The Oscars and a Union of Elites

The Academy Awards, seen as a social test or study, can be fun.

First, the interface. Hathaway seemed to be a winning, energetic girl who tried valiantly to fill her job. Her efforts were all the more noble beside her partner, James Franco, who, despite apparently being a well regarded guy, seemed to have intimations of doom and emotionally withdrew.

The award recipients were not so interesting in themselves, although True Grit was a finely made film. The behavior of the recipients was interesting. It has become quite the fashion to thank one's family when an award is given. This has become as routine as thanking one's producer or director or agent. This concern flies in the face of the entertainment industry's reputation and one can only hope it is genuine.

The other preoccupation--that was not universal but certainly frequent and prominent--was the occasional interjection that certain workers on the movie sets were union workers. This pretense always received a positive response from the audience as the multimillionaires showed their solidarity with their only wealthy colleagues.

One must have a peculiar notion of unions and unionism to participate in such a thing. Unions emerged to create a labor monopoly to oppose the industrial capital monopoly. Their conflicts were life-and-death confrontations for both. Incomes were not the only thing at stake; health, working conditions and the very fabric of families were on the line for both sides of the argument. As time went by, the purpose of unionism changed. The government stepped in to monitor safety and working conditions, health programs evolved and became routine, the success of capitalism raised all the boats. Unions, in search for relevance, tried to make labor a participant in the capital side of industry without the risk. This required an amalgam with government to change commercial rules--the government would buy only from union companies, the government would underwrite companies whose labor contracts were inherently self-defeating--so that with globalization, the jobs began to seek cheaper labor elsewhere, first in more capital friendly states then in cheaper countries.

What is left now is two groups of unions. One is incestuously linked with the very people they negotiate with--public employee unions and unions working for government subsidized and declining industries. Their "confrontations" are closer to collusion. These unions like teachers or hospital workers, often target people who are particularly vulnerable and who cannot influence the outcome. Neither of these organizations will keep their impossible promises and will try to prolong their death throes by becoming ideological and adopting the eidos of old French Socialism. The other union group is a boutique group that follows traditional extortion techniques in their negotiations to take more money out of their industry, like the Hollywood industry and the sports industry.

Boutique unions? A-Rod and Angelina are union members; none of us could have a beer in any of their clubs. Samuel Gompers couldn't. Unionism has changed; it is no longer the organization of the common man than the American Bar Association is.

Or maybe the American common man has changed.