This is not just a question of mutually constructive and innovative experience/cooperation inside the manufacturing process, it is a question that ought to be front and center for liberal democrats, left liberals if you prefer, social democrats, and democratic socialists. My own experience on the left, as a public sector union rep, and acquaintences with bankers and executives has left me with the impression that management has never wanted to "share the wheel" with labor, certainly not on the major questions of deployment of capital/automation, geographical locations of production and stance on reform of labor law, something the Democratic Party has failed to do since Taft Hartley, that is, through seven Presidents: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama and now Biden...
Therefore conflict is hard to overcome because Clyde, you are actually asking union leaders to think and act like management without actually having the power: if we ask for the raises in pay and benefits, will the company just automate or shift to the hostile labor sections of the country, or Mexico or further? Would profit sharing without seats on the decision making bodies change this?
We don't have many public debates about where Europe - Scandinavia, Germany, Central and Eastern Europe are today on these issues...to me, for labor to be taken more seriously we would have to have leaders with more intellectual depth than the late Richard Trumka.
The issues I am raising bear upon the demise of a healthy democracy in America where power and wealth are not shared, but concentrated in the owners and managers of the private sector. The ostensibly powerful Environmental Movement is proof of that: with much wider roots and membership than American labor even at its zenith - 1950 - has been unable to move American business on the crucial question of climate disruption, much less on the related demise of bio-diversity.
Thomas Piketty gets to the heart of the matter in his 2019 book "Capital and Ideology": centered on the ownership of private property, the message througout American culture, and beyond, even to Scandinavia and Western Europe, is "do not touch" with ownership and the control of capital.
It is the failure of the democratic left here and in Western Europe that has weakened democracy, worker power and scope, and left the bottom 60% of society - workers and lower middle class with no seasoned and insightful advocates.
This is not just a question of mutually constructive and innovative experience/cooperation inside the manufacturing process, it is a question that ought to be front and center for liberal democrats, left liberals if you prefer, social democrats, and democratic socialists. My own experience on the left, as a public sector union rep, and acquaintences with bankers and executives has left me with the impression that management has never wanted to "share the wheel" with labor, certainly not on the major questions of deployment of capital/automation, geographical locations of production and stance on reform of labor law, something the Democratic Party has failed to do since Taft Hartley, that is, through seven Presidents: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama and now Biden...
Therefore conflict is hard to overcome because Clyde, you are actually asking union leaders to think and act like management without actually having the power: if we ask for the raises in pay and benefits, will the company just automate or shift to the hostile labor sections of the country, or Mexico or further? Would profit sharing without seats on the decision making bodies change this?
We don't have many public debates about where Europe - Scandinavia, Germany, Central and Eastern Europe are today on these issues...to me, for labor to be taken more seriously we would have to have leaders with more intellectual depth than the late Richard Trumka.
The issues I am raising bear upon the demise of a healthy democracy in America where power and wealth are not shared, but concentrated in the owners and managers of the private sector. The ostensibly powerful Environmental Movement is proof of that: with much wider roots and membership than American labor even at its zenith - 1950 - has been unable to move American business on the crucial question of climate disruption, much less on the related demise of bio-diversity.
Thomas Piketty gets to the heart of the matter in his 2019 book "Capital and Ideology": centered on the ownership of private property, the message througout American culture, and beyond, even to Scandinavia and Western Europe, is "do not touch" with ownership and the control of capital.
It is the failure of the democratic left here and in Western Europe that has weakened democracy, worker power and scope, and left the bottom 60% of society - workers and lower middle class with no seasoned and insightful advocates.