Although labor unions go against every single employer-employee relation example in the Bible, it never ceases to amaze me how Christians still try to justify their membership and support.
One lady I work with asked me why I'm opposed to them, and I told her the economic reasons (they devastate an economy and provide the opposite results for their members than they claim), but I laid out for her page after page of Scripture showing why they are wrong.
Her reply was, "I'll have to ask my priest about that".
She returned a couple of days later and her response was, "My priest says the same thing you do. But, that just can't be right!" (Her economics major son also says the same thing, but she rejects that as well.)
The Bible calls willful sin "lawlessness" and there is a higher level of accountability for this. A faithful Christian simply cannot join or support a labor union in any way.
You're known by the company you keep, and they are extortionists.
71 comments
" asked me why I'm opposed to them, and I told her the economic reasons (they devastate an economy and provide the opposite results for their members than they claim"
Then can I assume you are not a conservative?
"My priest says the same thing you do. But, that just can't be right!"
What did you expect from a priest?
"You're known by the company you keep, and they are extortionists."
It's not nice to talk about the Federal Reserve that way. They put the word GOD on our currency.
If I need the services of an electrician, I make sure he or she is a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).
These people undergo 3, 4, or 5 years of in-depth training (respectively for network technicians, electricians, or linemen who work for electric utilities), unlike some non-union electricians who may have had 6 months of once-per-week classes at best.
If I have work done that could kill me if it is not done right, I want to make sure the person who does it knows what she or he is doing. That's why I always look for the union label.
"My priest says the same thing you do. But, that just can't be right!"
Please please, I hope she loses religion over this.
This is amusing
http://www.truechristianity.com/christian/unions.htm
One example of mixing Christianity and the world is when many people who call themselves Christians are members of Trade Unions. Trade Unions cater for the minority of semi wealthy or wealthy people in the world. However, some Trade Union members in poor countries would be considered poor, based on certain standards, but they would still be rich compared to the poor people in their country that the Trade Unions are destroying.
Union members are extortionists, but employers exploiting their workforce, paying the lowest wages for the longest possible hours and the shoddiest working conditions they can possibly get away with, are good Christian capitalists, right?
Sometimes union leaders can go too far and demand too much, with detrimental effects on their own industry. The British car industry in the 70s was a good example of that. But over the last 200 years, unions have done a lot more good than harm in this country. Why shouldn't workers organise to fight for a bigger slice of the pie? Your version of 'economic success' seems to involve a few people making a lot of money and the rest of the population working for peanuts.
I never cease to wonder at the level if idiocy that seems to abound.
Without unions we would be working 14 hour days in sweatshops - inbcluding children, have no holidays, no sick benefit, no health and safety at work legislation, no maternal/paternal leave, no tea/coffee breaks, a pittance for a wage and be sacked/fired at the whim of a capitalist employer who wouldn't bat an eyelid to see your family starve.
Hope of Glory, you woulnn't be able to affored your computer without the protection of unions. Get real, you gobshite! Read about the Labour movement and what conditions were like before unions came along.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!
Although labor unions go against every single employer-employee relation example in the Bible
Yeah, it's too bad we can't still own slaves like the Bible tells us we can, isn't it?
One lady I work with asked me why I'm opposed to them, and I told her the economic reasons (they devastate an economy and provide the opposite results for their members than they claim), but I laid out for her page after page of Scripture showing why they are wrong.
Her reply was, "I'll have to ask my priest about that".
You were lucky. If a non-indoctrinated person was in that situation s/he'd tell you to cram that scripture up your ass and give REAL evidence for your claim.
It's pretty amazing how much these fuckheads have internalized their right-wing conservativism with their religion.
Of course Jesus was against unionized labor, and he was for giving huge tax cuts to multinational corporations who only give jobs to Indians who don't know that making $2.50 a day is essentially slave labor.
Because things were just peachy back in the 19th century. You remember our good buddy Marx? Guess what? He didn't make that stuff up.
Her son's economic major? Either the education he's receiving is worthless or he's doing it wrong.
Oh and one more thing: check out Rerum Novarum. I know Catholics aren't "True Christians", but it's still kind of funny to think about it.
"Although labor unions go against every single employer-employee relation example in the Bible.."
Wait, let me stop you right there. The Bible does not have any authority over anything in what we like to call "the real world".
Think about that for a second. It'll all start to make sense soon enough.
What would Jesus do? Exploit the workers, obviously.
> You're known by the company you keep, and they are extortionists.
That goes for your church as well.
Good little brainwashed drone, here's a drone snack, there you go, now go along, your five minute break is over and you can't use the bathroom until your next five minute break in 8 hours.
No, you may not eat, you should've used your five minute break for that, now, keep up that menial labor, I need to sell this stuff so I can buy my daughter a new beamer, since she crashed her last one, but it's okay: rich people are better, so it's okay for you to slave so my daughter can crash expensive cars.
Rich people: because WE DESERVE it.
This guy is an asshole.
Why don't you try reading and look up Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People of London, Rowntree's study of York, and Friedrich Engels' Condition of the Working Class in England?
"You're known by the company you keep, and they are extortionists."
http://www.workingpeoplesvoice.org/wpvv2n1/torture.htm
extortion
c.1300, from L. extorquere "wrench out, wrest away," from ex- "out" + torquere "to twist" (see thwart).
torture
c.1495 (implied in torturous ), from M.Fr. torture "infliction of great pain, great pain, agony," from L.L. torture "a twisting, writhing, torture, torment," from stem of L. torquere "to twist, turn, wind, wring, distort" (see thwart). The verb is 1588, from the noun. Tortuous "full of twists" is recorded from 1426.
There are employer-employee relation examples in the Bible? I didn't know that.* Also, I'm not surprised that the woman ignored her economics major sun, considering that fundies tend to think that the policies of Adam Smith (who lived several centuries ago and, despite being one of the founders of economics, knew nothing of all the advances made in the field since then) and Reagan are Gospel truth (pun intended). To this day I don't understand why economics is the only field of science in which one can get away with having a religious outlook (see capitalism, libertarianism, supply-side economics AND Marxism, and its derivatives)
* To all you snarkers out there who will point out that the Bible condones slavery and all, technically, since the slave is not paid, this is not "employment". In fact, this is a major reason why slavery is wrong, that and the fact that a slaveowner can do anything he wants to a slave, including murder, and get no repercussions. As for paid workers, I don't think the Bible mentions them at all. Hope_of_Glory is pulling things out of his ass.
Are there any employer-employee relation example in the Bible? I only remember enslavement, and how to treat your slaves.
If that's what you think is a employer-employee relation, then I understand why you don't like unions.
Unions work to make the positions of employer-employee more equal. Together, we employees are stronger and can push companies into creating a healthy working environments, and give us fair pay for our work. In return, we will do our very best at work, and promise to not go on wild strikes.
@ Jewsus --
Her son's economic major? Either the education he's receiving is worthless or he's doing it wrong.
There are still economics departments -- well-respected ones! -- that insist on reaching their conclusions only via hardline-capitalist-style a priori reasoning. For most of the field, basing theories on evidence is heresy; the real answers can only be arrived while talking about idealized situations, after which the messy and imperfect real world can be brought into line by the perfect light of capitalist Truth.
@farpadokly
Oh, silly, surely you jest. Hope_of_Glory will pitch a fit if she doesn't get her cost of living raise and then some, fought for by the evil unions of past. It's the rest of us lowly maggots that should bend over and lube up for the Godly corporations to rape and pillage at will.
The same Scripture that condones slavery, rape, incest, and the subjugation of women?
Yeah, not an authority I recognize.
(Edited for spelling)
What bible have you been reading? A ture Christian IS A LABOR man, a UNION man. Apparently this moron only listens to the BULL CRAP prosperity gospel. Capitalist pig. Jesus was clearly a Socialist and any christian not a moron (aka not a Protestant idiot)who takes the bible 100 percent literal would know this. i may be a socially conservative fudie, but i hate nothing more than an anti-union pro big business capitalist pig. I hate these people more than Atheists.Have fun when the Socialist revolution occurs and drag you out in the street and shot you for being an evil, unethical, immoral greedy, heartles hypocritcal pig.
Right, this guy believes in the same Jesus who said "that which you do unto the least of my brethren, that you do unto me."
If this isn't proof that the wealthy are now using religion to further their policy goals, nothing is.
Although labor unions go against every single employer-employee relation example in the Bible
That would be because prior to labor unions, employers went against your Bible as well. Employees were treated like chattel, forced into inhumane conditions, and given barely enough money to live off of. If any attempted to find a different job, they were blacklisted among the community.
At least I hope that was the case. If the good Christian men who ran capitalism in the 19th century were actually following the Bible, it's yet another example of how modern civilization is more just and compassionate than your god.
@Swede
Are there any employer-employee relation example in the Bible?
Quick bible gateway search:
Leviticus 25:53
Dueteronomy 24:14
Isaiah 58:2-4
Interestingly enough, the Bible seems to imply that mistreating one's workers a la the 19th Century captains of industry is actually a bad thing...
Another case of fundies not reading their Bibles.
Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.
-- Isaiah 10:1-2
"Her economics major son also says the same thing, but she rejects that as well"
She would be well to do so. Too many economics departments still focus only on abstract theory and mathematical models, even worse some only look at a very narrow area of theory such as monetarism or neoliberalism.
Too few economics departments teach economics as a social science, as political economy (what the profession was originally termed).
I would like this guy to read "rerum novarum", you know, in the XIX century, or better, to work in the same conditions as they did at the time and they don't now thanks to unions and see if the Bible has an "answer" to that.
Yes, sometimes unions get out of hand, but if not for them we wouldn't have a 40-hour work week making a living wage with paid vacation & holidays with retirement plans. I suppose conservatives think that business owners just give their employees these benefits out of the goodness of their hearts?
And I would trust very few things a priest says. Why would a priest be an expert in anything but Catholic doctrine? Asking him about unions is like asking a stock clerk in your local grocery store about nuclear physics.
I don't think he understands that pretty much all of the employer-employee relationship used in the Bible are master and slave relationships. Of course if you remove the influence of Unions that is exactly what you would have in this country, indentured slavery.
It's funny to see the Right wing using the fundie hand so often.
You are the kind of person your corporate masters love the most. They can use and abuse you any way that they deem fit, and you'll take it without complaint because you think that's what God wants--a placid and pliable slave. Even better, you'll scold your co-workers and rat them out to management to curry favor with your boss.
You're the perfect toady.
LAchlan wrote:
Well considering that Christianity was invented to screw the poor over in favour of the rich...
Catholicism was invented to screw the poor, granted, but in the first century Christianity was basically a religion for slaves too. Put up with your lot in this life and you'll get a reward in the hereafter was the message. Jesus himself didn't see fit to condemn slavery, instead he told slaves to obey their masters, even the brutal ones.
And as for Paul...sheesh, I won't even mention the Epistles...
I love how there's no hate of large company lobbying or hell, large companies and all the evils of money and shit.
Oh, you fundies.
Also, this whole anecdote is dubious. Neither endorsement, or explaining it with the Bible do shit to really explain why unions are "wrong." To suggest so is to insult the intelligence of this coworker.
@ Orion
The Personal Finance class I'm taking at my community college actually fall under the Social Science requirement for a degree. :D
Hooray for Social Science and English classes (and, for college, Speech). They are the great classes because they promote critical thinking. :3
Confused?
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