Do we even give a shit about unions any more?

[Spike89]

38. We do, but it can get frustrating

Unions have been demonized, slandered, and scapegoated. Union membership and overall support has been declining. Unfortunately, the response from unions hasn't been terribly effective at reversing those trends. I know it is frustrating to see consumers buying non-union products. Educating consumers on the benefits of buying union is a good thing. Attacking consumers for choosing a non-union product is counter productive. Yes, union-made is often better--happy employees do tend to do better work, but that is no where near the point or rationale for having unions. Unions were NOT created to be more efficient cogs in the factory. They are NOT formed to give the corporate marketing department a bullet point in the next advertising PowerPoint show. Those are nothing more than the talking points used to reassure capitalists that unions aren't as big a threat to them as they may think.

Unions exist primarily to negotiate on the behalf of labor...simple as that. It is a fairness issue. Unions are about worker dignity and protection from those with the fiscal power. Unions are ideologically powerful--damn-near biblical--but that message hardly ever gets out. Instead, we mistake the union benefits to capitalists (which don't actually persuade them) with the real point of unions--their benefits to society and all labor.

The battle is not between labor and consumers (we're pretty much the same group). Unions must get into the southern "right-to-work" auto factories. When a Hostess national factory folds, the jobs should simply move to unionized regional factories (we're going to eat about the same amount of crap either way). We need to get to the point where "choosing union-made" really isn't an issue because every sensible choice consumers have is between union products.