Alternative Visions – Save Our Unions’ Book Interview with Author, Steve Early – 01/22/14
Jan 22nd, 2014 by progressiveradionetwork
Jack interviews author, Steve Early, on the release last week of Steve’s new book, ‘Save Our Unions’. An important book providing numerous cases and examples of specific union worker efforts over the past four decades to defend their unions and interests. Jack discusses with Steve, in the attempt to glean from the book’s many case examples what lessons it suggests for union labor’s current strategic impasse in bargaining, organizing, and political strategy—a continuing theme of recent Alternative Vision shows and interviews. Jack and Steve discuss the strategic implications of the past four decades of partial victories, and numerous defeats, suffered by union labor in America, and what ‘needs to be done’ going forward if unions are to rise again to play the economic and social role in the future they once did in the past. Jack argues more ‘thinking out of the box’ by unionists is needed in order to resurrect union labor, including revising internal union structure and organizational practices—locally, nationally, and globally.
This interview is available at http://www.alternativevisions.podbean.com
Dr. Jack Rasmus @drjackrasmus
Jack Rasmus 
TRADE AND SERVICE UNIONS
DEFINITION: A number of persons joining together for some common purpose.
TYPES OF UNIONS: Private and public
FACTS: Private and public unions negotiate with employers to obtain specific goals for those persons being represented.
Subjects for negotiations include wages, benefits, and working conditions.
If negotiations result in additional costs to an employer:
a. A private employer will absorbed those costs or will pass some or all to the customers.
b. A public employer will have its “rainy-day” funds reduced or will raise additional revenue from its taxpayers.
ANALYSIS:
a. If a private employer absorbs additional negotiated costs, margins will be affected, which will reduce taxable income, which will cause a reduction in the value of the employer’s business. If the employer passes on the additional costs to its customers, it would be inflationary and the customers would have less spendable funds for other expenditures, which may adversely affect the economics. In most instances of higher costs, those costs will be passed on to the customers.
b. If a public employer raises additional revenue from its taxpayers, the taxpayers will have less spendable funds and that may adversely affect the economics.
c. When a politician, economist, or anyone else calls for high-paying union jobs, they are implying that there be a shift of wealth from customers to the high-paying union jobs.
mz
mikiesmoky@aol.com
February 26, 2011