BRATTLEBORO — Your editorial in the March 2 Commons regarding the disgusting efforts of the Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, etc. to bust public service unions was right on target.
Writing as a longtime retired trade union organizer and educator (United Auto Workers in Chicago, International Brotherhood of Teamsters in St. Louis), I would add one thought. In Europe today, trade union members would be out of their workplaces and on the streets en masse if faced with the same attack. They know how effective a general strike, or even the threat of one, can be.
In this country, a hundred or so years ago, we have the example of the International Workers of the World - I.W.W., which coined the slogan “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
The I.W.W. is long-gone, but the concept is as valid today as it was then.
Token rallies, even a lot of them, won't accomplish much, although the participants will feel good. If the Service Employees International Union, two million strong, walked off the job for one day and called on the UAW, the steelworkers, the miners, the two teachers' unions, and other unions to follow suit, the Republican politicians (and the Democrats too) would have to think twice, or maybe three times, about their union-busting activities.
If union leadership and their “middle class” (that should read, working class) members, have not been totally co-opted and corrupted by the values of the powers that be, this is and will continue to be an opportunity to show some of the old trade union solidarity and militancy.
It's as true today as it ever was - a injury to one is an injury to all.
All of the above says nothing about the obscene and growing financial gap between the top few percent of the population and the rest of us. That gap has widened as the trade union movement has dwindled.
Coincidence?