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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 13, 2019 14:21:23 GMT
Today I noticed a sign-up sheet for SIPTU in my workplace's staff-room. I left SIPTU several years ago when I heard they had representatives at a pro-choice rally and that they were officially pro-abortion. And we all know that the trade unions generally support anti-life, anti-family, pro-PC causes.
And yet, I derive benefits indirectly from the presence of a trade union in my workplace. And I believe that trade unions play an important role in representing workers. (I'm not denying that unions, especially public sector unions, often abuse their power.) I wonder if my non-membership is morally justified in this regard.
I was reading Give Us Back the Bad Roads by John Waters last week. He describes how he was almost sacked from The Irish Times at one point, when the editor (who already wanted to get rid of him) heard he was not a member of the NUJ-- he had left in protest on some point of principle. On catching wind of this, he rejoined post-haste, at the urging of a friend who was an official in the NUJ. I think he was smart to do this, but it does show how complicated these questions are.
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Post by annie on Mar 14, 2019 22:16:34 GMT
I understand that in England, the Methodists were a good influence in the early days of trade unionism. The nihilism strain present in society since the second world war seems to have poisoned a lot of formerly wholesome organisations.
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Post by Young Ireland on Mar 16, 2019 19:15:57 GMT
At the end of the day, institutions will reflect the views of the people that run them. Part of the problem is that the unions bit off more than they could chew during the 1970s, giving Reagan and Thatcher a pretext to re-orientate the economy towards big business. Also, I think that the emphatic defeat of Labour in 1983 and of Walter Mondale the following year (as well as the 1989 revolutions) caused the center-left to move away from social democracy towards social liberalism. This hypotehesis is rather simplistic, I accept (the unrest of 1968 and the Watergate Babies that resulted would probably have resulted in a realignment in any case) but it is substantially true, I believe.
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