Kendan Bendt
Staff Reporter
Unions are a hot topic right now in the United States. Whether you have heard about railroad workers threatening to strike, wondered why Amazon workers have to pee in bottles at their jobs, or read a tweet about Starbucks workers getting fired for mentioning them, unions are an important part of our political discourse.
Unions, while having a varied history of impact and implementation in the U.S., can be a very good thing for protecting the rights of workers. We live in a society founded on liberal ideals; that everyone is endowed with the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If you are snoring, that is a good thing! It means I do not have to spend the next two pages of our paper explaining this to you because you heard it in Government in high school.
People have the right to get a job, buy a house, and generally build a life as they see fit. But what happens, say, if you can’t afford college, or student loans? You are looking at life in low income jobs with little chance for advancement. Depending on the area of the country, your job might not even allow you a roof over your head. Your best options are signing up for trade school, or a dangerous military job. These are not perfect solutions, and they are both difficult and potentially deadly work depending on what you are going into. But at least you will have some level of security.
What about that retail worker who helps you find your Avengers shirt at Wal-Mart? What about the restaurant worker who gets legally paid under minimum wage? Their jobs take no less time out of their day than a tech job, or a trade, or a job in the military. But the security they have, and their ability to create a life out of their labor, is lacking. This is where we have to realize as a society that we have to find a solution to the pains of the worker, or our economy that has been profiting off of their suffering will collapse completely.
This connects to unions because, while they are imperfect as a means of getting every individual’s needs addressed, they are the best legal bargaining tool that the working class has at their disposal. If companies are not going to provide for their workers, it is their right and their responsibility to organize and receive what they need out of their work.
No matter what side of the political aisle you are on, you should view unions as a good thing. Even if you think Jeff Bezos and his business model for Amazon have only been a gift to humanity (in which case, I am not sure that I could look you in the eye) you should want his workers to unionize! Stable profits with workers who are not dying on the factory floor is how we keep packages coming to your door in 1-2 business days for the foreseeable future.
Vote for and support unions wherever you see them. If candidates are pro-union, they generally understand how the world works. If they are anti-union, they are probably in somebody’s pocket.
