I love the diversity that you present here! Very good work on the drawing front. And I agree with you -- we must recognize not just the contributions of the labor movement over the past century and a half, but also how very far we have yet to go to ensure a good life for everyone.

Tohether & united is better than alone against the rest of the uiverse.

My partner just led his shop to a successful union vote. It's funny how the dominoes start falling once even just ONE shop in a company joins the union. Management has been running around like crazy now trying to appease the other shops before the join as well.

Union, yes!

Unions are getting a bad name because the only time they make it into the public eye is when they're doing something wrong. Everybody knows the UAW destroyed the auto industry (never mind whether it's true), but nobody's ever heard of the myriad trade unions that do flawless work for their members. There's also that, for a great many of us, any personal exposure to a labor union comes in the form of working for or knowing somebody who works retail grocery. The unions that represent grocery workers have all become house organs for the businesses they are supposed to represent their members to. Because of them, there are a couple generations of working class people that see unions as just one more useless middleman with a hand in their wallet.

Very much this. Not all unions are made equal, and not all union practices are admirable.

I've had to deal with a lot of different unions, from convention management, film production, carpentry and yes, even supermarkets, and while the Unions are very important, they are often discredited for nothing more than having to fight battles that have wide ranging impact on everybody, not just the people they fight for.

In some cases, the very protections the unions offer their workers cause grief to everyone else who want their independence from a union they aren't affiliated with. In others, the protections prevent people from being removed from a job when they make the workplace dangerous, or simply refuse to do their jobs.

But unions are still very important, not only in the USA, but around the world. The people need someone to represent them and back them when their rights are being trampled!

It's also that nobody is taught about the fight for workers' rights in school. I didn't find out that the factory bosses could call in the Pinkertons to murder striking workers until well into my 30's. Most people my age have no idea that people had to fight and suffer and even die en masse to make things like 8-hour work days and overtime pay a reality. Many I know actually think such things are somehow a natural outgrowth of civilized society, that they'd exist without government intervention and all those awful laws and regulations that "gum up the works" of the free market. Oi, gevalt.

Not so much "could" as "did." Killing people was never condoned (except for wars and executing criminals), but the people in power would do it anyway. At the time, the power was all in the hands of management (and landowners) and they didn't consider the consequences of "using up" their workers (and renters). Both sides profit from fair dealing and mutual respect, it's the short-sighted, self-important types that cause the problems. Now that type looks to get into union leadership, too, and are just as much a nuisance when they do.

be nice if some retailers like walmart was unionized. Big business has a lot of money and power, so we little guys gotta band together and pool our resources in order to keep things balanced as far as power goes. I'm beginning to think walmart's another damned standard oil...

When I went to work for Wal-Mart a loooooong time ago, the training video specifically mentioned union. Their stance was that Wal-Mart treats its employees so well, that unions were not necessary, and all they did was charge you evil, nasty dues. So if someone is walking around the floor asking people about unionization, tell a manager right away!

Hey, I was flat broke at the time.

"Remember, if a union had it's way, it'd kill you and your entire family!"

Unions are both great and there are spotty hits in both union history and unions today.

Great image!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CkFPyH8v1c

Unfortunately, unions are a big reason most animation production has gone overseas. Why pay someone here $40 an hour if you can get some Korean to do it for $40 a week? Union shops are also impossible to get hired at unless you're a member or know someone there. So yeah, it's really great if you happen to be one of the very few who work at a union shop-- everyone else is just SOL-- all the lower-end animation jobs have gone overseas and the union shops won't even consider hiring you unless you're already a member. And if through some miracle you do get hired at a union shop, you HAVE to pay them large amounts of money to join the union or you'll get fired. You're given no choice. So the price for some elite people getting super-high paying union jobs with tons of benefits are all the other artists being unemployed because all the lower-skill jobs are gone overseas, and the shops are closed to anyone who isn't a member. So a few people are better off because everyone else is being screwed. And I don't think you'll ever see the animator's union go on strike, because there's a lot of disgruntled artists like me who've been shut out of the good jobs by the union who would jump at the chance to go to work, scab status or not.

Wh yes, I am bitter. Can you tell?

Nothing will really change until our import/export laws are rewritten. You can't allow corporations to export their pollution, regulated work hours, and worker safety. Once manufacturing is brought to [greater] legal parity, labor jobs like animation should improve as well.

Hopefully, more will come of the riots at Foxconn. Something has to slap some sense into the general public.

Then again, animation has been outsourced since the 80's, so your particular situation is nothing new. I'm not sure anything is going to change there. Maybe if the public gets tired of cheapo Flash tweening and demands actual animation again...

Just a thought, would you rather the unions not exist and US citizens get paid $40 a week? Keep in mind, without the unions, it's possible that none of us would benefit from a minimum wage. I'm not trying to discredit your opinion, those problems are all there and need to be addressed. But to paint unions with such broad and uncompromising strokes does show your bitterness.

Unions were necessary in the early part of the century, but with the globalization of everything the unions as they are now are dangerously anacronistic. In Los Angeles the teacher's union is so strong it's almost impossible to fire teachers who molest children without year's-long hearings. I've been out of work for 4 years, and am completely shut out of any decent jobs in the industry by the union. They can go fuck themselves.

They're not so much anachronistic actually.

You see in the past they used to have tariffs, to make sure the plutocrats didn't make monstrous profits by shipping everything to countries which... we actually artificially keep poor.

Although if you'd like to work for third world wages (because union or not, if you don't they'll STILL ship your job to whatever place someone can hold a pencil (or click a mouse) the cheapest.), I'm sure they'd be glad to have you.

Not sure how working for a bowl of rice with occasional raisins would work out for you. But have at it.

Not that I'm unsympathetic to your plight actually. You're just kicking at the wrong target. What you SHOULD be demanding is that the people who ship jobs overseas pay high tariffs for that privilege. That way it becomes interesting to hire you again, and to hire you again for a GOOD wage.

And that's how history used to work too.

Just saying.

This also should make you, just like it should make anyone without a job due to jobs shipping overseas, a fierce proponent for getting money out of politics. Because that's how they abolished the tariffs and shipped your job oversea in the first place.

Don't blame the unions, blame the people who shipped your job overseas! And the people who keep these third world countries poor and sweatshop like, so the billionaires can make an extra buck or a million. (Because the customers sure as hell still pay the full price or more.)

I have no love for the executives either, but they're not the ones who told me not to even bother applying somewhere because I didn't belong to the union, and they're not the one who would force me to turn over large parts of my salary as 'union initiation fees' and then fire me if I refused. Unions may have been for the worker once upon a time, but now they're self-protecting private clubs that no one else can get into. At least management is honest while they screw you. The union will call you a schmuck for not supporting them, while refusing to let you into their party.

Improvements in electronic communication and the advent of the internet made the tech market going overseas inevitable. As long as there's shithole 3rd world countries with enormous populations they will exploit that, and there's nothing that can be done because there's too much money involved. And in most of these cases I don't think we have anything to do with keeping them 'artificially poor." They're poor because they're grossly overpopulated on marginal land with no natural resources, no infrastructure, corrupt governments and constant interethnic conflict.

That would be fine by me, because without unions, things are cheaper. They said that to make a pair of Levis here in the US with union workers, they would have to sell them at $200 or $300 each.

Not sure if serious.

The real minimum wage is $0. If you're not worth having at the legally-set minimum wage (plus insurance, social security, and all the other regulatory expenses) then you don't have a job. However, if you're part of a union and you're required to be receiving $70 of pay and benefits for $30 of work, then your employer's going to go to somewhere where they're not losing money by having employees.

And if these companies all go overseas and everyone loses their job, what happens to the union?

It's not the unions and "$70 of pay for $30 of work" that's killing American industry. It's the lawmakers and their piss-poor, selectively-enforced trade regulations (or lack of such).

If nobody's paying union employees, then the union bosses aren't going to be able to extort money out of the paychecks of the workers.

If it's a problem of trade regulations, what would you have lawmakers do?

Remember the homeless man in NYC that people found and he became part of the SAG? Well, the initial fee to join the SAG was $4000. Unions, like the UAW (union heads mainly) have become rather greedy and its a big reason why companies go bankrupt when employees are paid more than twice the average going rate. I really don't want to join a union where, more than half the time, the dues you paid are then paid to democrat's campaigns to make sure they get elected.

Don't get me wrong, union workers aren't bad people at all. Its usually the union heads that have become corrupted. Well, except for government unions, where there is no incentive to control their benefits packages. The only place unions don't belong are in government institutions.

The actual number is $2,277, and the annual fee is on a sliding scale based on income ($116 base plus 1.85% per year). The hardest part about the SAG is that you actually have to be a working actor. It's still easier than gaining membership to the Equine Art Guild, which isn't EVEN a union (and really has no benefits to speak of, except access to the EAG show at the Kentucky Horse Park) I had my house in California rewired by an IBEW member. He was fast, efficient, knowledgeable and surprisingly inexpensive.

All the electronics and computer jobs have been shipped out to Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and China, and that's without any unions ANYWHERE in the mix. There are no unions at all in the computer industry in America (except possibly in some of the larger electrical installations, where the IBEW gets involved). I'm bitter, too, especially when I encounter customers of those computer companies who have been treated like crap by overseas tech support getting paid 1/10 what their American counterparts are (at $1.25 an hour, it's a GREAT job over there!) and having not had their problem dealt with at all.

I'm glad for unions, but just like everything else, they can't be too powerful or else they don't help. Like RGibson said, when they get too powerful, you get situations like in Detroit (although there are other factors there) where no one can get a job unless they're a part of the union and the union has so much control that it strangles the business, forcing them to seek cheaper and less picky labor sources elsewhere.

It's got to be balanced. When the union works, it makes sure the company doesn't drive over it's employees for the sake of profit. But when a union doesn't work, it's either a "old boys only club" or a group of thugs trying to squeeze more money out of the company for less work.

I agree. There are situations that call for a union and situations that don't. Both sides have positions of authority, which tends to attract the power-hungry and unscrupulous. Those are the ones to watch out for, as it doesn't matter which side (management, union, or government) they're part of, they'll just cause problem after problem.

I count the election of Obama and the decision of the conservative media to target unions as cause of this, as the start of the most-current wave of extra-agressive anti-union semtiment.
Obama hadn't even been inaugurated before the non-liberal pundits (esp. on Fox News) were bashing labor unions day in and day out. And bashing them hard.
And the same folks who bash unions in such a merciless way, are the same market that belives that Iraq was involved in 9/11.

I recall a lot of the anti-union stuff started with Reagan. Greed was good in the 80's and nobody was thinking long-term. Things started to get better in the 90's, but then tech jobs started to take over, and nobody in IT ever unionizes. Once the boom of the 90's was over, it was all downhill from there.

Your recollection is correct as well, since America's corporate concerns have had huge problems with the mere existence of labor unions since the Industrial Revolution.
And the whole Greed Is Good mentality is coming home to roost, with this spirit of Screw You, I've Got Mine that is permiating America.
A recent survey ranked the USA as somethning like the 18th most-free country on earth.
Make no mistake. Both sides want to make America a third-world country as quickly as possible. But the right's forces in this effort have successfully cloaked themselves in a very-effective campaign of misdirection.Bashing the labor unions is a manifestation of that sucess.

Overall, the US is 12th, and 18th on the economy.
This is from 2011: http://www.prosperity.com/rankings.aspx

Ayn Rand can say what she likes, but it's logical for all sides for the divisible to unionise.

Hell, I spent most of a week this month picketing at the CTU strike. I have family in there.

It's useless arguing against propaganda. People either listen to it or they don't.

That's no to say there's no point in speaking and being heard! The people in the middle may budge a little, but those who are susceptible to propaganda do not have functioning minds.

Thank you for drawing this sir. One of the few pics that has made it into my favs that isn't porn

Unionization is so important to maintaining a middle-class standard of living...

I look at all these crazed, libertarian tech worker types, who are well compensated in salary but have mediocre benefits, and I wonder if they realize just how fucked they're going to be in a few years. Capital wants their form of labor to be as fungible as any manual labor. By the time they realize how precarious their position is they'll all be out of a job to someone willing to work for half their wages, due to the strangler's fingers of inescapable student loan debt forcing them to do any work they can for whatever pay comes along...

PACIFIC

STEELWORKERS, YO!

I am part of a Union too. UFCW-8

I was forced out of my first and last job by "my" union due to extremely vague regulations they created and decided to enforce for "my good" that knowingly would only result in the termination of my contract and the position itself. The California Teachers Union is all kinds of fucked up. If you think their lies from the out side are bad, oh boy are they just insane internally. Its a completely different culture within.

There are Good Unions, & there are bad ones. I just love how uninformed people seem to think that Unions are why our Jobs are being sent to China. Sorry, the reason our Jobs are being sent to China is because of CORPORATE GREED! Why do you think we have Labor, Minimum Wage, Sexual harassment, Child Labor & Anti Discrimination Laws? Its NOT because employers are nice & fair! Nope! They are greedy! & if they are paying a worker $15 an hr, its because they are making $100 off that worker. If it wasn't for laws put to control Employer abuse, we would all be making $1-$3 an hr. Just ask all the Documented workers how much they get paid.

Just ask all the Undocumented workers how much they get paid.*

(Correction)

They don't even have to be undocumented. http://qctimes.com/news/local/artic.....cc4c03286.html

the reason people hate on unions is several fold:

-in a time when everyone else is forced to take shittier jobs simply because it's all we can get in this failing economy and 86 a shitload of hobby spending, unions coerce companies into giving them raises that the companies can't afford and then throw tantrums when they don't get there way, further harming the people they work for simply because they're stuck on the workforce dynamic of a century ago and basically treat every company that is FORCED to employ them ad robber barons.
-in areas where they can get away with it they automatically deduct union dues from non-union workers simply because they work there. such as teacher's unions.
-they protect the jobs of complete shitbags while at the same time creating a massive barrier to entry that keeps many capable and otherwise qualified workers out of a job by imposing arbitrary restrictions on who employers can hire.
-the union leaders don't really do a whole lot and yet they get paid more than some of the business owners they vilify.

Guilds and unions have always been about protecting your job at the expense of other peoples' wealth and happiness.

collective bargaining is not the same thing as unions. in fact, it can be argued that many unions don't really do a whole lot of bargaining, and prefer to just collectively demand unreasonable benefits.

there are many unions that don't do all of these shenanigans, the Electricians guild being one of them, but the ones that DO act like spoiled children shit it up for everyone else. and that's why more and more people are seeing unions as an obsolete construct of a bygone era, now existing simply as a giant scam to fill the pockets of fatcat union bosses at the expense of higher priced goods and further incentive to bypass the unreasonable expenses by shipping the jobs overseas.

also, keep in mind a big contributing factor to the detroit auto industy going under was the rediculous strain the autoworker's union put on the "big three" to the point they couldn't make any profits, and went bankrupt because they had to basically support everyone who has ever worked for them.

if you want a collective business done right then look up "worker's co op," basically it's a business model where everyone working for the company is partial owner, and everyone gets a portion of the profits.

-in areas where they can get away with it they automatically deduct union dues from non-union workers simply because they work there. such as teacher's unions.

That's not quite how it works:

In the US, you don't have to join the union in order to work in a union shop. However, you generally do need to pay a fee to the union to cover the costs of bargaining and dispute resolution because the union is required to provide those services to all workers including those who do not join the union[1].

That fee is generally going to be less than the full dues because most unions also have services which are only available to members, (such as strike pay).


[1] With a little thought you can see why so-called "right to work" laws are government union busting: The union is still required to give you their main services but you don't have to pay them for it.

There's good and bad ones. I've yet to see any good in the one I'm in.

Think things are bad now? What about Watsons all over teh place. In ten years time, you will have an induvidual Watson on your smartphone. And it will be a smartphone, because Watson will be better at your job than you are.

Have a manual job? Seen the new two armed assembly line robot that costs $20000? That guy can replace three shifts. Also, its not being built by twin armed robots assembling parts printed on 3D printers, so things are going to get even cheaper. Who are you going to use, robots, or minimum wage slaves that cost 4 * as much in wages etc?

This Is the Singularity. Whether we as a civilisation crash and burn in nuclear holocaust, total indifference, or manage to survive and maybe even expand beyond our cradle, without then turning round and crushing it, well, thats what the future brings. Unfortunately for politicians, that future will not only be wile they are still alive, it will be while alot of them are still in the buisiness.

Hm.. Politicians. those are high quality mental jobs. Watson can replace those easily as well, Its certainly no more difficult than giving medical diagnosis.

For me there hit or miss, and in my life they have been more miss.

When I think of them, I think of the grocery union in Massachusetts and as I was doing paperwork for taxes and such I overheard a union rep talking to the shore about how they can't fire a cashier that had just not shown up to work 4 times in the last month. Sheash, she should had been dropped by the third at best. (and I'm not talking calling in and letting anyone know there's a problem). Mix that with paying 500 in dues over 3 months, just as long as the summer position. It was a waist of my money that I never wanted to do in the first place.

My other major problem is something I fallowed closely up in the same state involved a union for toll booth workers (and in the state there's less then a dozen, is it really needed, but I digress). Because of the union though first the costs to have some one manning a booth is about 19 bucks an hour (and just in the next state there's one that is manned at 10 bucks less an hour). Then there was one person that decided this wasn't enough and started to steal from the till (from what I understand to the tone of a couple of hundred a day). The state wanted to put cameras into the booths to prevent this further, the unions protested stating that it's a violation of there "privacy". Ya... right. I'd want the camera there if I worked there. It would not only catch those doing stupid things, but would prove that you did nothing wrong as well. I consider the second part to be the more useful myself.

Now I don't let this kill all unions in my mind. I know that in history they have made great strides and some still do. It's just that there are many of them how that are causing as many problems as others can solve... just like so many other things in life.

Unions have a place and time. Now is not the time.

Now is more the time then it's ever been.

Go unions!

Unions gained us many of the rights we take for granted, and while they can be just as guilty of being bloated or greedy, they continue to be a force for the collective power of the worker. Go unions, indeed.

Lol. I'm a Union Pipefitter.