Rightwing Frame: "Union Bosses"
I agree that the Nevada Fox-sponsored debate for Dem Presidential candidates was a terrible idea and it's fine to slam the local union leaders for supporting it. But I hate to the core when folks like Kos use the term "local union bosses", as if elected union leaders are the same as management bosses who get to tell their workers what to do.
It's one of the most persistent rightwing frames, creating an equivalence between union representatives of working people and those who boss them around without democratic accountability. Criticizing union leaders is fine and even needed, but using rightwing frames like the phrase "union bosses" should be avoided.
Advertisement
In general, we on the left aren't very smart about such things. The same people who rail against the "corporatist media" will turn right around and repeat the same things that media has programmed them to say. It's pretty ugly and frustrating to watch, but you see it every day, here as well as everywhere else.
In times of peace, the wise man prepares for war. -- Horace
The blade itself incites to violence. -- Homer
March 7, 2007 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Would "local Mafia representative" be more accurate?
March 7, 2007 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
You say Jim Gibbons is going to attend?
March 7, 2007 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
The issue with using the term "union boss" isn't that it creates a false equivalence with management. Who cares about that? Rather, the issue is that the word "boss" connotes corruption and thuggery.
And we all know that unions are squeaky clean and totally above board, right? It's totally unfair that people would associate them with corruption and thuggery, right?
Right?
March 7, 2007 5:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Boss implies only that someone works for you-- a master-servant relationship that is part of corporate culture.
Of course it's a tool to downplay the fact that business owners are not accountable to their employees by picturing unions as just an alternative "boss", rather than a democratic alternative.
March 7, 2007 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
What a grotesque straw man. No class of organizations is "totally above board and squeaky clean." But I'll take the record of the unions over that of corporate America any day of the week, especially any day in the past 30 years or so.
Or, I'll make you a deal: for every example of union corruption you adduce, I'll match you with three examples of big business wrongdoing. Put up or do what you should have done all along.
In times of peace, the wise man prepares for war. -- Horace
The blade itself incites to violence. -- Homer
March 7, 2007 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you as always Nathan for reminding us where the real fight is.
March 7, 2007 10:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, we reserve that kind of distinction for real criminals, like Ken Lay - the kind of modern day tin horn dictator who would have made Benito Mussolini proud.
Apparently you missed the turn in the road about 25 years ago when the Mafia left labor and moved into the board rooms where real "bosses" have always indulged their power fetishes quit openly.
March 8, 2007 2:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hmm, let's see.
Number of unions: about 60 or so, at least according to the membership of the AFL-CIO
Number of corporations: about 17,000,000, according to the Hoover's database.
But that's unfair, since a lot of these are tiny one-person shops. How about the number of companies with more than 50 employees? That's about 1,100,000.
I think the point is clear. If you take the proportion of unions that are corrupt, mobbed up or just less than clean and compare it to the proportion of corporations that are similarly problematic, my guess is that unions are more corrupt.
Now to be fair, the situation with unions is not nearly as bad as it used to be (but then you can also say that about corporations). And I think that on balance the arguments for strengthening unions somewhat are good ones. But let's just say that the reputation of unions precedes them.
March 8, 2007 4:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Unions are one of the pieces of civil society that are in deep eclipse in the United States. Those pieces form a crucial barrier between democracy and something a lot like fascism. The forces of the extreme right already control much of the the media and a significant percentage of religious institutions and have the deep loyalty of a big proportion of wealthy U.S. individuals, maybe even a majority. The Bush administration is trying very hard to destroy the legal system and the Constitution, thereby removing another barrier. Not all institutions that stand against the extreme right are perfect, but all are very necessary.
global citizen
March 8, 2007 5:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, by organizational structure, you have to look at union locals that are structurally the core component of unions and have independent control of many of their financial structures. Unlike branch corporate offices, which are subordinate to the national office, national union leaders are actually structurally subordinate and accountable to union locals. The Teamsters alone have hundreds of independent locals.
But however you measure it -- see my post today -- corruption in unions is far less prevalent and, more importantly, marginal to the overall finances of unions than corporate corruption has been in underming the pensions of employees and the finances of shareholders.
March 8, 2007 5:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Union members earn 30% more than nonunion workers.
Union workers are 63% more likely to have employer-provided health insurance.
Union members are four times more likely to have a guaranteed pension.
Nearly half of American workers who are not currently represented by unions -- 60 million people -- say that they'd join one if they had the chance.
Those "Union bosses" are looking a whole lot better these days than the "Bush Bosses" who make 1,000 times what their workers make; who earn in 1 day, what their workers earn in a year.
I'm always amused to hear people say they "hate unions" because it's immediately apparent that they have been propagandized and don't know what they're talking about. They're stooges of the right-wing propaganda.
If they were asked if they'd like to get a raise of 30%, have a guaranteed pension and comprehensive, employer-provided health care coverage, would any one of them say "no?"
March 8, 2007 6:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. And I would add that this framing of the unions as another "boss" is an example of the pervasive strategy of the right to frame in the extreme then call for fairness in terms of a binary, one side vs. the other side, context. Using the union "bosses" example, the right strikes the pose that they are for fairness to the worker from all bosses (union and capital) asking for what they would characterize as the "other side", i.e. no union representation. This is a gross simplification.
March 8, 2007 7:43 AM | Reply | Permalink