[lbo-talk] Blog Post: Teaching Workers

[michael yates]

In the excerpt from the blog post about teaching workers, I mention the marine who wanted to strangle me. He really wasn't that bad a guy at college (though god knows what he did in Viet Nam, where he did three tours), and we got along OK. After he graduated, he got a job driving a bus in Johnstown, PA, where I taught. He had a problem with his boss, and since the workplace was unionized he wanted to file a grievance. Well. you guessed it, he called me! Naturally, I advised him as best I could. I think he got what he wanted from the company. You never know when people will change, when they will see things in a different light than they did before.  

In this connection, I have been reading commentaries on the UAW defeat in Tennessee. On our moderator's Facebook page, someone wrote about (or at least made a strong suggestion about) the workers at the plant as trailer trash. This is pretty offensive. I doubt the UAW will do what the UE would--stick around and act as a minority union, learn from its mistakes, and come back again to try to win bargaining rights. But if it were to do this and at the same time get more militant (unlikely I know), many of those "trashy" workers would become militants too. I have known many southern workers. When they get the working class religion, they go all in. No one is a better brother and sister.

No matter the rockiness of the soil, perhaps we need to keep plowing!