Comments - Beginners Alliance

Beginners League, David Cogswell, 2012, ISBN 9781934389775

Forty hours of work week, pensions and safe working conditions are part of the US employment prospects, because employers think this is the right thing, right? No, these things are caused by the strikes and encouragement of the trade unions.

Despite the sharp decline in the number of union workers in the past half century, why should trade unions be the root cause of US fiscal problems? The American business class [1%] does not want to hinder their pursuit of profit. Employee salaries are treated as a fee and must be reduced as much as possible to drive up the stock price. One might think that a society like Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia is a world leader in using propaganda for its own citizens [because of the lack of better terminology]. So far, the world leader is the United States. People are taught to equate with free market capitalism to all good things in the United States. Any act against corporate power, such as a trade union, should be equated with tyranny, oppression, and communism.

The existence of trade unions is due to the basic reasons of human nature. If people get together, they can do things that one can't do. Since the early days of the United States, people have been on strike to get better working conditions. This book looks at some of the famous events in the history of trade unions. In 1835, the children of the silk factory in Patterson, NJ worked 11 hours a day and worked 6 days a week.

In 1886 there was a hay market event in Chicago [or riots, or massacres]. The Great Railway strike in 1877 and the homestead strike in 1892. In the 20th century, there was the Ludlow massacre in 1913. Recently, the book explored the conservative renaissance of the 1980s and the attacks on unions by people from Ronald Reagan to Scott Walker. Union leaders are just people, so through American history, they can be as evil and corrupt as other people in society.

This is a party book; it may not be possible to write a completely non-partisan book about trade unions. This book is still recommended for everyone. It suggests those who are interested in parts of the American history that are not well-known, suggest union members who are not familiar with their history, and suggest that they provide some explanation. How does the United States fall into the current financial chaos?

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