Everybody remembers the song, right? If you're anywhere near my vintage, you saw the commercials on television, maybe laughed at it and mocked it, but admit it. You hummed the tune, because it was catchy. I'll bet you that lot of conservatives over 45 or so can even recite the lyrics.
Look for the union label when you are buying that coat, dress or blouse.
Remember somewhere our union's sewing, our wages going to feed the kids, and run the house.
We work hard, but who's complaining? Thanks to the I.L.G. we're paying our way!
So always look for the union label, it says we're able to make it in the U.S.A.!
The ad was ubiquitous throughout the mid-70s and early 80s. Even Dr. Johnny Fever, Venus Flytrap, and Bailey Quarters spontaneously broke out into the chorus during an episode of WKRP In Cincinnati.
The lady seamstresses that are really no longer a thing here, and you certainly don't see or hear the ads on media anymore, because virtually every garment being worn in the country today is made in some country other than ours around the Pacific Rim.
The International Ladies Garment Workers Union was a powerhouse until outsourcing and cheap international labor hit them, causing them to have to merge with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in 1995. And that combined group had to further consolidate into the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union in 2004. The lady stitchers have been pushed to the back of the room within the union the same way Democrats are treating Latinos.
What? Too harsh, you say? Here's New York City Mayor Eric Adams two days ago at a press conference talking about what to do with the flood of illegal Latino migrants coming into Gotham from the Southern Border.
Yes, the herd was apparently culled by the Rio Grande. Those that were good swimmers made it here. Those that weren't, well, it sucks to be them, the Mayor intimates. Since the ones that made it across showed aquatic efficiency, might as well put them in a white T-shirt and red shorts, give them a whistle and a floatie, and stick them on a lifeguard stand. It's a win-win.
Another union that is a collection of strange bedfellows is the United Auto Workers. One branch of the UAW, 4811, represents 48,000 University of California graduate students and other pseudo-academic workers. In the last three days, a strike proposal was circulated amongst the membership, again, most of these members being students, and the vote was overwhelming.
The strike authorization vote, which passed with 79 percent support, comes two weeks after dozens of counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, for several hours without police intervention, and without arrests. Officers in riot gear tore down the encampment the next day and arrested more than 200 people.
The vote does not guarantee a strike but rather gives the executive board of the local union, which is part of the United Auto Workers, the ability to call a strike at any time. Eight of the 10 University of California campuses still have a month of instruction left before breaking for summer.
The reason for the possible strike? The University of California campuses are not sufficiently anti-Israel enough, and they're not caving to the demands of the antisemites taking up residence in the encampments rotting the landscape like some Bizarro World version of the California Mission system.
We saw a few weeks ago the pogrom that was taking place at the University of California, Los Angeles, as male Jewish students were literally hunted and chased down and detained on campus, and a female Jewish student who dared to hold up an Israeli flag was beaten unconscious.
Berkeley's antisemites have shown a level of harassment menacing enough that their Law School dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, a man of the hard left, has now rediscovered an appreciation for personal property rights after the mob came for him in his backyard, and has protested outside his home ever since.
University of California, Irvine got violent Tuesday as their low-key encampment got sparky and a dozen antisemites were arrested.
Our friend, David Strom, wrote on this site about a lovely mentor to today's youth at U.C. Davis, a paid professor, telling a student to put a gun in her mouth because she's Jewish and hasn't become enlightened enough to see that Jews are the cause for all the world's problems.
Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ offered a concession letter to the antisemites on her campus by saying she had no authority to divest and boycott the school from Israel directly, but indicated she was a kindred spirit to their antisemitic views, declaring her support for a permanent ceasefire and launching a diversity task force in order to look at the college's stock holdings for any potential Israel connections.
University of California, Riverside negotiated a settlement with their protesters a couple weeks ago, promising to shutter a business school global program in Israel, and normalizing the BDS language on campus, which is a strong signal to Jewish students that they're really not welcome there anymore.
So with all that happening up and down the Golden State's elite university system, the union representing many of these protesters have voted 79% to allow the union to call a strike on demand if the following demands are not met.
1) Amnesty for all academic employees, students, student groups, faculty, and staff who face disciplinary action or arrest due to protest.
2)Right to free speech and political expression on campus.
3) Divestment from UC’s known investments in weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and companies profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza.
4) Disclosure of all funding sources and investments, including contracts, grants, gifts, and investments, through a publicly available, publicly accessible, and up-to-date database.
5) Empower researchers to opt out from funding sources tied to the military or oppression of Palestinians. The UC must provide centralized transitional funding to workers whose funding is tied to the military or foundations that support Palestinian oppression.
If those demands are not met, then, checks notes, 48,000 antisemitic and/or terrorist-supporting PhD candidates, teaching assistants, and others university employees will...continue the protests in which they've already been engaging. This time, though, their placards will be more professionally mounted to a stick.
Even with the overwhelming call for a strike by UAW 4811, the larger body of the United Auto Workers are not going to walk off the assembly line, so your Ford five-door electric sedan grossly misnamed the Mustang Mach-E is safe to for you to continue to avoid buying...for now. But if this wing of the union does walk, and no one notices or cares, the rest of the union will have to get involved. Can you imagine selling that strike proposal out of solidarity to a line worker in Michigan or Ohio?
As for me, I hope they go on strike. I'm pro-union in this case. Walk out. Yeah, I said it. If there's anything this state needs less of, it is 48,000 pretend intellectuals either with phony degrees or working to obtain a phony degree. If the walkout doesn't cause administrators to change course and clean house out of self-preservation, at least it will hasten their collapse.
And if the larger U.A.W. has to get involved, I'm perfectly fine having the debate about unions now siding with the antisemites. If they do not get involved, and it becomes protracted for this one loony chapter, maybe that can bring about the demise of that particular union. I see nothing but upside to this happening.
In fact, call for the strike right before the DNC Convention in Chicago. If you're going to strike, you've got to time it so that it has the desired effect. Perhaps the convention center workers in the Windy City can join the strike out of solidarity, and drag the hotel and restaurant workers out on the picket lines with them.
August is going to be swell.
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