Bill de Blasio Quotes
I've always had a very positive relationship with the municipal labor unions - a respectful relationship.
de Blasio, Bill. Interview. The Wall Street Journal, 2013.
With the large number of jobs that are going overseas, and the increasing productivity, the economics of the late 20th century and early 21st century made job security an anachronism. Therefore the unions were weakened.
Mencken had a genius for finding the weak and hypocritical aspects of all institutions and most people. As a result he is frequently quoted by one political side or another to attack something they want to diminish. His career is so prolific that it is usually easy to find something nasty he said about any group, idea or person. In this case, he also wrote scathingly against businessmen, corporations, capitalism and politicians favoring the wealthy.
This quotation was reprinted and widely distributed by the CIO in its 1936 organizing drive of the Ford Motor Company
Two years later he was assassinated.
At the time, the mine owners and operators claimed that they had NO obligations to their workers—not even to ensure a safe mine. There was no OSHA and workers died and were maimed on the job much more frequently than they do today. Many mine owners now accept that they have obligations to the workers, and the rest are required to have responsible and safe working conditions by law and OSHA regulations.
The practice worked fine in the Automobile industry, until there was intense competition from imported cars, and price increases were not easy to sustain and keep market share at the same time. When the automobile executives made some bad decisions, there was great conflict with the Unions who argued that it was the management that made the big mistakes and therefore the workers should not have to reduce their remuneration, and the automobile companies were caught in a death spiral where there costs were too high for the cars they made, the quality had slipped in an effort to save costs, and they did not make the smaller, low gas mileage cars that were in demand. The industry would have failed completely had it not been for the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations working together to bail out the American auto companies to the distress of many conservative ideologues in and out of Congress. See {637913} for a classic right wing ideological response to bailouts earlier.
Bill de Blasio is an American politician serving since 2014 as the 109th mayor of New York City. A member of the Democratic Party, he held the office of New York City Public Advocate from 2010 to 2013.
