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Re: Technial Writing Unions

Subject: Re: Technial Writing Unions
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 19:48:56 -0800

Andrew Plato wrote:

We live in a free market.

We haven't lived in a free market for about a century and a half. It doesn't matter what you think of the fact, but European and North American societies long ago decided that the free market couldn't be left to regulate itself. Child labor laws, safety requirements, minimum wage laws, anti-trust legislation - all this and more are evidence of the fact that we live in a mixed economy.

I'm not stressing this fact to be one-up on anyone, but because it matters to the discussion. Far from being communistic, unions have a long history in our countries. In fact, they are a large factor in the enlargement of the middle classes in the Fifties and Sixties, and thereby partly responsible for our present consumer societies. They can also be seen as a concession that robbed communism of much of its appeal.

More importantly, any discussion of unions that imagines that we have a free market, or that unions are somehow alien to our economic systems is not well-grounded in reality.

My apologies for such bluntness, but it's true. There are arguments against unions, but not these ones.


--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

"What will I say when my children ask me,
'Where were you flying on that day?'
With trembling voice, I gave the order
To the bombardier of Enola Gay."
-Utah Phillips, "Enola Gay"




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Re: Technial Writing Unions: From: Andrew Plato

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