back next Labor drawings © 1987 Tom Ferguson 5 pages here: For a period in the 80s I did drawings for labor organizers in Atlanta
and when my main contact, Janet Kaufman, moved to other cities she
would call me
and tell me what she needed, i'd draw it up and send it. Sometimes they
were fighting management's resistence to unions (abetted by Reagan etc;
appointing anti-labor people to the dept. of labor). Sometimes they
were competing with other labor unions trying to organize the same
workers. Reagan marked the moment Management had awaited and planned
for since acquiescing to unions in the early part of the 20th
century. Their first coopting move was to deal only with the "moderate"
leaders who thus wouldn't interfere with their greater plans. George
Meany, AFL-CIO head, had investments in Haiti i'm told (Chomsky) while
supporting U.S. anti-union activity there. Keep'em happy, keep'em
supporting our little wars, pay off the cooperative
leaders etc; and
when the iron is hot (Reagan), destroy'em! The way ego is equally
distributed across class/race/gender - well, maybe not gender, there
wasn't much chance of real union among the unions.
