last night's entry - oh, you can't scare me

When I worked at a Socialist summer camp that was founded by union organizing Jews, I learned the side of labor history they forget to teach in school: victories. My public school taught me that labor unions were successful to a point, but in today's economy, were defunct or useless. The camp I went to held a Peace Olympics every year, and named their Olympic teams Mother Jones, and The Haymarket Riots. And every kid knew the life and times of the people for whom they were named. It was, in a word, sweet.

But when I wrote and called home to tell my parents all the things I and my kids were learning, my dad did a lot of sighing and eye-rolling. At the time, I told myself this was because he was Mr. High Corporate Executive, and unions meant trouble: strikes, negotiations, time spent not contributing to the productiveness of the company. When I told him about the local university's graduate student union's contract negotiations, he told me I talked about unions like the were the Big Answer, and that was simply not the case.

Last night, I sat on Town Duty, sucking down egg creams at the ice cream shop, waiting for kids to come by with questions or needing directions, and talked to my dad. He's considering taking a job with a Big Bad Company - I mean, the Big Bad Company. The worst one you can think of, the most famous, the one that Laura Love sang about. He's even sent me promo material about this Big Bad Company, touting some of their efforts. But, I pointed out, they put little guys out of business, they exploit their manufacturers, and their workers...

And then it occurred to me to ask him why he hated unions so much. I asked, "Who do you know that got screwed over by a union?" And he asked, "What makes you ask?" And I said he was the only person I knew who didn't think unions were at least a good concept. So he must know some union that failed someone he knew.

"Well, yeah," he said. "Me."

My dad dropped out of public college because he couldn't pay, and worked as a cab driver to save enough to go back. He talked about being a unionized cab driver, about the corruption, the politicking, the fact that 20 drivers would show up every day for work, and there'd be ten cabs. You'd have to bribe the boss in order to get work every day, and the union promised health care, but delivered so badly that it wasn't worth it, and they took dues every week, and couldn't gauarantee that there'd be any work.

As he spoke, he got more and more upset, but didn't start shouting. I listened, glad that he was sharing that piece of his story with me. I'd never heard it before. It's important.

I still believe in unions. I still believe that corruption exists, and that the system is flawed, and imperfect and needs change. But I can respect my dad's opinion, and take his experiences far more seriously than I could before. His positions make more sense, now - he believes it's the company's job to create decent working conditions, and the worker's responsibility to find good companies to work for. I told him that's his own idealism at work, that it's not always possible.

Huh. My dad, the corporate man, the idealist. Whooda thunk it?