[HN Gopher] Unionbusters (1986)
___________________________________________________________________
Unionbusters (1986)
Author : yesiamyourdad
Score : 18 points
Date : 2024-03-22 13:45 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.texasmonthly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.texasmonthly.com)
| mitchbob wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240322140257/https://www.texas...
| keybored wrote:
| I love unions in American fictional media. _The Wire_ seasons two
| is centered around the dockworkers who take bribes and are
| arguing about how corrupt they should be (I'm biased since it's
| the most boring season by far). _Ozark_ features a union on the
| periphery which is introduced by a man carjacking a truck and
| kneecaping the driver with a shotgun. Can't wait to see what's up
| next.
| readams wrote:
| It's not just fictional media.
| https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-
| vcrs/infiltrated-l....
| mezeek wrote:
| You skipped right over Sopranos
| nimbius wrote:
| The same class that operates the government also controls
| media, so this type of propaganda is unsurprising considering
| both the Hollywood strike and the union efforts at amazon have
| proven successful recently.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| hmm its not a "class" in the old social order sense.. aligned
| interests? what is allowed? maybe.. another angle is that
| govt is also shown as corrupt plenty of times in other
| places.. also lawyers .. also doctors.. just about all the
| professions.. Hollywood has to hook the viewer on the story,
| so yes they deal in stereotypes. Assigning "class" as a
| motivator is slightly dim, in the modern times IMHO
| triceratops wrote:
| > I'm biased since it's the most boring season by far
|
| Heresy!
| bryik wrote:
| Don't forget the classic film _On the Waterfront_. Considered
| one of the greatest movies ever made and adapted from "Crime
| on the Waterfront," a 24-article series by the New York Sun's
| Malcolm Johnson that received the second prize ever awarded for
| Local Reporting, in 1949.
|
| > In a vocation where loss of limb (and even life) was not
| uncommon, prospective workers -- in a field disproportionately
| comprised of working-class African-Americans and whites of
| Italian and Irish descent who did not benefit from the upward
| mobility of the G.I. Bill -- were forced to offer kickbacks to
| syndicate representatives at the daily "shape-up," in which
| prospective workers were forced to compete against each other
| to secure work irrespective of union membership. At any time,
| workers could be virtually blacklisted from subsequent
| employment for arbitrary purposes in the union's "blue books,"
| their jobs often requisitioned by members of the syndicate who
| were completing prison sentences.
|
| https://www.pulitzer.org/article/underworld-syndicate-malcol...
| kadoban wrote:
| > I'm biased since it's the most boring season by far
|
| That season has really grown on me over time and rewatches. It
| has a lot of great character work on Omar, Avon, Stringer,
| McNulty, Prezbo, Freeman, etc.; Ziggy, Nick, Sobotka is peak
| tragedy with a lot of fun along the way.
|
| You may be right that it's not as exciting as other seasons,
| but I personally would call it boring and it sets up and
| deepens _so_ much of what comes after.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| I'm definitely in favor of breaking up the
| dockworkers/longshormans unions. I don't see why we should let a
| small group of people hold the whole economy hostage just to
| enrich themselves.
| missedthecue wrote:
| You mean to tell me having the world's least efficient ports
| (worse than even Tanzania), is a bad thing?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-ports-key-us-sup...
| jordanb wrote:
| This isn't due to the dockworkers. This is due to everything
| after the cargo is offloaded. LA and Longbeach are a disaster
| because the rail network is incredibly mismanaged.
|
| Union Pacific has decided that they will only run unit trains
| out of the inland empire to a few destinations north and
| east.
|
| In order to get cargo from LA and Longbeach to those inland
| terminals thousands of truck movements have to occur across
| LA's congested freeway network every day. And if the
| container's not going to one of the preselected locations
| (Chicago, St Louis, DFW, a few others) it has to go the whole
| way by truck.
|
| Recall the "solution" to the blockage during the pandemic was
| to stack containers even higher. This is because the problem
| wasn't with offloading the containers, it was the trucking
| (drayage) getting them out of the port and to either the
| railheads ("intermodal ports") in the inland empire, or to
| their destination.
| harimau777 wrote:
| If we don't want a small group of people to hold the economy
| hostage to enrich themselves, then we should be looking at
| corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I am always shocked by the mental model that despises labor
| power but is okay with the bug in our socioeconomic system
| where ultra wealthy people and corporations are allowed to
| exist. Humans are strange.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-03-22 23:01 UTC)