Washington politicos lack not only courage, but along with Labor “Leaders”, lack historical perspective.
We are in the decline phase of the Capitalist system. It is not cyclical phenomonon, it is dying, almost dead. So it is also that we have long passed, overshot, the limits of growth on a finite planet with finite resources.
If we have any hope to adjust, we must recognize these realities and overthrow the paper shackles of the puppets in DC. Labor leaders may be able to fill the void if they would adopt the radical perspective that challenges every given of the Divine Right of Kings/Divine Right of Corporations, Investment Banks, Banks, Bourgeoise Landlords and all the lackey politicians and media that follow in cue.
We need something completely different. A Peoples Equity Union dedicated to community betterment, meeting the needs of people in an inclusive, affordable, humane, equitable, artisan, sustainable, and peaceful manner.
We need a fundamental overhaul and reorganization of the economic system.
But without leadership, the idiots will get up tomorrow and do something all too similar to what they did today. Is it approaching nothing?
Get real, Trumka. Face the Dead Air, and get Radical, like REAL LABOR LEADERS OF THE PAST. It is our only hope.
In Peace, Friendwalkin’, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
Peoples’ Equity Union
Showing posts with label Organized Labor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Organized Labor. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Regarding Mondragon
Recently, the "Solidarity Economy Network" published an article that was printed in Time Magazine, about the Mondragon "Cooperative" Corporation (MCC), MCCs recent "letter of intent" with United Steelworkers (USW), and two very small workers cooperatives start-ups in Cleveland and SF Bay. While I applaud the efforts in Cleveland and SF Bay and wish them much success and a more honorable and principled and eventually all-encompassing "growth" than the original MCC, let's not get deluded by wishful thinking and political greenwash.
You must understand the cooptation that has occurred in the Mondragon "Cooperative" CORPORATION (MCC) which started small and highly principled, but has in reality evolved to little more than another predatory Capitalist Conglomerate. Starting as International Cooperative Alliance principled workers cooperatives, MCC has devolved to a Corporation, who according to this PR glitz article, has over 100 workers' cooperatives in a Corporation of 256 Companies. That translates to about 150 Companies, who are NOT workers' cooperatives, and knowing the history of Mondragon, it is a fairly safe bet that those 100 or so are probably functioning now as worker cooperatives in just about name only.
Early Mondragon experience can be a very useful model. But the bootstraps model that the Capitalists, including the lackey Labor Organization, USW, want us to get enthused about is a false promise and destined to fail like the MCC did in truely living out its original mission and intent.
Only a unified Socialism that precludes the corrupting missions and modus operandis of unprincipled Capitalist realities (Capitalism eschews externalities), will allow for the success of an economy that sets out to meet the needs of the people in an inclusive, equitable, humane, wellness oriented, sustainable, and peaceful manner.
Mike Morin
You must understand the cooptation that has occurred in the Mondragon "Cooperative" CORPORATION (MCC) which started small and highly principled, but has in reality evolved to little more than another predatory Capitalist Conglomerate. Starting as International Cooperative Alliance principled workers cooperatives, MCC has devolved to a Corporation, who according to this PR glitz article, has over 100 workers' cooperatives in a Corporation of 256 Companies. That translates to about 150 Companies, who are NOT workers' cooperatives, and knowing the history of Mondragon, it is a fairly safe bet that those 100 or so are probably functioning now as worker cooperatives in just about name only.
Early Mondragon experience can be a very useful model. But the bootstraps model that the Capitalists, including the lackey Labor Organization, USW, want us to get enthused about is a false promise and destined to fail like the MCC did in truely living out its original mission and intent.
Only a unified Socialism that precludes the corrupting missions and modus operandis of unprincipled Capitalist realities (Capitalism eschews externalities), will allow for the success of an economy that sets out to meet the needs of the people in an inclusive, equitable, humane, wellness oriented, sustainable, and peaceful manner.
Mike Morin
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
With Respect to Labor Unions
I am named after my great uncle, Mike Misenti, who worked and fought? his way from humble beginnings as a mason to President of the Building Trades Union, and later President of their Pension Fund, in the State of Connecticut.
Mike Misenti didn't care what "his folks" were building, as long as they were building. That is my major complaint with Labor Unions, their need to self-perpetuate, and offer blind loyalty and complicity with less than optimal corporations/contractors and the latters’ self-interested profit motivated projects and industries that are sometimes, if not often, counter-productive to social/environmental goals...
Don't get me wrong, I consider the interests of workers of all "stripes" and the poor to be of the utmost importance. However, in this era of post-peak oil, climate change, inequality and the tensions that such brings, and the perception of hopelessness that are held by and for youth and for the children, it is necessary that we allocate scarce resources in the most optimal ways and means possible.
Mike Sar has pointed out the decline in airline travel. This trend will not only continue, we should employ all direct and indirect actions that we can to hasten such a decline.
We must recognize the fossil fuel age and the subsequent overshoot in automobile and airplane use as a historical exception that must be phased into perspective.
If we want to conserve precious fossil fuels for priority uses such as solar assisted heating, cooking, electricity generation, cooling, agricultural inputs, durable products, necessary industrial processes, inter-community and inter-regional transport within a paradigm of relocalization for all communities and regions (moving towards self-sufficiency), and preserve the luxury and convenience of occasional automobile and airplane travel in a manner that adjusts for economic disruption, then we must plan and implement.
We need to see the study and practice of Resource and Regional Planning beyond the historical complicity, and at best mitigation of, the irrational Capitalist growth paradigm that does not recognize and/or respect a finite planet whose limits that we are fast approaching. We must enter an era of Resource Allocation based on the explicit principles of meeting human needs, inclusion, equity, humanity, quality of life, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability, economic democracy, and peace.
The key to a bountiful green building economy is the reversal of the
thirty, fifty, one hundred year trend of sprawl development in the
United States.
By rebuilding neighborhoods and reallocating goods and services to
those renovated neighborhoods (made walkable, meaning that the great
majority of Americans will be able to get what they need within
walking distance of their homes), we can succeed.
Such a tremendous dedication of resources will be a boom to the
building trades and will create the effect of reducing automobile
usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years. Neighborhood commercial,
community and work/telecommute centers will be centrally placed in
what are now alienating, automobile dependent, strictly residential
areas, alleviating the problems associated with post-peak oil and
climate change and bringing with it the quality of life associated
with communities and neighborhoods, that most individuals and
families currently lack.
If we do this, we can take the opportunity to retrofit for
weatherization, passive solar design (heating and cooling),
electronic environmental controls, solar assisted hot water
applications, limited PV and wind applications, etc.
Also, if done correctly, we can make changes in ownership
arrangements that are much more fair and just, and work towards an
equitable distribution of wealth among neighborhoods.
It is important that we fundamentally reassess our economic system
and replace the current economic/finance system with one that targets
the needs of the current residents, and not, for-profit speculation.
Because of the terrible inflation of real and capital assets that is
a product of the speculative modus operandi of the Capitalist system,
it will be fundamentally necessary to reform our economic/financial
system by consolidating private (while rededicating them as
quasi-public) real and capital assets and equity and writing way down
the “market value” of those assets.
After completing that awesome task, we could proceed with a “plan and implement” economy dedicated to meeting the needs of the indigenous populations of all communities: inclusion, humanity, equity, quality of life, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability,
and peace.
Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808
Mike Misenti didn't care what "his folks" were building, as long as they were building. That is my major complaint with Labor Unions, their need to self-perpetuate, and offer blind loyalty and complicity with less than optimal corporations/contractors and the latters’ self-interested profit motivated projects and industries that are sometimes, if not often, counter-productive to social/environmental goals...
Don't get me wrong, I consider the interests of workers of all "stripes" and the poor to be of the utmost importance. However, in this era of post-peak oil, climate change, inequality and the tensions that such brings, and the perception of hopelessness that are held by and for youth and for the children, it is necessary that we allocate scarce resources in the most optimal ways and means possible.
Mike Sar has pointed out the decline in airline travel. This trend will not only continue, we should employ all direct and indirect actions that we can to hasten such a decline.
We must recognize the fossil fuel age and the subsequent overshoot in automobile and airplane use as a historical exception that must be phased into perspective.
If we want to conserve precious fossil fuels for priority uses such as solar assisted heating, cooking, electricity generation, cooling, agricultural inputs, durable products, necessary industrial processes, inter-community and inter-regional transport within a paradigm of relocalization for all communities and regions (moving towards self-sufficiency), and preserve the luxury and convenience of occasional automobile and airplane travel in a manner that adjusts for economic disruption, then we must plan and implement.
We need to see the study and practice of Resource and Regional Planning beyond the historical complicity, and at best mitigation of, the irrational Capitalist growth paradigm that does not recognize and/or respect a finite planet whose limits that we are fast approaching. We must enter an era of Resource Allocation based on the explicit principles of meeting human needs, inclusion, equity, humanity, quality of life, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability, economic democracy, and peace.
The key to a bountiful green building economy is the reversal of the
thirty, fifty, one hundred year trend of sprawl development in the
United States.
By rebuilding neighborhoods and reallocating goods and services to
those renovated neighborhoods (made walkable, meaning that the great
majority of Americans will be able to get what they need within
walking distance of their homes), we can succeed.
Such a tremendous dedication of resources will be a boom to the
building trades and will create the effect of reducing automobile
usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years. Neighborhood commercial,
community and work/telecommute centers will be centrally placed in
what are now alienating, automobile dependent, strictly residential
areas, alleviating the problems associated with post-peak oil and
climate change and bringing with it the quality of life associated
with communities and neighborhoods, that most individuals and
families currently lack.
If we do this, we can take the opportunity to retrofit for
weatherization, passive solar design (heating and cooling),
electronic environmental controls, solar assisted hot water
applications, limited PV and wind applications, etc.
Also, if done correctly, we can make changes in ownership
arrangements that are much more fair and just, and work towards an
equitable distribution of wealth among neighborhoods.
It is important that we fundamentally reassess our economic system
and replace the current economic/finance system with one that targets
the needs of the current residents, and not, for-profit speculation.
Because of the terrible inflation of real and capital assets that is
a product of the speculative modus operandi of the Capitalist system,
it will be fundamentally necessary to reform our economic/financial
system by consolidating private (while rededicating them as
quasi-public) real and capital assets and equity and writing way down
the “market value” of those assets.
After completing that awesome task, we could proceed with a “plan and implement” economy dedicated to meeting the needs of the indigenous populations of all communities: inclusion, humanity, equity, quality of life, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability,
and peace.
Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Response to World Socialist Party Regarding AFL-CIO
Thank you for the heads up on Trumka.
(Trum(p)ka(r)(d)?)
He takes over a very ineffectual AFL-CIO, who as we know from our Labor History and personal and familial experience struggled mightily to form, only to retreat to the allowed role of collective bargaining and have over the years seen this compromised position eroded so terribly as to have to acknowledge almost a complete lack of a Labor Movement in the United States (and elsewhere?)...
Just minutes after I read your piece on Trumka, I got an e-mail from the AFL-CIO, inviting me to join their movement. I joined saying that I am a Union member (I am the Chief Organizer of the Peoples' Equity Union, not (yet?) a member of the AFL-CIO. When asked to specify, the only category that fit was "other".
You see, when checking out a rather long list of affiliated Unions, it became very clear that the Union has a (very decimated) body, but no brain whatsoever. I will elaborate on this point, when I discuss what I watched of Trumka's speech.
Included was a series of videos of Trumka's "acceptance" and leadership speech, which I watched the almost the first two (of about seven), enough to allow me to offer the following observations.
Trumka concedes the ownership of all resources to the Capitalists and Corporations, including the press. "But you can't own us", he defiantly growled to a crowd that looked like Sweeney's Union of Office Workers. No contention, only that Organized Labor "built a "middle class" by "fighting" and would do the same again (i.e. rebuild a middle class by fighting). His facial expressions revealed he knew the absurdity of his claim.
My questions for Trumka and thee all, relate to these two areas of consideration.
First of all, would a true labor movement concede ownership to the Capitalists?
I think that you all would agree that the answer is no...
Secondly, was it a middle class that we built or a dysfunctional Capitalist empire?
True, once upon a time, some if not many of our families moved via Union and non-Union gains of "post-war" (it was to a large extent the continuance of a military industrial complex as a base of the expanding economy) abundance based on the assumption of infinite available resources to fuel infinite economic growth (abstractions) into this "great American Middle Class". Some if not many could eventually work their ways into positions of petty Capitalism and/or Corporate participation in the ownership drive of Capitalist global hegemony. Certainly, many of us were put into positions where we were allowed to take mortgages (on what once were relatively affordable properties).
But the American dream has died for most and Trumka's call for its revival (in other words) is ridiculous.
Let's assess the term "middle class". I find it offensive. First of all, it assumes that it is something less than noble to be "working class". I am proud to be a worker, but I doubt joining an organization such as the AFL-CIO, which accepts the rules of the Capitalist game, is going to allow me to gain equity in what is a fundamentally inequitable and "out of sight" and irrational economic system.
Secondly, defining the goal as reaching a higher class, but not quite the highest, explicitly accepts a legitimacy of a ruling Capitalist Class.
We must say no.
Where the Union brain must step in and become coordinator of the body is in the definition of a mission for one big (world) union and the fundamental principles that underlie that mission (inclusion, equity, humanity, quality of life, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability, and peace).
We must ALL understand that the economic system never was (and never should be) run by invisible hands. Given resource constraints, equity and population concerns, we all need a union of heart, mind, and body to plan and implement an ecological economic redevelopment within the aforestated mission principles.
We need to somehow come to consensus for methodologies for reimagining, reorganizing, restructuring, reforming, reallocating, rebuilding our communities. Such will take a fundamental reassessment of the way that we allocate resources among and within economic sectors and to and within villages/communities. Inter-community, inter-regional, and world unity and cooperation is and will be essential.
I have, in a way, joined the AFL-CIO, because as an old record album from the sixties was titled ,"I Salute the Body Politic".
I have great respect and empathy for labor movements throughout the world and the terrible sacrifices and partial gains that such have made beneath the shackles of overlords and their ways of oppression.
Let us start and eventually finish our finite existences on this planet by declaring peace.
It's not all we're saying
but give peace a chance...
- John Lennon
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
(Trum(p)ka(r)(d)?)
He takes over a very ineffectual AFL-CIO, who as we know from our Labor History and personal and familial experience struggled mightily to form, only to retreat to the allowed role of collective bargaining and have over the years seen this compromised position eroded so terribly as to have to acknowledge almost a complete lack of a Labor Movement in the United States (and elsewhere?)...
Just minutes after I read your piece on Trumka, I got an e-mail from the AFL-CIO, inviting me to join their movement. I joined saying that I am a Union member (I am the Chief Organizer of the Peoples' Equity Union, not (yet?) a member of the AFL-CIO. When asked to specify, the only category that fit was "other".
You see, when checking out a rather long list of affiliated Unions, it became very clear that the Union has a (very decimated) body, but no brain whatsoever. I will elaborate on this point, when I discuss what I watched of Trumka's speech.
Included was a series of videos of Trumka's "acceptance" and leadership speech, which I watched the almost the first two (of about seven), enough to allow me to offer the following observations.
Trumka concedes the ownership of all resources to the Capitalists and Corporations, including the press. "But you can't own us", he defiantly growled to a crowd that looked like Sweeney's Union of Office Workers. No contention, only that Organized Labor "built a "middle class" by "fighting" and would do the same again (i.e. rebuild a middle class by fighting). His facial expressions revealed he knew the absurdity of his claim.
My questions for Trumka and thee all, relate to these two areas of consideration.
First of all, would a true labor movement concede ownership to the Capitalists?
I think that you all would agree that the answer is no...
Secondly, was it a middle class that we built or a dysfunctional Capitalist empire?
True, once upon a time, some if not many of our families moved via Union and non-Union gains of "post-war" (it was to a large extent the continuance of a military industrial complex as a base of the expanding economy) abundance based on the assumption of infinite available resources to fuel infinite economic growth (abstractions) into this "great American Middle Class". Some if not many could eventually work their ways into positions of petty Capitalism and/or Corporate participation in the ownership drive of Capitalist global hegemony. Certainly, many of us were put into positions where we were allowed to take mortgages (on what once were relatively affordable properties).
But the American dream has died for most and Trumka's call for its revival (in other words) is ridiculous.
Let's assess the term "middle class". I find it offensive. First of all, it assumes that it is something less than noble to be "working class". I am proud to be a worker, but I doubt joining an organization such as the AFL-CIO, which accepts the rules of the Capitalist game, is going to allow me to gain equity in what is a fundamentally inequitable and "out of sight" and irrational economic system.
Secondly, defining the goal as reaching a higher class, but not quite the highest, explicitly accepts a legitimacy of a ruling Capitalist Class.
We must say no.
Where the Union brain must step in and become coordinator of the body is in the definition of a mission for one big (world) union and the fundamental principles that underlie that mission (inclusion, equity, humanity, quality of life, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability, and peace).
We must ALL understand that the economic system never was (and never should be) run by invisible hands. Given resource constraints, equity and population concerns, we all need a union of heart, mind, and body to plan and implement an ecological economic redevelopment within the aforestated mission principles.
We need to somehow come to consensus for methodologies for reimagining, reorganizing, restructuring, reforming, reallocating, rebuilding our communities. Such will take a fundamental reassessment of the way that we allocate resources among and within economic sectors and to and within villages/communities. Inter-community, inter-regional, and world unity and cooperation is and will be essential.
I have, in a way, joined the AFL-CIO, because as an old record album from the sixties was titled ,"I Salute the Body Politic".
I have great respect and empathy for labor movements throughout the world and the terrible sacrifices and partial gains that such have made beneath the shackles of overlords and their ways of oppression.
Let us start and eventually finish our finite existences on this planet by declaring peace.
It's not all we're saying
but give peace a chance...
- John Lennon
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
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