Yes, America Still Needs Unions

[irishbobcat]

From Wisconsin earlier this week, it was written:

Unions are the primary counter to the power of wealth that can distort our elections. Through them, workers become a vital source of funds and volunteers for candidates who will support their interests. The Civil Rights Movement, among others, could not have triumphed without union support.

Strong unions are also central to a thriving economy. They help workers gain a fair share of the profits and productivity that they work to generate. Unions gave us the weekend, child labor laws, workplace safety protections They were central to building the broad middle class, which was the postwar triumph of American democracy.

It isn't surprising that, as unions have lost ground since 1980, inequality has grown to Gilded Age extremes. Nor that the advanced countries with stronger unions – like Germany and Sweden – have fared far better in sustaining widely shared prosperity while navigating the currents of globalization.

Wisconsin is the first fierce battle in what will be a brutal and extended struggle. Will America come out of the economic collapse with policies that revive a broad middle class and widely shared prosperity? Or will the power of wealth and Wall Street succeed in continuing the squeeze on working and middle class families?

Will unions, the critical counter to the power of wealth in the democracy, be crippled? Or will those who had the party be held accountable for the mess they left behind? Walker picked this fight. Now across the country, people will have to decide, in words of the old union song, "Which side are you on?"

[Dan Moadus]

People who oppose the efforts to diminish labor's power often resort to pure demagoguery, and this latest attempt "pasted" by Dennis is no different.  Statements like this: "
Behind the vague notion that unions are somehow obsolete is the suggestion that workers—and their families—are amply protected by the law's provisions prohibiting child labor and mandating minimum wages, safe working conditions, overtime pay and all the other standards that we now take for granted.
But if you listen carefully to "conservatives" of the ilk of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and billionaire financier David Koch, you'll learn that they want to do away with most if not all of those advances, hard won by the labor movement and its allies over the past century." attempt to use fear and emotionalism to sway public opinion. Though grossly distorting, they are effective because we know that people did work under poor conditions before the advent of unions. By inserting one provision favored by the "right", (wanting to do away with minimum hourly wages) into a list of other obnoxious things such as child labor and unsafe working conditions, they try to paint a picture of a bleak future for all workers if the "right" gets its way.

Though no one can say that this "future view" is not possible, it would require the help of the voters, and be very unlikely. The far greater threat, is that the unions prevail in this battle, as it would demonstrate that even in disastrous times the unions not only could exempt themselves from sacrificing, but keep making gains beyond the point of bankrupting our local and state governments.

There is a dangerous tipping point where a majority of people derive their income from the government, and gain the voting power to take from the rest of us, whatever and how much they like.  Because the unions have demonstrated an unwillingness moderate their demands, reaching this tipping point could spell the end of Democracy as we have known it.

That's why this battle is so important to both side. It will indicate on which side of that tipping point we are.

[irishbobcat]

Yes, America Still Needs Unions
Posted on Feb 23, 2011
By Joe Conason

"There was once a need for unions, but they've outlived their purpose," said a nice lady interviewed on the radio in Tennessee just the other day. Annoyed by the spectacle of tens of thousands of teachers, firefighters, cops and other public employees rallying to protect their rights in Wisconsin, she was saying what more than a few Americans think about the labor movement.

They ought to think again—unless they want their children and grandchildren to become the peons of a corporate oligarchy.

Behind the vague notion that unions are somehow obsolete is the suggestion that workers—and their families—are amply protected by the law's provisions prohibiting child labor and mandating minimum wages, safe working conditions, overtime pay and all the other standards that we now take for granted.

But if you listen carefully to "conservatives" of the ilk of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and billionaire financier David Koch, you'll learn that they want to do away with most if not all of those advances, hard won by the labor movement and its allies over the past century. Their core belief is that the state should never interfere with capital—and therefore every law defending workers or consumers is a constitutional abomination. Their ultimate project is to return this country to the absolute dominion of the wealthy that existed before the rise of the Progressive Movement and the New Deal.

Politicians like Walker know better than to articulate their goals so unappealingly. Invariably, they prefer to talk about fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets, hoping that nobody will notice (in Wisconsin or Washington) how they squander vast sums on tax breaks for the wealthy while demanding "sacrifice" from the middle class and the poor. Breaking unions is the only way, they tell us, to restore jobs and ensure prosperity.


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But if you thumb back through the pages of our economic history over the past hundred years or so, a number of obvious facts stand out. First, the United States enjoyed a far better distribution of income and a steady improvement of our productivity and power when the labor movement was strong. Second, labor always struggled to expand human and civil rights for everyone, whether or not they happened to belong to unions. And third, the success of labor's effort toward a more equitable society ensured broad prosperity for decades. As labor's power diminished, income and wealth skewed upward—and helped drive the economy into stagnation and recession.

So Americans not only display ingratitude when they denigrate unions, which have done so much to improve the lives of ordinary people, but ignorance as well. Even in its terribly weakened condition, the labor movement remains a bulwark against the kind of corporate tyranny that would swiftly make serfs of the rest of us.

This week, a prankster pretending to be David Koch phoned Gov. Walker and recorded their chummy, obnoxious, highly revealing conversation. Hearing the governor eagerly agree as his top contributor rambled on about union "bastards" was like listening to a conversation between a robber baron and a servile politician of the Gilded Age. Here was the new version of the unvarnished "conservatism" that ruled us before our forebears learned to stand upright, join together and fight for democracy.

It is more than a funny coincidence that the Wisconsin uprising echoes the revolutionary democratic fervor currently sweeping across North Africa and the Mideast.

Common to every dictatorship, from the fascist and communist despots of the 20th century to their counterparts in today's authoritarian societies, is the impulse to forbid workers from organizing. The legacy of those who established those rights with their blood and toil, both here and abroad, is not ours to surrender to bullies such as Walker and Koch. Like all of our liberties, it is a trust to be guarded—by every means available