I really don't have time for this...

I'm not really back. I don't plan to post regularly until after this weekend. However, some things can't be passed up. Like Cheney taking a shot at a "friend" -- yet another case of the VP not thinking before acting. However, the thing that's got me pissed off today is this new anti-union campaign by a real dirtbag whose main claim to fame is that he represents the most backward interests around. I've missed the ads, since I've mainly been reading regional papers with a few looks at the LA Times thrown in there, but the Washington Post has a little story about the ads (more proof by the way of Baudrillard's contention that the media becomes the event -- their coverage creates the story and even moreso, their coverage is the story).

Unions of course have their problems, not least of which being their narrowed focus post-1950's Red Scare on wage and benefits issues. The idea of "union culture" pretty much died at that point, whereas unions previously had formed a focus for social life, putting together local education programs and culural events such as theater productions. V.I. Lenin excoriates trade unions in general as the limit of non-theoretical working class movements (Lenin stresses the need for a "vanguard party" to provide the theory that will guide proletariat practice -- this combination of theory and practice generally gets the name of praxis). At any rate, the largest problem unions face these days is shrinking membership as traditionally unionized industries are shipped overseas.

This retrograde organization that's launched the antiunion campaign of course lays the blame for plant closings at the feet of the unions. Not exactly a novel charge; my grandmother, who also believed FDR "sold us down the road at Yalta," blamed unions for the steel industry collapse and medical insurance for the high cost of medical care. These charges, however, rarely stand up to any kind of real scrutiny. Sure it's true that non-unionized labor is cheaper in countries where life is cheaper, but let's take a look at some specifics:

"The full-page newspaper ads that ran yesterday showed a "Closed" sign over a padlocked gate, declaring the sign "The New Union Label. . . . Brought to you by the union 'leaders' who helped bankrupt steel, auto, and airline companies."

Interesting charge, especially since most analysts would tell you that the steel industry failed to modernize their plants and couldn't compete with newer foreign plants; the auto industry has twice been "surprised" by US consumers' changing tastes and extremely slow to abandon gas-guzzling models -- gm and ford cars are among the least inventive and poorly designed available; the airline industry has largely been impacted by two major factors -- discount carriers and September 11th.

On top of the individual industries, the charges as a whole hold even less water when one looks at financial moves since the early 1970's that have allowed Capital to move more freely while labor has been constrained, often at the point of a gun, in the emergent sweatshop archipelagos of southeast Asia and Central America. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that, ethics aside (and seriously no one running balance sheets actually cares about ethics), it's a no brainer to move let's say shoe production out of the unionized US and into the prison farm labor system of China (a supposedly Communist country, but that's a bit like taking the old East Germany seriously as the "German Democratic Republic"), where it'll cost you 19 cents to produce a shoe you can sell for $120.

Already too long a post. Plan for a second chapter on the contradictions of Capital in a consumption based economy and no good jobs. Consumer debt as spectre haunting the economy...etc.

Oh yeah, and Happy Valentine's Day.