Guest post: At a visceral level
Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Seven lousy days.
My dad thought unions were just greedy arms of the mobs until he watched Reagan fire and basically destroy Patelco, the air traffic controllers union. Dad was a Republican government employee of the Customs and all of a sudden he understood at a visceral level what it means to not have the ability to use a strike as bargaining power. It’s amazing that this was all it took to turn a Republican into a Democrat who in his later years took any opportunity he could to lampoon whichever Bush happened to be in the White House.
But, the problem is that there were not enough union members who saw this, and instead were happy to buy into Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” narrative, and the Republicans were able to make inroads into a traditional Democratic base, as the unions were weakened by Reagan’s labor policies.
Me? I think that Congress and the President should have played this a bit differently to force some brinkmanship with the railroads and see if they were willing to blink closer to the Dec 9th deadline. The fear of the strike has been taken away from the rail unions.
I’ve got a combination of paid time off and sick days up to 36 days per year to allocate as I need to. I don’t have as physically demanding a job as railroad workers do.
7 lousy days.
And that’s why the non-Dulles airport in DC is called NATIONAL, no matter what it says on the signs.
When I flew in there I couldn’t bring myself to call it anything else.
The destruction of PATCO looms large in the list of horrible things Reagan did. I had a conservative co-worker who was angry at his mother for having voted for Carter against Reagan; he was a bit taken aback when I said I did, too, and that Carter was a far better president than Reagan.
I have been to DC a good few times for both business and pleasure, before and after the name change, and I will always refer to that airport as National or DC National.
Mike, I’ve been following your new blog on Substack, and enjoying it very much.
Same. I just read On the accusations of hate & recommend everyone else do likewise.
Already have – subscribed the other day :-). Mike, you’re setting a high bar for yourself – no pressure.
@4 agree, I appreciate both the stories and the clear explanations, have subscribed.
Subscribed last night.
Thank you, all.
And Sackbut, I just now realized I had incorrectly identified the union. Patelco was Pacific Telephone.
I need an editor.
I guess I may as well take this opportunity to let you know of the podcast I co-host with Greg Laden, and this is an episode with our guest Laurent Penet, who sometimes comments here on B&W:
Episode 29 Agro Ecology and Smart Farmers, With Laurent Penet
Laurent has agreed to another episode, which we’ll record in January.