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From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: The Sub-Minimum Wage Again - (nf)
Message-ID: <476@tty3b.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 29-Aug-84 11:33:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: tty3b.476
Posted: Wed Aug 29 11:33:02 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 30-Aug-84 01:42:22 EDT
References: <469@tty3b.UUCP>, <5000104@uokvax.UUCP>
Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill
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From: andree@uokvax.UUCP
 >Sorry, but the SU does have a union. It's called the Communist Party. You
 >don't have to be a member to work (but you do have to vote!), but you can't
 >organize into another union (even if you're in another country).
 >
 >It's the kind of union that should make every union lovers heart warm. It
 >runs the companies, so it sets wages, working hours, and benies. Of course,
 >it also runs the country, but that's a detail. The Perfect Union.

This, of course, is the same kind of red-baiting that trade unionists have learned
to expect from the right wing.  Analyze the impeccable logic here: you are for
trade unions; the Soviet Union has a make-believe trade union; therefore, you are
for this make-believe trade union.  QED.

The irony is that the trade union movement is probably one of the strongest
bastions of anti-communism.  The leadership in many unions today are the same
people who presided over the purges of communists from the unions after WW II. 

I hope that it is self-evident that one can defend the rights of workers to
organize without having to defend the distortion of that by the Soviet Union.
Rhetoric is not reality, and calling an organization a free union does not make
it one.

Mike Kelly