Singing for Unions

Recently I posted a brief note about the decline of organized labor. The Serpentine Dancing Queen has another take on unions (snippet):

....Personally, I'm troubled by the corruption that abounds in most unions: Tons of money is spent on overhead and political contributions and unions either spend too much money on servicing their members or too much money organizing new members. (SEIU falls into the latter category; most of their money and resources are spent convincing people to join their union and then they leave most members without adequate support staff to help them bargain their contracts and uphold them.) And then there's a problem with the fact that most traditional union sectors of the economy are going overseas. As more and more people have white collar employment, unions appear to be less relevant to our society. I personally disagree with that assessment. I think the most powerful unions in the country are government employee unions. They set the gold standard for healthcare, pensions, and time off. Unfortunately, they can also create an environment where it is very difficult to fire someone who isn't doing their job. But, ultimately it's management's responsibility to negotiate a contract that offers clear disciplinary guidelines and it's management's job to enforce the work ethic. I've had some really interesting life experience with unions. My father ran to be president of his union local (he's a government employee) and my mother is in management (for the same agency). And the stuff I saw while I was a union organizer was heartbreaking (when we lost) and inspiring (when we won). Ultimately, I think the only way to create a worker's movement in this country that is truly progressive and populist is for workers themselves to organize. I think unions have something important to offer America, but I'm just not sure if the leadership of any of the major unions is truly willing to give up control of the movement to the masses....

The simple fact that workers of identical jobs are significantly better off unionized is still the overriding factor in assessing the value of organized labor in a democracy, or even in an oligarchy like the United States.

On an unrelated note, I came across THIS site that has a huge number of union songs, with both the complete lyrics and mp3 recordings. There's some really interesting stuff there, including the Iraqi War Song. Check it out.