I have no specific comment to had to your last blog but more on your perception of society in general. I love theses large words such as “social justice” in wich you can colligate so many large ideas and concepts that mean so little in the end.
I do agree with all the concepts about syndicalisation. Too many people died already in the name of production and profit. Just look in my province, decades earlier when French Canadian workers where used and abused regardless of human rights and dignity. But extremes in this field are presents as well. Syndicats are clearly destroying the economy of too many regions of Quebec. Too strong with too many unrealistic requests. Do you find it logical and socially beneficial that a man is paid 25$/hour to clean the floor when the nurse working just beside and who got a bachelor degree is having about the same salary, and way worst conditions? And what about those thousand of workers who asked illogical salaries and benefits in time where they had the monopole of the production, but are still claming the same now that their industry is only one among a huge international network? What do you think is happening? the industry closes, these people lose their job and put it on the back of the so bad company when they never ask themselves how to readjust their request in term of the global economic changes. Instead of producing a new generation of creators and leaders, we are hold by these concepts that produce workers as motivated as sheep and protected in their incompetence by their syndicats. You should look in Quebec to see the gold age or syndicalisation or when all these social justice concepts when wrong. Where young and motivated workers do not find any job because the working place is fulled by unmotivated and overprotected people waiting only their retirement check.
(I do not say as much as I wish for the simple reason that English is far from being my first language. So excuse any unlogical terms.)
(For everyone else, M. Simard was one of the people I spent a few months with four years ago when i was doing the bird thing in Arizona.)
I don't know enough about the labor movement in Quebec to sufficiently engage your argument, though i suspect i disagree with it. So i'll just throw out a couple of thoughts. But i wonder if what you describe there really has less to do with Quebec's own peculiar location within the neocolonial circuits of the Canadian nation-state and the global economy.
First, i don't know that this blog is an accurate representation of my "perception of society." It's primarily rants about Yale, unemployment, depression, and music fetishism of an anti-Hornby stripe.
While I have my own problems with institutionalized labor bureaucracies, your arguments about unions rewarding the lazy and the "sheep" sound to me like managerial propaganda. I've worked with six or so union locals at one point or another over the last five years, and I will join and do whatever organizing i need to do with a new union in just a few months. And while i'm strongly critical of Organized Labor's complacency over the past six decades, its racist history of exclusion (although there's also an antiracist history of subaltern organizing and autonomous self-activity,) its history of collusion with capitalist classes (as opposed to the also present history of its struggle to constitute new articulations and possibilities of living and "working," i'm not afraid of ever encouraging mediocrity or sheephood in the organizing work that I do, because I know that the labor movement is not and has never been a monolithic subject, but is instead a far more complex network of competing and contradictory social movements and approaches which sometimes act in concert and sometimes vie against eachother.
I share your hope that unions encourage workers to understand their struggles in global context. Every union I've worked with or studied that's been successful has done so, often powerfully.
I strongly understand your point of view. If I dare say, I could compare, maybe at a point, the situation of labour movement in USA as they were here 50 years ago: justified and neccessary. What I observed, however and in a general conditions, is that these labor groups, once they get what they were fighting for (security, justice, rights and respectable salaries) have nothing left but to push the mouvement and their requests too far. It is becoming frustrating. And at the same time, in the same province and even in the same city, you have this side of the medal (strong, old labor groups sitting on their acquisitions)and the other one: a group fighting against Wal Mart to gain better working conditions. According to me, these people should fight and must be help by social pressure. However, too often, we see labour group fighting to get 25$/hour instead of 23$/hour and complaining while they should already be largely satisfied with what they already get.
I am now working into an gouvenrmental institution with a very strong labour group. Of curse this assure me a pretty fair salary and conditions. But I just have to get my head out of my office to see people doing nothing and protected by the convention while there is so many young and motivated workers waiting for their chance and unable to get it because the place is fulled by these people. Make me lost all my illusions. I've been lucking enough to get trough a little crack in the wall, but the wall is still to thick for the majority. Just have to wait that these Babyboomers get the retirement check.
And about neocolonialism, this is a very interesting debate. Just have to look what will happen in the few coming years with all this Gomery huge joke and the demonstrated fact that Canada try to buy us. I hope we will wake up for once. Only time wil tell, but I could predict that our national day will be a huge demonstration of blue and white this year!
Must go back to work: I'm on a temporary contract so I'm not protected that much by the convention rigt now ;o)
I have no specific comment to had to your last blog but more on your perception of society in general. I love theses large words such as “social justice” in wich you can colligate so many large ideas and concepts that mean so little in the end.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with all the concepts about syndicalisation. Too many people died already in the name of production and profit. Just look in my province, decades earlier when French Canadian workers where used and abused regardless of human rights and dignity. But extremes in this field are presents as well. Syndicats are clearly destroying the economy of too many regions of Quebec. Too strong with too many unrealistic requests. Do you find it logical and socially beneficial that a man is paid 25$/hour to clean the floor when the nurse working just beside and who got a bachelor degree is having about the same salary, and way worst conditions? And what about those thousand of workers who asked illogical salaries and benefits in time where they had the monopole of the production, but are still claming the same now that their industry is only one among a huge international network? What do you think is happening? the industry closes, these people lose their job and put it on the back of the so bad company when they never ask themselves how to readjust their request in term of the global economic changes. Instead of producing a new generation of creators and leaders, we are hold by these concepts that produce workers as motivated as sheep and protected in their incompetence by their syndicats. You should look in Quebec to see the gold age or syndicalisation or when all these social justice concepts when wrong. Where young and motivated workers do not find any job because the working place is fulled by unmotivated and overprotected people waiting only their retirement check.
(I do not say as much as I wish for the simple reason that English is far from being my first language. So excuse any unlogical terms.)
M. Simard
Hey, good to hear from you.
ReplyDelete(For everyone else, M. Simard was one of the people I spent a few months with four years ago when i was doing the bird thing in Arizona.)
I don't know enough about the labor movement in Quebec to sufficiently engage your argument, though i suspect i disagree with it. So i'll just throw out a couple of thoughts. But i wonder if what you describe there really has less to do with Quebec's own peculiar location within the neocolonial circuits of the Canadian nation-state and the global economy.
First, i don't know that this blog is an accurate representation of my "perception of society." It's primarily rants about Yale, unemployment, depression, and music fetishism of an anti-Hornby stripe.
While I have my own problems with institutionalized labor bureaucracies, your arguments about unions rewarding the lazy and the "sheep" sound to me like managerial propaganda. I've worked with six or so union locals at one point or another over the last five years, and I will join and do whatever organizing i need to do with a new union in just a few months. And while i'm strongly critical of Organized Labor's complacency over the past six decades, its racist history of exclusion (although there's also an antiracist history of subaltern organizing and autonomous self-activity,) its history of collusion with capitalist classes (as opposed to the also present history of its struggle to constitute new articulations and possibilities of living and "working," i'm not afraid of ever encouraging mediocrity or sheephood in the organizing work that I do, because I know that the labor movement is not and has never been a monolithic subject, but is instead a far more complex network of competing and contradictory social movements and approaches which sometimes act in concert and sometimes vie against eachother.
I share your hope that unions encourage workers to understand their struggles in global context. Every union I've worked with or studied that's been successful has done so, often powerfully.
more later, maybe.
Hello!
ReplyDeleteI strongly understand your point of view. If I dare say, I could compare, maybe at a point, the situation of labour movement in USA as they were here 50 years ago: justified and neccessary. What I observed, however and in a general conditions, is that these labor groups, once they get what they were fighting for (security, justice, rights and respectable salaries) have nothing left but to push the mouvement and their requests too far. It is becoming frustrating. And at the same time, in the same province and even in the same city, you have this side of the medal (strong, old labor groups sitting on their acquisitions)and the other one: a group fighting against Wal Mart to gain better working conditions. According to me, these people should fight and must be help by social pressure. However, too often, we see labour group fighting to get 25$/hour instead of 23$/hour and complaining while they should already be largely satisfied with what they already get.
I am now working into an gouvenrmental institution with a very strong labour group. Of curse this assure me a pretty fair salary and conditions. But I just have to get my head out of my office to see people doing nothing and protected by the convention while there is so many young and motivated workers waiting for their chance and unable to get it because the place is fulled by these people. Make me lost all my illusions. I've been lucking enough to get trough a little crack in the wall, but the wall is still to thick for the majority. Just have to wait that these Babyboomers get the retirement check.
And about neocolonialism, this is a very interesting debate. Just have to look what will happen in the few coming years with all this Gomery huge joke and the demonstrated fact that Canada try to buy us. I hope we will wake up for once. Only time wil tell, but I could predict that our national day will be a huge demonstration of blue and white this year!
Must go back to work: I'm on a temporary contract so I'm not protected that much by the convention rigt now ;o)
Good to hear from you! Take care!
M. Simard