So this video has been making the rounds. It’s the video that Target forces all employees to watch. It’s full of ridiculous lies and rhetoric, and is meant to keep the workers from organizing. This means they stay at the mercy of their employers, watching their benefits whittled down, their full-time hours reduced to just enough so that they can’t make a living wage anymore, yet not enough that they’re eligible for government benefits.
Watch it. It’s horrible and completely misleading and will make you angry if you believe in the right of people to bargain with their employer for better workplace terms and conditions. But you need to see it.
I hate stupid sh-t like this.
I’ve been thrilled, what with the events in Wisconsin, to see people embracing unions. When I was up there, the day that Scott Walker signed the ‘non-fiscal budget bill’ into law, the unions pretty much stormed the rotunda in the morning and held it until closing. One after another: Teamsters, Boiler makers, Steel Pipe Traders, firefighters, sheriffs, deputies, the Labor Retirees: EVERYONE.
And there were so many people who were telling me exactly the same thing I said when I stood to address the crowd in the morning: I’m not union, I’m not a teacher, I’m not a student, I’m not a public worker, I’m not a Badger, (some said, I’m not even employed right now) but I still support unions.
So I’ve been thrilled with the reemergence of people power and union support in parts of our country. Unions are tricky. So many of us take them for granted. And when they’re corrupted or abuse their power, that becomes our excuse to demonize the entire union enterprise and organization of workers.
The problem right now is that unions are still facing a PR crisis. They’ve broken away, for the most part, from the mob ties that caused them, at least in part, to be subject to tremendous government scrutiny in the days of Hoffa, and here in Chicago, the days of Simpson and Hamilton and the rest of those giants.
Amazingly, the GOP has managed to convince some Americans that two long, interminable wars, a huge national debt, reckless Wall Street practices, and costly tax cuts didn’t cause the current economic crisis that threatens our infrastructure, our medical care, our social services, our healthcare.
Unions did.
And that’s bullshit.
The best way to combat disgusting videos like this one from the Target Corporation is to fight back in the PR war and educate people about how unions, though they are subject to corruption like just about any other organization of people (look at our congressmen and our courts), are responsible for creating the middle class and standing up for the worker.
To the drawing board, people.
The powers that be at the various corporation must be organizing (love that irony) because I saw that exact same video with people wearing Home Depot uniforms posted to Facebook a few months ago. They’re colluding, people, and they’ve even got a script. If bosses are organizing, it would be foolish for workers not to.