Unionisation Means Philanthropy In Action

It is the democratic right of every human being to speak and be heard. But in a room that is too bog, where the acoustics are not very good, it is easy for one voice to get drowned out among all the other voices, struggling to be heard by one set of ears. If no one can hear that one voice, then that person suffers. Voices must speak in unison to be listened to.

The people whose ears should be burning to listen to these voices are a long way away. The people who should be listening are in the same room, but they are a great distance away. Let us call one of them Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam can see in the distance a set of lips moving. The lips are trying to communicate something. He turns away. That is not what he wants to see. If he turns away, he cannot see the lips. Uncle Sam glances back. Now there are several lips, all moving in sync. He turns away again. That is not what he wants to see.

In another room, the same thing is happening. The acoustics are not so bad in this room, but the lips still need to move in unison to communicate their message effectively. People who should be listening still turn away. But there is a key difference between the two rooms.

In one of the rooms, a novelty set of ear muffs appear. They are gigantic furry ones. Someone puts them on, and all the noise of the room is made silent:

"Wal-Mart said it would close a Canadian store where about 190 workers were close to winning the first-ever union contract with the retail giant after the company failed to reach a labor agreement with the employees, who are represented by the United Food & Commercial Workers. A Wal-Mart spokesman said union demands would have made it impossible for the store to sustain its business. Union leaders promised to fight the closing. The store in Jonquiere, Quebec, became the first unionized Wal-Mart in North America in September when the bargaining unit was certified by provincial labor officials. The closest a U.S. union has ever come to winning a battle with Wal-Mart was in 2000, at a store in Texas, where 11 workers -- all in the meatpacking department -- voted to join and be represented by the UFCW. That effort failed when Wal-Mart eliminated meatcutter jobs company-wide, and moved away from in-store meatcutting to stocking only pre-wrapped meat."

In the smaller of the two rooms, no comical ear muffs appear. Instead, the people who should be doing the listening turn around. All the lips are moving in sweet sweet harmony. The people thhis time are happy to face the music:

"Retail union Usdaw has made a £15,000 donation to the Farepak Response Fund after discovering members’ children were facing a bleak Christmas after the collapse of the food hamper company. Union leaders were incensed that shopworkers across the UK has lost thousands of pounds they couldn’t afford after Farepak went into administration and some would have no money to make sure their children had food on the table let alone presents. “Usdaw represents some of the lowest paid workers in the UK and this donation will go some way to making sure that people who did the sensible thing by not getting into debt and planning for Christmas will at least be able to afford a turkey to put on the table,” says Usdaw General Secretary John Hannett. “I was particularly touched when I found out that one of our members had donated her commission as a Farepak agent to the Response Fund organised by the Family Fund and Usdaw decided it needed to put its hand in its pocket and help out too.""

Individual noise is better than silence. Unified noise is better than individual noise. The socialist principle stands true in any room, regardless of size or acoustic quality: by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright