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Thursday, 27 September 2007 |
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There are no General Motors manufacturing plants in Illinois, so I should probably just cough into my fist as 73,000 GM workers go on strike nationwide, trying to keep their jobs from being someday shipped to Saqu Province. Sorry, not my table.
BY NEIL STEINBERG Sun-Times Columnist But I pulled a little paper card out of my wallet, identifying me as a dues-paying member of the Newspaper Guild of the Communications Workers of America, and as I looked at it, I decided that union solidarity demands something be said. Workers in the Third World are paid less for a reason. They are less educated, less efficient, and work under harsher conditions, churning out pollution we would never tolerate here. Their standards can be woefully inadequate, as U.S. toymakers discovered to their sorrow. They don't have unions. We do. Years of Republican lobbying have given unions a bad name by focusing on all-too-real corruption. But we wouldn't have the standard of living that's imperiled now without them. They may not be perfect, but shipping work to countries where workers are inferior in almost every way is definitely not the answer "There is no lie," wrote Pliny the Elder, "so reckless that it lacks all support." I would go further than the great Roman and suggest that there is no lie so reckless that it lacks a whole lot of support. |
