Re post #45 aapitbull:
This whole debate thing is getting pretty stupid now. Here we have pitbull making issue over the Patco Strike that happened almost 30 years ago. Hell I was just out of High School at the time and I'm gonna guess pittbull was around 14 years old in 1981 and still riding a school bus....He wants to make issue about Patco, he was not even working within the industry at the time and his only source of information is history books...
pitbull, I'm not interested in history lessons. Either move to some true topic of interest, or go sit in the Truck......geeeezzz :blink:
Out of all the famous quotations, few better describe this eerily familiar time than those attributed to George Santayana and Yogi Berra. The former, a philosopher, warned that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The latter, a baseball player, stumbled into prophecy by declaring, "It's deja vu all over again."
No matter the issue, this axiom is the same: When money has a vested interest in burying history, history is inevitably buried, ultimately leading us from Santayana and Berra's aphorisms to Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same things over and over again and somehow expecting different results.
High Speed Steel, it is folks that think like you that make it into union office mostly appointed and repeat the same mistakes over and over again that lead to a card drive to oust the TWU. Regardless of how may years ago the PATCO strike took place and President Reagan fired those employees, it happens to be a significant part of labor history that demostrates the failure in taking a position that because some group doesn't confirm to the AFL-CIO established form of unionism that so-called union men/women will pick and and choose if and when they will stand in support of middle class workers. That isn't unionism at all, that is holding freedom to choose representation as monetary and belief hostages for ransom. And regardless of your opinion, each and every failed battle in organized labor history including PATCO, or AMFA/NWA, IAM/EASTERN, each of these failed out comes have a direct impact on each of us in our struggle to keep the middle class from becoming poor. And 2 of 3 were of the nature where AFL-CIO turned their backs on workers and watched from the sidelines. Evidence shows that AFL-CIO support or non-support is not really the ingrediant that dictates win/loss outcome to begin with. Yet, just as the arrogant fools are losing the battles in the political arena, you and others still hold the belief that they are all powerful and important. In fact the AFL-CIO is now controlled by mostly untouchable and unaccountable weak and fear mongering leaders that make enough financially to classify them as rich.
You refuse to read the historical documents that are dictated proceedings of the past TWU Conventions that will clearly prove to you that "change from within" has failed time and time again. So you ignore those that have read and understand this history. You seem to be content to remember and dwell on history that suits your opinions and needs, but disregard completely any historical fact that could place your allegiance in question.
Go ahead and ignore history, and history will be repeated. Maybe that is why the T/A that was just voted down was to create another division within the TWU of the "have nots". The B - Scale, the SRP, and now the SMA and those without retirement medical and defined pension. Everytime I read some TWU advocate writing material about how organizing drives divide the TWU membership, I just have to laugh. You have been vicitimzed and wrote letters about your group being seperated by loss of skill premium. I recall something to the effect of a Bee-Hive being kicked over. Well the TWU keeps failing to learn from history, and it must be because the leadership like you refuses to admit or review historical failues and outcomes. I see you as much smarter than that, but I watch is awe as your emotions take over and your intelligence is relegated to standby.
The unionism of the AFL-CIO that claims you only get support if you conform to our ways and ideas, is the equivilent allowing a human race or population to be wiped out because of their religous or political beliefs or even just simply because of their race. If you ever want to get to the bottom of the failures of organized labor as a whole, simply look at the AFL-CIO and how they use and/or withold support to assist suffering working men and women as a manipulation tool to attempt to gain dominace and control over organized labor. They will standy and watch a group union men and women struggle because they "don't belong" or "don't conform". Yet they don't hesitate to lobby for a raise in minimum wage, 40 hour work week, workmans comp, ect. for those that don't even belong to ANY union period much less the AFL-CIO family of unions. What is even more appauling is that you and other TWU supporters keep using this injustice as a reason to stick around with an AFL-CIO union. Each time I think about this, I scratch my head and say, I am surrounded by F'ing idiots.
