A few days ago, while I was attempting to enjoy a quiet beer, the woman sitting next to me reacted favorably to a news story about Trump that had just finished on the television behind the bar, announcing that she hoped whatever the topic was would mean that unions could now be destroyed and power restored to the workers. Obviously, she was not aware that union membership is made up of the workers or that unions were formed because someone had to protect their hour, wages, and conditions of employment the best of which are not given freely by the bosses who would pay the least amount of money in wages if they could.

She revealed in further comments that she sincerely believed that those things won by unions over the years, things like the weekend, fair wages and relative income equality, the end of child labor, employer-based health coverage, and the family and Medical Leave Act would have happened anyway because corporations, if left to themselves, are good enough to have bestowed those things at their largess.

She was not aware that corporations find unions to be cumbersome in the attempt to take those things back, and are working hard to remove them for that reason.

Another gentleman who was sitting nearby offered that if the corporations were going to do it anyway, why did they refuse to until workers went on strike.

Her response was that the workers demand and get whatever they want and perhaps the corporate owners wanted them to learn that this was not how it should be done.

Further discussion revealed that she had no idea what negotiating a contract actually meant, but believed, instead, that it was a one way process where unions made demands and without any input, management had to give what was demanded.

She also was unaware of the reality that when things went right in a business the owners took the credit, while anything that was wrong was put onto the unions and the workers.

In my experience, another problem with people’s attitude toward unions was that the general power structure favors those who own companies over those who work at them, which is odd considering by how much the workers outnumber the corporate heads with too many workers siding with management over their peers. Either from a nurtured fear of possible dismissal if this opinion is not shared by the working class or because of some form of the Stockholm Syndrome those who should identify with the workers, even workers themselves, are more ready to believe what is said by corporations and not workers.

Although the unions I had belonged to had an in-house newsletter, unlike management who had the finances, they did not have a set public relations department, so, in spite of releasing news notices to media outlets, the publication of these notices was up to the whim of the editors while these same outlets actively sought news from management.

As a result, the actions of management were very well known while those of the union were only treated if there was a labor/management problem, and then presented too often with a bias favoring management as what the media releases is decided on by their management.

While reading a news story from the Sunday paper at home, enjoying the backyard barbecue,  or when sitting in the doctor’s office getting the treatment their healthcare plan covers, many, if not most people will condemn unions while not realizing those things were earned for them by unions and not the largess of corporate heads.

It is a sad but common thing that the news of the good that unions do is either downplayed or completely usurped by, and the credit for it taken by corporate heads.

AT&T’s latest move is a fine example of this.

After the passage of the GOP tax plan, AT&T played a self serving hand when it’s CEO announced the company would give $1,000 bonuses for all AT&T employees, saying they were the result of corporate tax cuts passed in Congress.

So, this is all about the erectile dysfunction. on line levitra It is always safe to use an ED drug works for a long time and provides its users enjoyable time cialis 40 mg with their partners. These cialis price can be garlic, pomegranate juice, oysters, onion, cherries, salmon, porridge and pork. Rita was satisfied with the sex, but it was focused more on viagra no rx the improvement of search quality. The president loved this and accepted it as validation of the tax bill to which he contributed nothing besides his bragging about its going to be yet another historical first that was better than just about anything.

However, AT&T had already been involved in talks with its union to give holiday bonuses, and was taking credit for itself and bestowing praise on Trump most likely to ease the administration’s reluctance to allow AT&T’s merger with Time-Warner.

The company wanted this favor from the White House and chose to misrepresent and completely ignore that the company had already reached a new contract agreement with its workers after a year of pressure from the workers’ union,  the Communication Workers of America.

Considering the promises of a workers’ financial windfall if things went as Trump was boasting, the CWA had begun contacting AT&T, asking the company to give workers a $4,000 raise, the amount the president claimed all workers’ paychecks would rise by.

The $1,000 bonus was the settled on amount in the negotiations, and not the product of corporate largess.

Trump’s Justice Department had filed an antitrust lawsuit to block the AT&T/Time Warner merger threatening to block the merger if Time Warner did not sell CNN, Trump’s fake news nemesis, so this praising of Trump might have garnered much desired pro merger results.

This past Wednesday Trump crowed,

“This just came out… AT&T plans to increase U.S. capital spending $1 billion and provide $1,000 special bonus to more than 200,000 U.S. employees, and that’s because of what we did. That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good.”

No, it was because the union negotiated that. 

AT&T is hoping by claiming it was the sole idea of its management in response to “his” tax plan, Trump’s ego was stroked enough to allow the merger.