Become a
Paid Mullings Subscriber!
(To join the FREE mailing list or to unsubscribe Click Here
... and Oxymorons
Rich Galen Wednesday July 27, 2005
Dear Mr. Mullings:
What's with the title?
Signed,
National Coven of Retired AP Headline Writers
Ah. I was hoping you would ask. Monday's column (Ironies, Paradoxes, and Mysteries) included a point about disharmony among Big Labor.
It has, indeed, come to pass that two unions have left the AFL-CIO this week leading to a number of amusing headlines including the Washington Post's, "Two Large Unions Split from AFL-CIO."
Yes? And? That's amusing because �?
Because putting the words "unions" and "split" together is not an irony, a paradox, nor a mystery. It is an oxymoron. Like Jumbo Shrimp. Or (in boxing) a Light Heavyweight. Or (a favorite around here come November) a Continuing Resolution.
Oh, jeez. All that just to get to oxymoron?
Which Merriam-Webster's Third Unabridged defines as, "a combination for epigrammatic effect of contradictory or incongruous words." If that is not an oxymoron of its own, it is certainly obtuse.
The two unions which officially bolted the AFL-CIO are the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Teamsters (Teamsters). According to the Washington Post these two unions provide some $20 million of the $120 million annual dues which flow into the AFL-CIO coffers.
Two other unions, the Food and Commercial Workers, and UNITE HERE didn't officially disaffiliate from the AFL-CIO but did boycott the convention.
The real issue about the AFL-CIO is that its president, John Sweeney, has led the labor movement right off the edge of the social and political cliff in the United States.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, "Union members, who once made up roughly one of every three private sector workers, account for just 8 percent of the private sector today.
The AFL-CIO was a merger, in 1955, of two separate labor organizations, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
The AFL was made up of craft unions - carpenters, machinists, bricklayers, and so on. The CIO was organized by industry - auto workers and mine workers instead of the specific jobs within an auto plant or a coal mine.
That's history. The present problem for labor is, even including public employee unions (about 37% unionized), the unionized segment of the economy is, according to the World Socialist website, "just 15.5 million, or 12.5 percent of the workforce."
That means 87.5 percent of the workforce is not unionized and probably has no interest in having yet another organization taking yet another piece of their paycheck each and every month and watching it disappear into the pockets of their leaders who live far away acting just like rich people: Traveling around in private jets and in chauffer-driven limousines and not pulling into the nearest KampGround America for their vacations.
The Big Labor vote has become all but meaningless. The notion of a White carpenter in Missouri having very much in political common with an Hispanic hotel worker in New York is � oxymoronic.
A portion of most union-members' dues goes into the AFL-CIO's political operation which has been, you may have noticed, particularly unsuccessful in electing Liberal Democrats over these past few years.
Again from our friends toiling at the Socialist Workers sweatpage:
[Sweeney's] tenure has been marked by the abandonment of strikes and any resistance to the employers. Instead, Sweeney transformed the AFL-CIO into a virtual adjunct of the Democratic Party � increasing the percentage of union members who voted Democratic, while the overall number of union members continued its steady decline.
The real divide can be summed up in seven letters: Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart is a big fat 1.3 million worker target - er, objective - whom many in Big Labor believe is ripe for a major union organizing effort.
Spending millions on the Presidential campaigns of Howard Dean and John Kerry, or even Hillary Clinton doesn't get Labor any closer to the greeters at Wal-Mart's front doors.
Hillary Clinton and Wal-Mart. There's your oxymoron.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the Socialist Workers page and a link to the PBS page summarizing Wal-Mart stats. Yet another license plate as a Mullfoto and a pretty good Catchy Caption of the Day from yesterday's Shuttle launch.
--END --
Copyright © 2005 Richard A. Galen
Current Issue |
Secret Decoder
Ring | Past
Issues | Email
Rich | Rich
Who?
Copyright �2002 Richard
A. Galen | Site design by Campaign
Solutions. |
� 
