Breaking the breakers...

I am not an expert on unions. I have been a member in a few though. I was in the Ontario Labourers Union branch 183 where I trained and worked in watermain and sewer. I was a teacher in BC and was a member of the BCTF. I am sure in some office jobs that I had I was with CUPE too. Add to that a couple of grad school courses in industrial/organizational psychology and that's it. It's really not a lot but it helps me when I am forming opinions on what's going on in the producers versus workers war that is constantly waging. But if you read on today know that I am not an expert and am only really and armchair quarterback about these things. After writing yesterday's blog I spent a lot of time thinking about the labour situation and trying to get a mental grip on it. The 'battle' over dollars produced has been going on since medieval times. In those days the 'Lords' were granted a large piece of land to manage in exchange for giving their support to the King of the day. The Lord had beneath him the soil and the soil produced the products which were exchanged for money or 'capital'. Obviously the Lord wasn't terribly keen to work the soil himself and so he had peasants working for him (2 classes being surfs and free men). The surfs worked in hopes of winning their freedom and the freemen worked in hopes of improving their lives and having a little more food. But the Lords tended to be very rich and the peasants tended to be very poor. The very thing that tied them together was the self same capital that held them apart. To move forward very quickly through time the Crusades happened and that triggered the start of the Renaissance which is when 'guilds' or 'unions' gained power. You see during the medieval period (the dark ages) nobody left their little plot of land and so science and Economics and everything that moves an economies and countries forward were at a standstill. The Crusades were religious wars with the Muslim people over control of Jerusalem and because the war was declared by the King (Richard the Lion Heart I believe) the Lords had to follow or lose their lands. The Lords brought their peasant 'army' and the whole lot of them trooped off to Jerusalem for their little pissing contest. All good so far, right? Forget that was for a minute and focus on what else happened as a result of this little trek across Europe. All of a sudden the Europeans and in particular the English became exposed to new goods and thinking. They tasted thing like pepper for the first time. They wore silk clothing for the first time. And more importantly they were exposed to new and progressive forms of science. You see the Muslims and other peoples of the world hadn't been sitting around in isolated feifdoms but rather had been advancing things like medicine, astronomy, cartography (mapping) and many other things where their northern enemies hadn't. I can imagine that an awful lot of the English from the Lords on down had themselves a bunch of 'Holy shit!' moments. Fast forward to the end of this war and everybody is heading back to their homes in England and Europe. And everything is the same. Except that now everything is different. Having tasted the fruit of knowledge the working class wanted no part of the way things had been before (woman's lib came as a result of the same experience that occurred when woman took over from men in the factories and workplaces during WW2 and were the expected to go back into their kitchens after the men returned). The peasants now had knowledge of how much better things could be. They had both everything to gain and everything to lose. The perfect recipe for a revolution! The revolution that occurred was a cultural revolution. Merchants started traveling abroad to bring back the highly sought after spices and silks. With them they picked up artisans to craft the raw goods into finished goods and an artisan class began to grow. The artisans formed 'guilds' to protect the craft skills which were developing. A middle class began to form where there had been none and it was peopled with merchants and tradespeople who could operate independently of the Lords and the Monarchy. Things were a'changin! I am going to stop for now. But tomorrow I want to fast forward us to more modern times. We'll see where we go from there. Have a good day! :)