MovieChat Forums > On the Waterfront (1954) Discussion > Revealing portrayal of Unions in America...

Revealing portrayal of Unions in America up to the Present


Not only is this movie a great love story, a morality expose and a reaffirmation of traditional Christian values, it is also very illustrative of the condition of labor unions up to 2009. The leadership forgets that they serve at the pleasure of the membership. The low-level officials are nothing but fawning synchophants of the union bosses who lead them into doing all kinds of immoral reprehensible actions and the members are too too easily intimidated into unmanly submission to undeserving-authority. Today, the union dictators are members of a ruling class who misuse their members' dues to finance such awful efforts as electing know-nothings to high office in our Republic as well as autocractially funding politically-correct mumbo-jumbo from coast to coast. Workers of the world arise! You have nothing to lose by the chains that connect you to the barren doctrines of the past!

"Could be worse."
"Howwww?"
"Could be raining."

reply

[deleted]

I was wondering about this and was going to post something. So you're saying the corruption is still going on? I don't much about this and am curious.

"I've got nature on my hand!"--Monk

reply

Still corruption going on in today's labor unions. Maybe not so much killing and 'hard crimes' but federal and state laws are definitely being broken.

I worked in a union shop for 3 years and kept my mouth shut. I declined an offer to join the union and a week later I was fired for 'insubordination' (this is a state run organization in Michigan).

The major thing now I see is the big labor bosses taking advantage of the non-English speaking workers in the southwest. Challenging their homes and jobs for an agreement to join their 'club'.

Union leaders are no longer classy, well respectable citizens either; they're mostly low level employees who know how to snitch on those who don't want to descend into their cesspool of mediocrity.

reply


Labor unionism in the world was started by the communist party: "Proletariats of the world, unite!", which is found on the emblem of the Soviet Union. ("Proletariat" being communist class jargon for worker class. So, it's not a simple call for workers to band together.)

We are all familiar with the record of the communists and their mass murders. So, the communists simply retitled themselves to something else around 1990. Ask old-time communist Putin what he is today and you'd probably get a verbose, rambling, indirect response that most polite people would accept for a legitimate answer.

So they cut up their communist party cards. They know it would be a simple matter to get new ones.


reply

Wow. The mafia had infiltrated many unions - that's why many Longshoremen's unions were kicked out of the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations). It was easy for the mob to shake down union members, as shown in On The Waterfront. To make sure you worked for the day, you had to pay something to the "union" (mafia). Otherwise, you didn't work.

The origin of labor unions date from before Karl Marx - they were trade guilds - a way to ensure that people actually knew their trade and allowed for some standardization of wages.

Labor unions took hold in the United States in the late 19th century because of ridiculously tough working conditions. Adult workers in some fields such as mining were often competing against child labor. The labor unions in the US in the late 19th, early 20th centuries were instrumental in getting rid of child labor (now, with weaker unions, some states are trying to bring child labor back), 5-day workweeks (instead of the standard 6 days), and set working hours. For jobs that took place outdoors, the work day was often from about sunrise to sunset. So were a lot of early industrialized jobs prior to gas lighting.

In some states, you have to belong to a union in certain jobs. For example, if you're an autoworker in a closed-shop state, you have to join the union or you lose your job. In some other states, called right-to-work states, you don't have to join a union, even if there is a union representing workers. What often happens though is the non-union workers often get the same benefits that the union workers get, but don't pay the dues. The one drawback to that is if you don't pay the dues and there are layoffs, you don't have the union fighting to keep your job.

Unions do provide benefits - healthcare, retirement funds, etc. My dad and I both used to belong to the United Food and Commercial Workers union when we worked in grocery stores. It wasn't a strong union and was easily broken up by an association of several independent grocers in the city. The union stores would short your hours once a quarter to prevent you from becoming a full-time employee with better benefits. The non-union stores didn't do that, but didn't provide the benefits that the union stores did. When you have a large number of young workers (college or high school students) - the hourly wage is more important than retirement benefits. What happened at the store my dad worked out was the long-term union workers were eventually outvoted on whether or not to have union representation by several college students who were working through school and didn't want to pay the union dues - again, retirement benefits meant nothing to them. Unfortunately, the short-sighted orientation of the students ending the union representation meant that the long-term workers weren't able to add several years towards their retirements. The more years you worked, the larger your retirement benefit.

reply

Having problems with newspeak, brother? I'll send you the new dictionary.

my vote history:
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur13767631/ratings

reply

More and more people, including a lot of Tea Party members, are realizing that capitalism-- particularly the Wall-Street-driven corporate variety that has created a new class of super-rich and is wiping out the middle class, a group that includes most of us who use this website-- is also a "barren doctrine of the past".

The so-called "union dictators", what's left of them, can't hold a candle to the wealth and power of the CEOs, bank executives, and interlocking boards of directors that really run things. In the 1920s American auto companies hired goons to MURDER auto workers who pushed for decent wages and working conditions. The unions arose because people realized the corporate heads were the real "dictators" who had millions of people under their thumb, and something HAD to be done to give the ordinary person a chance against their power. Decades of corporate-funded union-busting and politician-buying have helped bring back the feeling that the robber barons rule and all we can do is bend over for them. But of course most right-wingers will never, never, NEVER talk about that, even when they and their families are suffering from it, because the 'free' market is an untouchable article of (blind) faith.

Corporate capitalism has gone out of control, abandoning any sense of moral and social responsibility, and we see the destruction all around us. Feel any responsibility for pay your employees a livable wage and providing some job security? Protect the environment? Try to schedule your workers so they and their spouses have a chance of ever seeing each other, let alone their children, thus helping to preserve the supposedly crucial institution known as the family? Forget it! NOTHING matters except the Supreme Sacred Goal That Cannot Be Challenged: the maximizing of profits to ensure "maximum shareholder value". If that means laying off thousands of employees even when the company is doing very well and the executives are getting huge bonuses, because that will make a big temporary spike on the next profit-and-loss statement and make those executives even richer at the expense of the rest of us... well, tough! The big boys have to take care of themselves by making a pile of cash before the next economic crash that THEY have helped create. The rest of us can go suck an egg. And we do.

But, again, most self-described 'conservatives' will never, never, NEVER talk about that, even though many of them are among the biggest victims of that obsessive, destructive system.

It is a house of cards. It will not last. It will destroy itself. (That has already started.) But it will take all of us down with it.

reply