President Joe Biden will travel to Michigan on Tuesday and walk the picket line with members of the United Auto Workers union, he announced Friday, a trip that comes after the president faced political pressure to ramp up his public support for the union members.
What on earth are you talking about? I literally just said these workers are SO important that I think they should be nationalized.
A strike is not a good thing. The purpose of unionizing is NOT to strike. Getting demands is the goal and they got that through back channels without a strike. The union itself reports this as a victory.
I’m literally unionizing at my job right now and I keep having to explain to this to my colleagues who are terrified they’ll have to endure a long strike without pay if we unionize. A strike is a last resort desperation move. It. Is. Not. The. Goal. Collective bargaining negotiations is the goal. That was accomplished without a strike.
Collective bargaining and negotiations isn’t the goal, and striking also isn’t the goal. The goal is to win your stated demands (or as many of them as possible), like you said. Collective bargaining is safer and involves putting less at stake but is less of an exertion of force and offers less opportunity to flex your strength as workers united. Striking is riskier and is much more devastating to fail at but garners much more public recognition and cements how necessary you are in the event you succeed. Both are choices and both should be available and used at the appropriate time.
As for the original quote I made, I think there was a little bit of a disconnect there, I agree that rail workers should be nationalized (although that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t also be unionized), I’m saying that the problem is that the auto workers can have their strike entertained because they’re “less important” (read: the consequences of their striking are less immediate) where rail workers can’t have their strike entertained, because while they’re just as exploited, they’re also more day-to-day mission critical.