Tuesday, July 12th, 2005...9:26 am
The People That Brought You The Weekend
A co-worker of mine responded to my post about the strikes against ASARCO/Grupo México with a bit of a rant about how he doesn’t make as much as these miners do, and even threw the word “communist” around.
Joseph, Joseph…
Yes, you are right, these guys make more than we do. Then again, mining these days is a highly specialized and technical profession. The days of anyone who could swing a pick getting hired are long gone. It is, however, still dangerous. In 2003 there were 223 serious injuries, but luckily there haven’t been fatalities since 2002. I can’t recall the last fatality at our job.
I would love it if we were paid more at the job we are at. That isn’t any reason why we should be mad at people who are getting paid more. Why do they make more? Well, conservatives claim they love the mechanism of the market to determine such things. What do labor unions do but use that same principle to sell their labor? They have something that the company wants, their skills, and the workers, in turn, are refusing to sell those skills until they get the price they want. It should bring a tear to Adam Smith’s eye.
Also, on the “communist” angle: conservatives love to think that our nation was on the verge of a bolshevik takeover until Ronnie was sworn in in 1981. However, the fight against communism was undertaken by many parts of our society, including labor. Political leaders, yes, even Republicans, knew that a strong and democratic labor movement was a great bullwark against communism, by showing that workers could achieve power without some sort of Marxist revolt. George Meany and others were criticized by many on the left for purging communists from the ranks of labor.
One also must remember that communism in Poland fell not to some consortium of right-wing economists, but a labor union. It didn’t do much for the East bloc rhetoric of a “worker’s paradise” to have workers organized against it.
But, hey, it was, what, 2:20 in the morning when you wrote that? I guess I should give you a bit of a break.
1 Comment
July 13th, 2005 at 4:25 pm
This is totally off-topic, sorry.
New Survey-USA poll on Napolitano’s approval rating shows that Napolitano is more popular in Phoenix (58% approval) than in Tucson (52% approval). WTF?
Going back to June, you can see that the change in her Phoenix numbers is within MOE, while in Tucson her approval rating has clearly plummeted.
Any thoughts? Just off the top of my head, I have to wonder if it has anything to do with the immigrant bashing she’s taken to lately.
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