And these “leaders” listed below, and their immediate predecessors, sit and wait like a deer in the headlights to get run over!
James P. “Bud” McCourt, Newton Jones, James Boland, Lonnie Stephenson, James P. Hoffa, Frank Christensen, Eric Dean, Daniel E. Stepano, Kenneth E. Rigmaiden, Kinsey Robinson, Joseph Sellers, Jr., Mark McManus, Terry O’Sullivan and James T. Callahan, along with their point man Sean Mc Garvey, preside over a totally failed culture of representing workers! They are the latest group of senior leaders spanning more than 40 years, silent on advancing workers’ rights in North America – bred to be silent and complicit with management, to rollover to nearly every management whim.
EVERY piece of verifiable information, from all quadrants of business and government, indicates that the trades are going down! And yet the above leaders insist that Value on Display is working, and as Trump does quit often – doubling down on being collaborative (complicit) with management.
Consider the Supreme Court decision as a prelude to an avalanche of upcoming anti-union legislation.
Long before the mid-term elections the R’s Freedom and Heritage factions will submit legislation for PLA’s, RTW, prevailing wage reform to outright repeal – stripping organizing rights and making a bad NLRB even less effective. There will be NO help for insolvent trades’ pensions with this group. MAYBE a coalition of commerce type R’s working with D’s for pension help – but betting money is against that – and the history of the hard-right beating the traditional faction of the Rs supports that bet!
Right now, many trades are “securing” deals for their own trades with many diverse players on infrastructure. Those deals/partnerships aren’t even worth the paper they are written on! The trades are in the every trade for themselves mode. This is like climbing a greased pole, and yet even though the trades have NEVER climbed that greased pole of Value on Display – they continue to try. Being partners. Being chumps!
Huge amounts of the upcoming infrastructure will be public/private funding. The R’s have created legislation to strip those jobs of PLA’s and other union initiatives.
Many companies are launching efforts to train skilled workers – using the trades training info, but not the trades themselves. I’d say stealing the trades training info – except for the fact that we GIVE it away. I was particularly interested in the current Exxon training commercial, which is running in select markets and highlights the training of the UA. Exxon is partnering with others on this initiative!
And yet we continue to recruit and call it ORGANIZING! We protest (in talk) and passively (staying behind the barricades) – and we complain about how unfair it all is!
Activism is on the rise in both the U.S. and Canada, and yet the trades – despite EVERY number(s) across all measuring categories showing that for more than 3 decades of losses – continue to sit and capitulate!
The trades as a temp agency can not even survive as a temp agency if the shell as a union is gone!
Leaders my butt – they are rolling over on their responsibility to ensure the future of the middle class and that of all workers, union or not!
These leaders wouldn’t know a good fight if it bites them on the rear –
Danny L Caliendo
Organizer
Labor Rising/Labor Combat
