspective it is rational, though.

We aren't taught elementary lessons such as "Your average employer wants to exploit workers and have them work for less and less money." From practically any perspective that's an accurate statement, and one that should actually be emphasized because it has some pretty dramatic implications. But it makes the system look kind of bad, doesn't it?

It's not that labor history is boring. For just one modest example, we can look at Mother Jones's "Children's Crusade" in 1903, in which she organized children working in mills and mines in a march from Kensington, Pennsylvania to Oyster Bay, New York, the home of President Theodore Roosevelt. They carried banners demanding "We want time to play!" and "We want to go to school!" Many of those kids were working up to 55 hours a week.

That march offers dramatic and fascinating images, and it's just one glimpse into what was going on until pressures started mounting against the glories of capitalism.

Mother Jones was called "the most dangerous woman in America" because she demanded what people take for granted today. She was apparently a decent person, so she had to be smeared.

Grandpa h.

[grandpa]

Well, we can't be too happy about all our labor
laws.
After all, they drove the cost of doing business up
to the point that manufacturing in the US is now
unfeasible.

Maybe it's a secret, but manufacturing is not completely unfeasible in the US.
The only thing that makes it so is many "Americans" actually have standards that might cut into profits and make them more difficult to control.
It's certainly not entirely a matter of labor laws, which themselves arguably serve only to solemnize workers with the system.

People in other countries are now working for what Americans achieved over time.
They too are trying to make capitalism unfeasible.

Grandpa h.

[tman_ndsu08]

Hyundai, Nissan, and Toyota have all built (or will build) 1+ billion dollar assembly plants in the US in recent years.


How are they able to do this?


The build them in the south, where the laws protect workers from unions.

IE, Right-to-work law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia