So I grew up in a right-to-work state. I lived in a right-to-work state. I currently live in a union state and am a member of a union. Shit is really fucked up here. Not saying that's the fault of unions. However, my grandfather was a regional president of the AFL in a right-to-work state and I certainly wasn't indoctrinated into the horrors of right-to-work. I have seen the stupid song'n'dance you have to do in a non-right-to-work state to accomplish certain things. For example, lots of orchestral scores are recorded outside California because if you want to double the violins in Pro Tools, you copy and paste. But if those violins were recorded in California, you have to pay the violinists double. This is the problem the left has with GMO: If the rest of the world needs to be convinced that GMO is a bad idea, you'd best not base all your arguments on the assumption that GMO is a bad idea. I've yet to see any paper or magazine or website try to explain why Wisconsin going right-to-work is going to be so terrible for workers everywhere... it's just sort of assumed that if unions need to compete for your dues the world will fucking end or something. My union is so incompetent that their leadership was removed by the International and each one of them was making over $200k a year apiece. Their replacements are, too - the secretary at my union was pulling down $186k a year and then using unpaid interns to do her work. But to fix that, IATSE had to come down from New York and take them to court. That's the kind of inefficiency I'd like to see handled, thanks, and I haven't seen it happen in right-to-work states. Anyone else have a different experience? 'cuz I'm honestly curious.
Purveyor of all information, I get on one knee and ask thee: what the fuck is it with people and GMOs. A girl didn't want some snack I was eating because it didn't say it was Non-GMO, and when I mentioned that I'm pretty sure there's nothing wrong with GMOs she flipped the fuck out on me and straight up walked away. Wat. I-w-why. Did GMOs kill people's families? Did I make a huge social misstep? Edit: I guess I was in Boulder so that might explain the reaction, but shit, still.
sighs deeply So the argument for GMOs is they allow shortcuts to genetic selection that allow farmers and food producers to bypass years or decades of selective breeding in order to create crops with favorable characteristics such as pest-resistance or improved durability or improved nutrition or general, non-denominational Better Living Through Chemistry. To the best of my knowledge, that argument is undisputed. The argument against GMOs, minus the crazy, is that the regulation and testing developed for GM organisms and products is not rigorous enough to detect many of the problems associated with altering the chemistry and genetics of organisms. It's a legitimate argument. A lot of GMO crops are tested by putting them in a field and watching them grow. I can't find a link but this film (by one of Jerry Garcia's widows) tells the tale of a test crop in Idaho that ended up spreading plants clear to the Andes. BUT: I can't find a citation and the discussion tends to go like this: HOLY SHIT Flavr Savr tomatoes cause stomach lesions! JESUS CHRIST Stomach tubes can cause stomach lesions would you please calm the fuck down? I've thought about this more than most and my personal position on GMO foods is that careful scrutiny by the FDA prevented thalidomide from being sold in the United States but did not prevent approval of Vioxx, which might have contributed to the early deaths of a half million senior citizens. The careful scrutiny of thalidomide, from my understanding of GMO regulation, is not found in the regulation of genetically-modified organisms. That said, if your corn syrup comes from GMO corn, I think you're pretty safe from any GMO hanky panky. I mean, fuck - you could modify corn with velocirpator venom or some shit and the act of refining the fuckin' fructose out of it would pretty much eliminate anything corny about it. The general fear, I think, comes from Frankenstein Syndrome and a lack of understanding of the modern food system. To the best of my knowledge there aren't any GMO foods that you can up and buy... it's all broken-down ingredients. You're right, though. People be batshit. I once wrote to Mother Earth News and asked them if they maybe could put together a primer on why people should avoid GMO foods. They published it with the response "everybody knows GMO foods are bad for you." Uhhh, okay. Thus is knowledge spread, I guess.
There is also the (perhaps paranoid) suspicion that GMO tech will be used to create strains for which you must buy seed from an evil corporation every year (GURTs).
The GMO companies all say they aren't doing this or planning to, but who trusts an evil corporation? Buying seed every year is already the reality for a lot of crops, due to the use of high-performing but non-viable hybrid strains.
Leave it to Jacobin to disinclude nuance from their "polemic". I don't have experience inside a union. I do have experience out side a union looking in (as an engineer in a factory). Growing up with a dogmatically leftist father, and a teacher's union member for a mother, I've always had a soft spot for unions. Especially with regard to teachers, salaries tend to be quite a bit higher in union states, although I'm not sure whether there is a correlation with the quality of education received by students from union to non-union schools. Anyway, that's beside the point here. So there I was, a white collar kid in a blue collar job setting. My view of the union dimmed markedly during that employment. Pretty much everyone I met who was UAW was a giant jerk off to me personally, and none seemed interested in building a working relationship. It was adversarial. And it had nothing to do with me. That's just the way things were done at that plant (and from talking to a lot of people over the years, I don't think it was unique). The question is whether to let my personal feelings of the union men and women with whom I worked affect my feelings toward unions generally. Of course, there are a lot of data out there showing that unions lead to higher wages and more power for workers. Historically, I'd say unions have done a lot of good, but I'm not sure they are a good way of operating in the 21st century (obviously, we have things like OSHA, e.g., that didn't exist in Reuther's time). To me, the best companies are ones that operate from a position of mutual respect between all levels. I think the best way to accomplish this is via revenue sharing or some form of worker co-ownership. Why would a worker need any better motivator to succeed than a bigger paycheck and more job security? If you have stock, bonuses, or dividends on the line, then you bet your ass you're going to care. Ownership = pride, IMO. I was glad to see GM pay extra large bonuses this year to the line workers (and I can tell you first hand they only paid partial bonuses to white collar employees--70%, I believe), because maybe it signifies that union and management had a wake up call after 2009-2010, and that the union can start to repair its image as a giant road block to progress.
This right here. Back in the late 80's / early 90's, I worked for Seagate, and at that time Al Shugart had a profit-sharing policy that was great for generating employee loyalty. The way it worked was, every quarter, IF the company made a profit above a certain threshold, then a small slice of that profit was distributed to every employee, based on salary (everyone would get, say, 15 hours worth of extra pay). It wasn't ever a lot of money, but a regular bonus based directly on company profit was a huge morale boost - and we all noticed the quarters when we didn't make a profit.Why would a worker need any better motivator to succeed than a bigger paycheck and more job security? If you have stock, bonuses, or dividends on the line, then you bet your ass you're going to care. Ownership = pride, IMO.