Is It Treason to Strike Against the Government?
Is it treasonous to go on strike against your employer? Most reasonable people would say no. But, given the opportunity, most Bosses would make it illegal for their employees to strike for better wages and conditions. The government, as employer of many thousands of public sector employees, is the only employer that has the ability to outlaw strikes by its employees. Al Shanker, who led New York City’s school teachers on a number of strikes between the early 1960s and the late 1970s, grumbled that the illegality of strikes and the steep fines and penalties incurred by city unions that strike anyway were a holdover from monarchistic thinking, and that there isn’t even the slimmest pretext of arguing for public safety or welfare in making them illegal. Shanker would point out that teachers at private schools would face no penalty if they chose to strike, even though such a strike […]
Hey Radiohead! Here’s a Quid
Radiohead have fired a shot across the bow of the record industry by making their upcoming record, “In Rainbows” available for download for any price that the consumer chooses. “No really, it’s up to you,” the band’s website reassures the fan who is unsure how much to pay for the download. The band’s use of the honor system has produced a cottage industry of articles predicting the End Of The Record Industry As We Know It (EOTRIAWKI) or confessing how much one paid for the download. Apparently, one third of listeners paid nothing for the download. If the RIAA had their way, these people would be sued for $220,000. But, on average, fans have paid about $8 for a download that – like all records – could be had for free. Me, I paid one pound, 45 pence – about three American dollars. It’s more than I’ve ever paid for […]
Labor’s Cold Warriors: Meany, Dubinsky and Shanker
I’d prefer a better term for it, but I think of myself and my peers as being a part of the “Sweeney Generation” of the labor movement. We’re the kids who were recruited to beleaguered labor unions to organize greater numbers of workers as part of a grand movement for social justice (That was the idea, at least). It is hard to believe that if I had come of age thirty years earlier, I’d likely have viewed the AFL-CIO as the AFL-CIA – a pale, male and stale dinosaur that was to the right of most presidents of the U.S.A. in prosecuting the Cold War. Thanks to some inherited books, and Richard Kahlenberg’s new biography of Al Shanker, I’ve recently subjected myself to a history lesson on some of labor’s biggest Cold Warriors. As head of the AFL-CIO from the time of the merger in 1955 until 1979, George Meany […]
“The Heart Blood of the Union”
David Dubinsky was a leading light of labor in the 20th century, heading up the International Ladies Garment Workers Union from before the New Deal upsurge until well into the 1960’s. He was also an inveterate splitter and eager faction fighter. Therefore, it is of little surprise to find a passage describing his relish in fighting one of the earliest staff unions in his autobiography, “A Life With Labor.” It comes during his chapter on “Union Firsts” (many of which were actually pioneered by Sidney Hillman’s Amalgamated Clothing Workers, a few of which are even acknowledged as such), while describing a union-sponsored Training Institute that took young college graduate and trained them to be paid staff organizers, working for the ILGWU. Quoted and highlighted in relevant part: An even greater disappointment came in the early 1960’s when some of the institute graduates became the spearhead of a movement to organize […]
Comment Is Free
I’m getting more comfortable with the Word Press software that powers this Blarg, so I’ve been stretching out and enjoying some of its features. First off, comment is now free. I’ve disabled the requirement that a reader must register before posting a comment, but I’ve increased the scrutiny of the spam filter. So, please, do leave comments on these posts but try to avoid writing about viagra or mortgage refinancing, or else your comments might be deleted unread. Secondly, I have now deigned to accept your direct e-mail correspondence, in the Pen Pal link to the left. Thanks to Frieda Gerson for pestering me to finally set up a contact form, and to Shannon Hammock for actually writing lonesome me. Finally, I can now peep the peepers, using a tool that shows what search engine terms are directing people to this website. To the young men who are searching this […]
Prudish Socialists
Steadily making my way through Si Gerson’s books, I’m surprised (although I’m not sure why) by instances of prudishness of our revolutionary heroes. In his “History of the Three Internationals,” William Z. Foster spends a hundred pages after the end of the Third International to ruminate on then-contemporary issues. This material is all, essentially, Party-line, what with the impending crisis of capitalism (in 1954), the imperialist Social Democrats and so on. Within it, this passage manages to stand out as uniquely wrong-headed: In the field of culture there is likewise a general retrogression throughout the capitalist world, above all in the United States, with its cultural mess of pragmatism, psychoanalysis, neo-Malthusianism…with its swamp of “comic” books, oceans of sex, crime and horror stories, printed and on the radio and television. Foster was 73 when he wrote this, and he sounds like a nagging grandpa. But, sadly, this is Party line […]
John Turturro’s Queens Musical
It’s hard to imagine in this DVD age that John Turtuorro’s “Romance and Cigarettes” could languish in a studio vault, largely unseen by the public, for over two years. In many ways a valentine to Queens, particularly the areas down south by Kennedy airport, where things get weird, Turturro’s working class characters break into song and dance when feeling most dreary and desperate. It’s a familiar device to fans of Dennis Potter, but unlike “The Singing Detective” or “Pennies From Heaven,” “Romance and Cigarettes” neglect to weigh down its narrative with believable drama. The family at the heart of the story are hard to take seriously, with Aida Turturro and Mary Louise Parker playing James Gandolfini’s daughters. The characters are probably supposed to be teenagers, or at least in their early twenties, if their living at home and playing in a backyard punk rock band is supposed to be believable […]
They Can’t Drive These Cars Themselves
Is the NYC cabdriver strike successful? It’s hard for me to say. The only time that I spend in Manhattan these days is a few minutes underground, switching from the Long Island Rail Road to New Jersey Transit on my way to Rutgers. The Taxi Workers Alliance, which called the strike over a city mandate that yellow cabs install credit card machines and GPS systems, claims that 80% of the city’s cab drivers stayed home. Mayor Bloomberg is pooh-poohing the extent of the job action. Strolling around Greenwich Village tonight, I saw exactly three cabs when I would normally see dozens more. It’s easy to shake one’s head in confusion over the cause of the strike. What’s wrong with providing more consumer service, you may ask? Isn’t this fear of GPS a wee bit paranoid? Keep in mind the precarious position of most cabbies. They are not employees (and the […]
The Human Being Inside Bill Foster
Still poring through Si Gerson’s books, I’m having fun playing labor historian, although I’m not sure who’s benefiting (a young comrade in another forum complained, “this post seems like a big name drop…I don’t really need to read the words of dead men to know how I think society ought to be structured.”). I came across a fascinating observation about William Z. Foster in Nat Hentoff’s lamentably brief biography of A.J. Muste. Muste is best known as a pacifist, a leader of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the War Resisters League, who mentored Bayard Rustin, David McReynolds and scores of other activists committed to nonviolent resistance and was a leading light of the opposition to nuclear armaments and the early stages of the Vietnam War (he died in 1967). He had quite the interesting biography before all that. A protestant minister who quit his congregation to resist the first World […]
Wisdom in Old Books
Shortly after writing about Sophie Gerson’s passing a few weeks ago, I was contacted by her grand-daughter Frieda and daughter Deborah. They’re cleaning out the family house in Bensonhurst and thought I might be interested in some of Si Gerson’s books. Would I! Si had a voluminous book collection on topics like socialism, the labor movement, election law and policy and New York City politics that stretched back decades. There was an impressive diversity to Si’s collection, as it was not limited, like too many young leftists’ today, to those writers with whom he agreed. Si’s habit of underlining sections and scribbling exclamation points in the margin suggest his opinion of the material. My favorite so-far being the prominent question mark beside Norman Thomas’ preposterous claim, in “Socialism Re-Examined,” that Marx’s theory of surplus labor value could not account for automation (Marx, of course, devotes several chapters of “Capital Vol. […]