my dad was a union man

 

 

In 1887, Michael Cudahy, with the backing of Philip Danforth Armour, started the Armour-Cudahy packing plant in Omaha, Nebraska.

Cudahy Packing Company was created in 1890 when Cudahy bought Armour's interest. The company added branches across the country, including a cleaning products plant at East Chicago, Indiana, built in 1909. In 1911, the company's headquarters were relocated from Omaha to Chicago

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cudahy_Packing_Company

 By 1922, Cudahy Packing Company was one of the largest packing houses in the United States with over $200 million in annual sales and 13,000 employees around the country. and operations in South Omaha, Kansas City, Saint Joseph, Sioux City, Wichita, Memphis, East Chicago, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles, as well as distribution operations in 97 cities. The business was hit by the Great Depression, but the company still employed about 1,000 Chicago-area residents during the mid-1930s.

Following World War II, it moved its headquarters in 1956 to Phoenix, where it took the name Cudahy Company. In 1957, the company was one of 500 companies listed in the first S&P 500.

One of the packing plants owned by Cudahy was one in St. Paul Park, Minnesota, a short drive from my dad’s home town of Hastings, Minnesota.

 During WWII, farmers were exempt from military service because their produce, especially hemp, was vital to the war effort. Shortly after war broke out, dad left the running of the Brennan farm to his brother Clem, and he joined the Army.

When the war ended, dad returned to the farm, but after marrying my mother in the fall of 1946, he needed more income, so he went to work for Cudahy.

In 1954, the plant closed.

Dad now had a 6-year-old son, a 4-year-old daughter, and a new mortgage, so he needed to find a way to generate some income – in a hurry. He started working the night shift at Zinsmaster Baking Company, but knew that he needed a better job for the long term – so he took the test to become a mail carrier.

He started working for the Postal Service in 1955 (the peak year for union membership), and stayed there until his retirement in 1976.

 In the 1960s, the percentage of workers who were members of unions was falling from the peak achieved in the 1940s and 1950s. While 31.5% of workers were union members in 1950 and 33.2% were in unions in 1955, that percentage fell to 31.4% in 1960, 28.4% in 1965 and 27.3% in 1970. Union participation has continued to fall since then. Thus, although unions have had an important impact on the American economy, an increasingly smaller percentage of American workers have been part of this impact since the late 1950s.

When the 1960s began, the world of American labor was still adjusting to the 1955 merger of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In 1968, the United Automobile Workers (UAW) withdrew from the AFL-CIO and, in 1969, merged with Jimmy Hoffa's International Brotherhood of Teamsters

^{https://www.historycentral.com/sixty/Economics/Laborunion.html#:~:text=While%2031.5%25%20of%20workers%20were%20union%20members%20in,Union%20participation%20has%20continued%20to%20fall%20since%20then.}

One of the exceptions to a diminished union presence is the United Postal Service, which now has seven separate unions.

https://facts.usps.com/collective-bargaining-agreements/

 Today, only a little more than 10% of the American work force belong to unions, but the trend is starting to shift in the other direction, for two reasons:

(1)          Record corporate profits

(2)         Unfavorable working conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States

 U.S. corporations pulled in more profits in the three months ended in September of 2021 than ever before. Not just in dollar terms—something that happens frequently—but as a share of the economy. According to initial estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, third-quarter after-tax corporate profits from current production amounted to 11% of gross domestic product. The previous record of 10.7% was set in the second quarter of 2021; before that the all-time high was 10.6%, in the first quarter of 2012.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-06/stock-market-u-s-corporations-hit-record-profits-in-2021-q3-despite-covid

Those record profits, however, have not been of much help to the people who work for those corporations.

Business has boomed during the pandemic for Kroger, the biggest supermarket chain in the United States and the fourth-largest employer in the Fortune 500. It owns more than 2,700 locations, and its brands include Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, Ralphs, Smith’s, Pick ’n Save and even Murray’s Cheese in New York City. The company, which is based in Cincinnati, said in December that it was expecting sales growth of at least 13.7 percent over two years. 

 The company’s stock has risen about 36 percent over the past year

 But that success has not trickled down to its vast work force of nearly 500,000 employees, a number of whom have reported being homeless, receiving government food stamps or relying on food banks to feed their families. A brief strike in Colorado last month by workers, represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, at dozens of Kroger-owned King Soopers locations brought renewed scrutiny to the issues of pay and working conditions for grocery workers, who have been on the front lines throughout the pandemic.

 During the pandemic, grocery store workers have been recognized as essential to keeping society going, but they have also faced health risks. At least 50,600 grocery workers around the country have been infected with or exposed to the coronavirus, and at least 213 have died from the virus, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

 Kroger has one of the country’s starkest gaps between a chief executive’s compensation and that of the median employee. Rodney McMullen, Kroger’s chief executive since 2014, earned $22.4 million in 2020, while the median employee earned $24,617 — a ratio of 909 to 1. The average C.E.O.-to-worker pay ratio in the S&P 500 is 299 to 1, with grocery chains like Costco (193 to 1) and Publix (153 to 1) lower than that.

These disparities have fomented outrage among employees, who are also dealing with issues like fights over masks and theft and violence in stores. 

I’m a big fan of Starbucks. Although it’s rare that I’ll spend $4 to buy a tall latte at one of the company stores, it’s the only coffee brand that I buy at the store.

The company’s found, Howard Schultz, has written three books, and I have read all of them.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=howard+schultz&i=stripbooks&crid=FJ452IGDZEDM&sprefix=howard+schultz%2Cstripbooks%2C120&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

In terms of employee benefits, Starbucks is more generous than many employers.

A company health plan, a stock option program, free online college through Arizona State University, online mental health counseling.

If you dig a little deeper, though, you’ll discover that employees needed more than that, which is why the employees in Buffalo, New York just formed a union.

The Washington Post article posted below is lengthy, but it provides a lot of the answers that help us understand today’s labor market.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/02/12/rhodes-scholar-barista-fight-unionize-starbucks/

In spite of the success in Buffalo, other cities are not as fortunate.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Starbucks employees in Memphis, TN announced their campaign to unionize in the same city where King was murdered while fighting for the rights of sanitation workers to unionize.

Starbucks responded by firing every member of the Memphis organizing team.

The seed of the labor movement was the Haymarket Riots in Chicago in 1886 – which eventually led to Labor Day celebrations throughout the world. Violence was common in the early days of unions.

The first successful strike was in Flint, Michigan in 1937.

Corporate goons discouraged the union from forming, but the workers eventually prevailed.

https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/february/flint-michigan-sit-down-strike

By the late 1970’s, unions had actually acquired too much power, which made corporations, especially auto manufacturers, unable to compete against foreign corporations, which is why Honda opened a non-union plan in Marysville, Ohio in 1982.

When I started my first job (at Montgomery Ward) in 1964, I was required to pay union dues. However, every single job that I have had since then has been a non-union job.

Unions, though, have been a great benefit to me in my lifetime.

In the 1950’s, a guy without a college education, and a union card, could make enough money as a sole provider to pay for a mortgage and provide a comfortable living for his family.

Recent attempts to form a union have not always been successful, as evidenced by attempts to unionize auto plants in Tennessee (VW and Nissan) but the trend is clear.

Unions are here to stay – and they will continue to grow.

Dad would be pleased.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My little girl

Not long after we moved to Waukesha, Wisconsin, Brian and I joined the YMCA Indian Guides program. In addition to the twice a month meetings at the homes of the boys in the tribe, the young Guides also got to go camping in the fall and in the winter at Phantom Lake, the second oldest YMCA camp in the country (dating back to 1896). 

 During the fall, we would all go for hikes in the woods, and congregate around roaring bonfires in the evenings. During the winter, “snow snake” races would be held on the frozen lake, and we would watch old movies after dinners of hot dogs and beans on Saturday night. After a few years, it became difficult for the dads in the organization to find time for leadership roles, so I eventually got elected Federation chief, and was allowed to wear a fancy feathered headdress at the fall ceremony where I, as chief Horsefeathers, got a chance to use my Toastmaster training and lead the ceremony. 

 In the fall of 1985, Kelly became old enough to join the Indian Princess program, and came along for the fall campout with me and Brian. On Saturday evening, as we all sat around a campfire, my little brown-eyed girl got up from her seat on the other side of the fire, walked over to my side, put her arms around me, looked me in the eyes, and said, “daddy, I love you”. 

 Gulp.

 I’ve accomplished a lot of things in my lifetime, and I’d had some wonderful travel experiences, but I’ve always felt that that moment in time would always be one of the most memorable in my life. Little girls always seem to have a special place in their dad’s hearts, which is why a lot of grade schools have “daddy-daughter” dances when their young charges get to be 7 or 8 years old. 

 A few dads are able to demonstrate their affection for their daughters in more elaborate ways. 

Gwyneth Paltrow’s dad took her to Paris when she was about 11 years old because he wanted her to see Paris for the first time with a man who would always love her. 

 There are several towns in America that have been named after somebody’s daughter (one of them being the Alpine village-themed Helen, Georgia) , but the most memorable story about a town named after a daughter involves Carol Stream, Illinois, which is located 17 miles northeast of our old house in Aurora.

 In the mid-1950’s, a man named Jay Stream was president of the Durable Construction Company. He had planned to build a 400 home community in Naperville, but the red tape involved in the process proved to be too frustrating for him.

 A sympathetic(?) clerk told him to “build his own town”, so he decided to do exactly that. In 1957, he started to buy farmland in the unincorporated farmland outside of Wheaton, Illinois, and the first few homes were erected that spring.

 On August 26, 1957, his teenage daughter Carol was returning from Racine, Wisconsin with some friends in a 1949 Studebaker much like the ones pictured below. While attempting to cross U.S. Highway 45 in Kenosha, their car was struck in the right rear corner, killing the 15 year old passenger that was sitting there. Carol was ejected through the windshield, and into a utility pole. 

She was so badly injured that the doctors at the Kenosha hospital thought that the comatose girl would never awaken or, if she did, she would be severely handicapped.

 In spite of her dire condition, the doctors felt that good news might help her to heal, so Jay Stream decided to name the new village in her honor. After four months in a coma, Carol regained consciousness. When she first learned that the village had been named for her, she thought at first that it was “odd and silly” but she quickly warmed to the idea.

Carol Stream never lived in the town that bears her name. Shortly after she recovered from the accident, she moved to Arizona with her mother as her parent’s marriage unraveled. However, she frequently participates in municipal celebrations and parades. Carol Stream, the person, is living proof that good news can be tremendously therapeutic, and that a man’s love for his daughter is a powerful tool. Although I could say a lot more about THAT topic, I’ll let Tim McGraw have the final word:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rigq_M8qh4 

  

that's just the way it is

 

In 1986, Bruce Hornsbury and his band, the Range, recorded the biggest hit he has had to date, "The Way It Is". It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1986.The song described aspects of homelessness, the American civil rights movement and institutional racism. It has since been sampled by at least six rap artists, including Tupac Shakur, E-40, and Mase.

For reasons I’ll never understand, it popped into my head today.

Although the song itself is more than 30 years old, it is extremely relevant to today’s society, since there is a great deal of controversy about something called “critical race theory”, which is a 40-year-old academic study that examines the effect that systematic racism has had on our society.

The civil rights era, arguably, started in 1948, when Harry Truman desegregated the military, but it was preceded by Jackie Robinson’s 1947 hiring by Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Rosa Parks and Emmet Till followed in 1955, then the Greensboro sit-in in 1960, the 1961 Freedom Riders, Martin Luther King’s speech in 1963, and “bloody Sunday” in Selma in 1965.

Bruce Hornsby & The Range - The Way It Is (Official Video) - YouTube

Martin Luther King’s assassination led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was signed into law on July 2, 1964, roughly 3 months after MLK was assassinated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

After the March on Selma turned into “Bloody Sunday”, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on August 3, 1965.

 https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/35187

About 1:30 into the song, Hornsby sings, “hey little boy, you can’t go where the others go”. This is what he was talking about:

1)    It wasn’t until 1949, the African-Americans were allowed to use swimming pools and the Chicago lakeshore alongside white people. In the late 1940s there were major swimming pool riots in St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. Whites threw nails at the bottom of pools in Cincinnati, poured bleach and acid in pools with black bathers in St. Augustine, Florida, and beat them up in Philadelphia. 

 https://www.chicagoreporter.com/the-forgotten-history-of-segregated-swimming-pools-and-amusement-parks/

 2)   Although the 1954 Supreme Court decision of 1954 officially desegregated schools, schools in the South were slow to comply. It took until 1957 before the Little Rock Nine could go into a white high school in Little Rock, with a little help from president Eisenhower. When Ruby Bridges entered an all-white school in New Orleans in 1960, she was escorted in by U.S. Marshalls.

3)   Even today, realtors in a variety of cities don’t show potential black buyers houses in the “white section” of some cities.

 If you still don’t think that systematic racism does not exist in this country, consider these facts:

·         A 2021 analysis of marijuana-related arrests in 2020 in New York City’s five boroughs reported that people of color comprised 94 percent of those arrested.

·         A 2021 analysis from the Milwaukee County, Wisconsin District Attorney’s Office reported that Black Wisconsinites were 4.3 times more likely than their white counterparts to be convicted for having marijuana. The worst disparities in Wisconsin are in Ozaukee County, where Black people are 34.9 times more likely to be arrested and Manitowoc County, where Black people are 29.9 times more likely to be arrested.”

·         A 2020 analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union, concluded, “Black people are 3.64 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession, notwithstanding comparable usage rates.” Authors reported, “In every single state, Black people were more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession, and in some states, Black people were up to six, eight, or almost ten times more likely to be arrested. In 31 states, racial disparities were actually larger in 2018 than they were in 2010.”

·          

https://norml.org/marijuana/fact-sheets/racial-disparity-in-marijuana-arrests/

 

More people died from police violence in 2017 than the total number of U.S. soldiers killed in action around the globe). More people died at the hands of police in 2017 than the number of black people who were lynched in the worst year of Jim Crow (161 in 1892). Cops killed more Americans in 2017 than terrorists did (four). They killed more citizens than airplanes (13 deaths worldwide), mass shooters (428 deaths) and Chicago’s “top gang thugs” (675 Chicago homicides).

 Yet only 12 officers were charged with a crime related to a shooting death.

 https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/01/a-man-of-integrity.html

In 2021, State lawmakers have enacted nearly two dozen laws since the 2020 election that restrict ballot access, according to a new tally by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

These 22 laws in 14 states mark a new record for restrictive voting laws since 2011, when the Brennan Center recorded 19 laws enacted in 14 state legislatures.

Most of the new laws make it harder to vote absentee and by mail, after a record number of Americans voted by mail in November. The people who will now find it harder to vote are Hispanics, African-Americans, and native Americans.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/politics/voter-suppression-restrictive-voting-bills/index.html

 Hornsby also touched on homelessness, when he sang “get a job”

 The truth is that all of us are just a heartbeat away from being homeless, as explained in the link below:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2020/09/

 As we get closer to the mid-terms, the most important issues aren’t critical race theory, inflation, the southern border, or voter fraud.

The only question that matters is whether candidates for public office agree with the Republican National Committee that the events of January 6 were “legitimate political discourse”. If they can’t answer this question correctly, then they are not qualified to hold public office.

That’s just the way it is.

 

 

 

 

all the news that's fit to print

 

In 1897, Adolph S. Ochs, the owner of The New York Times, created the famous slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print," which still appears on the masthead of the newspaper today. He wrote the slogan as a declaration of the newspaper's intention to report the news impartially.

I’ll have to admit that the New York Times is my favorite newspaper, in large part due to the fact that it has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper.

However, I also have paid subscriptions to the Washington Post (69 Pulitzers). The Boston Globe (26 Pulitzers), and the Arizona Republic (12 Pulitzers). In addition, I also read the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and the National Catholic Reporter on a daily basis. Occasionally, I’ll also read Al Jazeera, the Tucson Daily Star, and the Chicago Tribune.

One of my favorite memories as a kid was laying on the floor in the living room, and reading the comics in the St. Paul Dispatch. Years later, I actually wound up working for the St. Paul Dispatch on Saturday nights, assembling the Sunday newspaper. I also was instrumently in helping my brothers-in-law, and one of my co-workers to join me.

 I just finished reading “Defense Attorney”, by James Patterson. Apart from the main character (Barry Slotnick), another important person in the “telling of the tale” is a reporter for the New York Daily News named Jimmy Breslin.

Breslin worked for the New York Daily News for a number of years, but he also wrote columns for several other New York papers. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for Commentary "for columns which consistently champion ordinary citizens"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Breslin

In my early adult years, I frequently read Jim Klobuchar’s columns in the Star Tribune. Despite his struggles with alcoholism, he managed to live to be 93 years old – and he is also the father of Senator Amy Klobuchar.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Klobuchar

 We lived in the Chicago area for more than 25 years, which led me to become a fan of Mike Royko.

Over his 30-year career, he wrote over 7,500 daily columns for the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune. A humorist who focused on life in Chicago, he was the winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Royko married Carol Duckman in 1954, and they had two sons, David and Robert. She suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died on September 19, 1979, Royko's 47th birthday. He later described that time as "a period of disintegration. The only column he wrote during that period was a short note to readers on October 5, 1979, in which Royko wrote, "We met when she was 6 and I was 9. Same neighborhood street. Same grammar school. So, if you ever have a 9-year-old son who says he is in love, don't laugh at him. It can happen. That column ended with a much-remembered line: "If there's someone you love but haven't said so in a while, say it now. Always, always, say it now.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Royko

After we moved to Arizona, I started a subscription to the Arizona Republic. Although I read most of the columnists on a regular basis, E.J. Montini is the guy with the most longevity. I have also discovered that the columnists will respond to you directly if you write to them.

 It’s no secret that newspaper circulation numbers have gone down. In fact, they are now at the lowest levels since 1940. The ones that have prospered have resorted to digital subscriptions to boost their bottom line. The New York Times, in fact, gets more revenue from its digital subscriptions than from its print editions.

 https://letter.ly/newspaper-statistics/

 Apart from the fact that vulture capitalists like Alden Global Capital (which now owns more than 200 newspapers) have decimated newspaper staffs throughout the country, newspaper readership has declined due to the rapid expansion of cable news and social media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alden_Global_Capital

To quote Abraham Lincoln, don’t believe everything that you read on the internet.

Traditional television and radio outlets (commonly known as mainstream media) have strict controls on what can be said on air. The editorial boards of “mainstream” newspapers also have strict controls over what is printed.

Social media companies also have controls on what is posted online, but are limited in how much they can control. Facebook and Twitter can restrict or ban certain individuals who are posting mid-information – but that is not always done.

Spotify paid Joe Rogan $100 million to be his exclusive sponsor, but his broadcast of mid-leading COVID information led to a response from other musical artists (like Neil Young) rather than the company itself.

When Roger Ailes founded the FOX network in 1996, he called it an “entertainment” channel, rather than a news channel. As a result, much of that is broadcast on the channel cannot be taken as fact. When Tucker Carlson was recently sued for defamation, his lawyers argued that the 'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' "

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye

Since its founding more than 25 years ago, FOX has only earned ONE Emmy award. Its competitors have earned MANY more. For example, in 2018, CNN earned three Emmys, CNN International for three, NBC got two, the New York Times got two, MSNBC got one, ABC got one – and NPR earned SEVEN.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-fox-news-emmys-obama-1149922#:~:text=While%20Fox%20News%20won%20no%20awards%20for%202018%2C,PBS%20took%20the%20biggest%20haul%2C%20with%20seven%20Emmys.

 

We watch Rachel Maddow whenever she is on the air because she is well informed – and funny.

In the first quarter of 2021, she was the most watched on-air personality on cable news, with 3.606 million viewers.

Three months later, the most-watched host was Tucker Carlson, who had an average audience of 2.8 million viewers. This is the guy, remember, whose attorneys said that nothing that he said could be taken as fact.

 I’ve strayed a bit from my opening comments about newspaper columnists, but one common thread of the 4 guys that I mentioned earlier is that they all were hard-nosed reporters who focused on FACTS. They were not afraid to take on corrupt politicians or mobsters. On rare occasions, though, they would print human interest stories that could bring you to tears.

One example of this is Mike Royko's column of November 22, 1979, which was published shortly after his wife died. 

http://michaelsherwood.com/RoykoNovember.html

Unlike most Americans, I don’t watch a lot of television, but I will ALWAYS read newspapers.