The New Threat to Unions is Unions!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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Here's a very funny clip from last night's Daily Show in which union members are grilled for hiring non-unionized folks to picket a Wal-Mart for not being unionized. Got that? Just watch the clip.

Comments

[Pro Libertate]

Not a fan of the show, but I knew Aasif in the Before Time. Keep on keeping on, dude!

[sage]

I've heard about something like this before. There were unions also hiring bums to do the picketing while the union workers continued to "work". Then the bums wanted to organize a union, or "Bunion" as it's called, and they hired non-union bums to do their panhandling for them. It sort of cascaded from there, eventually involving illegal immigrants begging for less than the non union bums would take.

[Spencer Smith]

How dumb can people be?

[Barely Suppressed Rage]

Need you ask?

[Sandy]

I once temped at the American Federation for Teachers. They were one of the largest customers for my temping company, as their generous benefits (negotiated by the union representing their workers, natch) kept 1/3 of their workers out of the office at any one time.

So here I was, making $11K/year with no benefits, so the union could keep functioning.

[Episiarch]

I saw this clip last night. He ridiculed the union douchebag pretty good.

[Dr. Dave]

F'ing hilarious.

Unions equal organized crime.

I just read something incredible - for the first time ever, the majority of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of unions. My only question is WTF? Why did it take so f'ing long?

[sage]

What you read is a glimmer (a small one) of hope. NO ONE PISS ON THE GLIMMER!

[JW]

[zipping up] Now you tell me.

[CrackertyAssCracker]

Aren't a majority of union members government-employed now?* That might have helped.

*I totally just made that up, as far as I know.

[prolefeed]

You're right, as about 20 seconds of googling would show:

"The BLS's annual report on union membership shows the labor movement's decline in membership continued in 2009. While a full 23.0 percent of Americans belonged to labor unions in 1980, by 2008 only 12.4 percent did. In 2009, that figure dropped slightly to 12.3 percent.[2] There are now 15.3 million union members in the United States, 770,000 fewer than in 2008.

...What is newsworthy, however, is another figure reported by the BLS: 52 percent of all union members work for the federal or state and local governments, a sharp increase from the 49 percent in 2008. A majority of American union members are now employed by the government; three times more union members now work in the Post Office than in the auto industry."

[troy]

So the Daily Show isn't just a mouth piece for the left?

[sage]

Not that clip last night. Apparently.

[prolefeed]

Well, Aasif is poking fun at a union member for not being sufficiently leftist, so perhaps not.

But the Daily Show and Colbert Report both seem to be more willing lately to take swipes at leftists who do dumb shit.

[Les]

I think he poked fun at him for being a hypocrite. And the chants he taught the picketers were much more about making fun of unions instead of not being leftist.

[Tman]

It's been interesting to watch not just the Daily Show but the other comedy outlets from the left since Obama won in terms of their reluctance to start poking fun at the left.

To TDS's credit, they have been goring sacred cows of the left pretty consistently as of late, as this Union piece shows. But for every piece like this there is a fawning interview with Carter or Biden that reminds everyone who they really work for.

I predict that they will go back to full bashing of the right once the dems go down in flames at the midterms.

[dmoynihan]

It's funny to hear the audience when Stewart goes off-message.

Mocking Obama for vacationing during the Gulf Spill drew muted applause, but getting the "we should apologize to BP" Congresscritter at the end drew raucous laughs.

[MikeP]

So the Daily Show isn't just a mouth piece for the left?

This provides us no evidence to the contrary.

Jon Stewart's not shaming this union behavior because it is hypocritical, but because it is insufficiently liberal.

Damn moderate unions and their damn recognition of comparative advantage.

[Les]

See, I don't get this. The whole story was about hypocrisy. He even made fun of unions themselves. The squirrel on the sleeping teamsters helmet. "That's not my job!" "I'm on coffee break!"

[MWG]

"Is one of those companies the UfCW?... That's the one where I nail you."

- Aasif

Priceless

[MNG]

This clip is unpossible as we all know The Daily Show is a leftist shill show totally equivalent in every way to Fox programming like Hannity. Nice try Nick!

[Paul]

The clip is entirely pro-union. So it's entirely consistent.

The issues being addressed:

Lack of representation.
Low wages.
Lack of benefits.
Hours being cut with no recourse.

[MNG]

Imagine something like this (goring a sacred cow of that side) on Hannity.

Well, you'd have to imagine it, cuz it don't and won't happen.

[sage]

I haven't WTFV, but apparently no sacred cows were gored in this case either...

[Apogee]

That's why we're here, as this certainly isn't Hannity.

And Hannity isn't the antithesis of TDS.

There's also no doubt in my mind that JS looks at Olbermann and thinks: "I don't want to be that guy."

[Paul]

I'm not a Daily Show hater. While I don't watch it because I just don't catch any regular 'show', I've always thought that while the Daily show is home to a Democratic mindset, they're not entirely partisan.

Also, Hannity is really a different kind of show. Or at least I'm assuming it is. Isn't Hannity a kind of Television Rush Limbaugh? It's a news commentary site. Daily show is comedy first, commentary second.

[Apogee]

It's all entertainment.

[Paul]

But damn it's funny.

[Apogee]

As Tman said, TDS is best when they stray off the reservation and skewer hypocrites in action without regard to party politics.

They're pretty bad at analysis, and I don't look to them for new information (Unions hiring temps has been a story for at least a few years now), but they do the juxtaposition thing really well.

It's hard to argue that this is pro-union, however, as it absolutely devastates the idea that unions stand for 'the working man' or the 'fair wage'.

[Some dude]

Too easy

[Ellie]

Jon Stewart's not shaming this union behavior because it is hypocritical, but because it is insufficiently liberal.

True dat. Non-liberals (conservatives, libertarians, evangelicals, etc.) get mocked for existing. Liberals get mocked for being too conservative, ineffectual, or embarrassing their team.

[Apogee]

Don't be too sure.

The Alinsky rule of forcing your opponents to live by their own rules isn't a loving suggestion.

It's designed to destroy the opponent. Unions are clubs, just like country clubs, and all the rhetoric surrounding them is meant to distract from that fact.

Somebody needs to have wages proportionate to their skill level, or the system won't work - which is becoming catastrophically obvious with respect to, say, Public Sector Pensions.

If the union was forced to pay 23.75 per hour + benefits to everybody striking, then they couldn't afford to do it with any effectiveness.

[Astrid]

At least this isn't old news or anything.

But still, it's nice to see the unions called out for this sort of thing.

[J sub Spitzer]

Does anyone honestly think that the folks who do the landscaping at the union hall are unionized?

The roofers and plumbers probably are, I have serious doubts the janitor is.

[J sub D]

^Fucking joke handle.^

I always screw that up.

[R C Joke Handle]

Yeah, me too.

[Isaac Bartram]

Many years ago when I was working in construction I had a permit (not full membership or a "book") with the local Operating Engineers Union as a surveyor. When the Local was building their new office building they specified a non-union crew to layout their parking lot.

I was told to go do the job. It's kind of complicated, but when the boss told me I'd be getting my "non-union rate" I pretty much said "no fucking way". I bitched loudly enough that the Union relented.

Sometime later the carpenters local did the same thing with an addition to their office.

And the fuckers wondered why we told them to go fuck themselves when they told us to walk picket lines.

The funny thing was that the building trades unions pretty much busted up after a general contractor building a hotel on Disney property refused to honor Disney's umbrella union contract. I don't know what happened legally, but I take it there was nothing in the hotel company's agreement with Disney that said they had to.

After that everybody started and Disney made it so that more of the construction was being done on leases so now, pretty much only the parks themselves are covered by the union contract.

Today there is no advantage to belonging to the union. A journeyman worth his salt can command more than the union rate on just about any site around. or, at least, he could until the bubble burst.

[Socrates]

It really is. Union leaders' economic illiteracy is stunning, but that's obviously not what unions are about. They're about grasping for whatever can be had and then holding on to it for dear life.

[Pip]

Unions = Economic Vampires

[JW]

As a former UFCW member, I approve of this clip.

[Patrick]

wow a whole 3 seconds of the Comedy Central Logo. I'm impressed.

[joshua corning]

The Daily Show is a bunch of right wing tea bagging racists!!!

[Hobo Chang Ba]

Stewart's unquestionably on the Left, but skewering hypocrites enables him to maintain his self-righteousness and the respect of his fans, and reach out to even those of us who do not share his worldview.

[Naga Sadow]

Aasif delivered a brutal beatdown on that dude. Awesome.

[Naga Sadow]

Aasif delivered a brutal beatdown on that dude.

[Pham Nuwen]

Aasif delivered a brutal beatdown to that dude. It was epic.