The role of unions/Getting to know our future overlords
Ignore George Will’s little snarkity-snark about Howard Dean, and this is actually a very interesting column about a union leader for today’s world. Also an interesting tidbit about China:
Today Stern thinks globally. He has been to China five times and believes few Americans comprehend the scale of that nation’s potential challenge to America’s economic supremacy. Intel Corp., he says, sponsors science fairs around the world for students heading to college. Last year 66,000 young Americans participated in the local fairs that select finalists. In China, 6 million participated.
It’s true - countries like China and Russia haven’t been permitted to throw their resources into developing nuclear weapons and expanding their armies - but this allows them to invest all these savings into their economies, with which they will crush us. What are we supposed to do when China calls in our debts to them? Flatten them with A-bombs? George Will obliquely concedes that unions do benefit working people by giving them time to rest and fair compensation for their work, redistributing the wealth across the populace. Is it time to unionize China? That economy sure would slow down if people weren’t working 24 hours a day, and everybody sat around all weekend like I am doing right now. And if union organizers were to go in and start planting the seeds of revolution, would deomcracy follow? Or is a democratic state a pre-requisite for union activity?
And then, what about us? China’s got a heck of a lot more manufacturing than we do, and it’s easier to organize those types of laborers. Here in America, we’ve got a service economy that depends on cheap immigrant labor and is very difficult to organize. What can the SEIU accomplish?