Unions had their place in workers rights. A very important place and their is no denying that.

However, unions have made themselves obsolete. They did so because the actual purpose of unions, protecting workers rights, is now done by law; Minimum wage, OSHA, fair labor standards, child labor laws.

Now unions collect dues and negotiate contracts in the best interests of the negotiators and the union. But not the union members themselves. They also support politicians, for a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with workers rights or protections. (See "Hillary Clinton" and "NAFTA")

Steel is one of the best examples of unions and their influence. In the US, there is only one major steel company that is non-union. This is Nucor Steel, where the hourly employees have the lowest hourly wages and the highest incomes (yes, at the same time, due to their bonus structure) and better benefits than any other major steel company. The company also has the lowest labor cost per ton of steel.

Put all of these numbers together, and they show one single thing: Union members get paid less, plus pay union dues, and yet still cost the company more in the long run, due to complacency and inefficiency.

Is this what you want?

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The Ludlow massacre pertains to the violent deaths of 45 people (32 of them women and children), during an attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado in the U.S. on April 20, 1914. These deaths occurred after a day-long fight between strikers and the Guard. Two women, twelve children, six miners and union officials and one National Guardsman were killed. In response, the miners armed themselves and attacked dozens of mines, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard.


Ludlow massacre monument
This was the bloodiest event in the 14-month 1913-1914 southern Colorado Coal Strike. The strike was organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against coal mining companies in Colorado. The three biggest mining companies were the Rockefeller family-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I), the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company (RMF), and the Victor-American Fuel Company (VAF). Ludlow, located 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Trinidad, Colorado, is now a ghost town. The massacre site is owned by the UMWA, which erected a granite monument, in memory of the striking miners and their families who died that day.

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"Ludlow's legacy is indeed alive and well. The same story of worker repression and political cowardice that brought on a massacre is again unfolding here in Colorado -- and all over the country." .... or the planet, that is.

Then it was brutal, untrammeled, ruthless and carried out by the Blackwater of those days - Pinkertons and such.

Now it has been going on, like that "permanent war on terror", more subtly, barely felt, slow and steady; not so much a physical thing, however. It's been internalized and the massacre is psychic - numbing and disfiguring and stunting workers by way of their psychic structures. Workers are now "trained", much like dogs and apes are, into dehumanized "jobs" most of which can be carried out in an automatic and automated fashion (the WORK done by the worker is one of toleration, endurance, and stamina in retaining some slight shred of humanity); alternatively, they are trained as adjunct "software" to supplement the scripted protocols of the "program" -- in order to present a "live" quality to calls and interactions with the pre-defined "Customer".

Being unseen, pervasive and corrosive like the worst of acids, this is the continuing Ludlow Massacre of ALL working people launched in earnest more than 30 years ago. A great "Debt" is owed to those academicians and practitioners in areas of Psychology, Linguistics, Medicine for providing the exploiters with all the 'emerged and emerging technologies of control and manipulation which, together with "No Child Left Behind" are yet providing us with more and more workers resembling more the "Happy Idiot" than anything else. The "Ludlow Massacre" of today is ubiquitous and an integral component of the Corporate State.

Of course, there's a Plan B in case of recognition: Blackwater.

The object of massacre today, in vast numbers and on a continuing basis are our very psyches and emotions; that is, those elements which make us human. That's Ludlow for you!

Today, the Pinkertons have been replaced by Rehabs, Therapies and Pharmaceuticals. An odd state of affairs these days: WORKING triple-overtime just to endure one "Job".

Then: quick, brutal and merciless; Now: slow, methodical, clinical, efficient, internalized, wholesale and .... merciless.

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It was early springtime when the strike was on,
They drove us miners out of doors,
Out from the houses that the Company owned,
We moved into tents up at old Ludlow.
I was worried bad about my children,
Soldiers guarding the railroad bridge,
Every once in a while a bullet would fly,
Kick up gravel under my feet.

We were so afraid you would kill our children,
We dug us a cave that was seven foot deep,
Carried our young ones and pregnant women
Down inside the cave to sleep.

That very night your soldiers waited,
Until all us miners were asleep,
You snuck around our little tent town,
Soaked our tents with your kerosene.

You struck a match and in the blaze that started,
You pulled the triggers of your gatling guns,
I made a run for the children but the fire wall stopped me.
Thirteen children died from your guns.

I carried my blanket to a wire fence corner,
Watched the fire till the blaze died down,
I helped some people drag their belongings,
While your bullets killed us all around.

I never will forget the look on the faces
Of the men and women that awful day,
When we stood around to preach their funerals,
And lay the corpses of the dead away.
We told the Colorado Governor to call the President,
Tell him to call off his National Guard,
But the National Guard belonged to the Governor,
So he didn't try so very hard.

Our women from Trinidad they hauled some potatoes,
Up to Walsenburg in a little cart,
They sold their potatoes and brought some guns back,
And they put a gun in every hand.

The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corners,
They did not know we had these guns,
And the Red-neck Miners mowed down these troopers,
You should have seen those poor boys run.

We took some cement and walled that cave up,
Where you killed these thirteen children inside,
I said, "God bless the Mine Workers' Union,"
And then I hung my head and cried.

--Woody Guthrie

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No other option. You wave to work with other nation's unions to prevent job export and economic warfare.

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Thank you for this great article, David.

If you wish to get a copy of a free, fair use May Day strike poster - and other Impeachy graphics, please go

here

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