Freedom is never given anyone – it is always won. Union strength was behind FDR – he could never have accomplished the things he did without movement politics. Unions constitute one of the most powerful grassroots organization forces in our history. Union organizing is a basic human right – even the Catholic Church, itself a top-down hierarchy, supports the right of humans to form labor unions. Unions are strong all over the democratic world, and with them goes a strong middle class, relative equality of income, basic human dignity, and education.
Pundits all over our talking screens who say they love our freedom so much that they hate unions are quick to point out that unions dues are mandatory, and are used to finance political activity.
This is true, to a minor degree. First, unions are not hierarchies, but rather democratic organizations. I don’t mean “democratic” in the cosmetic sense that the members are occasionally allowed to choose between two preselected candidates for high office. Union leaders come from the membership. So there is some sense of fulfillment of common purpose when a union engages in political activity.
Unions usually support Democrats. We only have two choices, and Democrats are slightly less repugnant, so that makes some sense.
Unions engage in issue-oriented activities. This is the type of activity permitted all tax-exempt organizations, including churches, charities, and fraternal organizations. Planned Parenthood engages in education activities regarding birth control, and Focus on the Family supports anti-abortion/birth control campaigns. Unions advocate workplace freedoms, worker benefits, and organizational activities. They support specific legislation, like the Employee Free Choice Act, which was dead-on-arrival in Washington in January of 2009. So much for supporting Democrats.
All of this is legal and healthy activity, part of our civil discourse.
No doubt there is pressure among union member’s to behave in proscribed manners, including PAC contributions. That goes with the territory, just as a corporate executive cannot expect to advance far unless he engages in bundling with others for the right candidate. And crowd behavior is hard to manage, so that there is often violence during strikes, especially when scabs cross the picket line. And, of course, as Governor Walker talked about doing, there is the agent provocateur, an activity so common that it even has a name. This is the enemy-in-our-camp, the guy planted in a crowd to foment violence. I don’t wish to paint too-rosy a picture here. People are as people do, and unions use coercion in many forms to keep their members in line. I am not a Pollyanna.
The United States lags far behind other industrial democracies in many ways, with our oligarchy pulling virtually all the strings, hidden in plain sight. Anti-union indoctrination has been standard fare since the 1930’s. It should come as no surprise in the 21st century that unions are still scorned, and that the most basic of facts about unions are hard to find among the obfuscatory clutter that we call news, or in our Texas-spawned history textbooks.
Piece of Mindful 
When unions refuse to participate in Democratic Party actions when those actions run against labor’s interest, both will be better positioned to take on the oligarchs. Unions must decide, and force Democrats to decide, which team they’re on. Since NAFTA, workers have needed either a labor party, or a labor movement, willing to fight for more than health and retirement benefits in lieu of wage increases that at least keep pace with inflation. It’s been all defense in a protracted game of minimizing losses.
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Unions are strong all over the democratic world, and with them goes a strong middle class, relative equality of income, basic human dignity, and education.
Correlation does not imply causation. The democratic world you point to also had a largely homogeneous, high achieving population that made such results easier with or without unions.
Unions are a proxy for the historic clan or tribe organized along ethnic lines. One way to weaken unions is to import a new people of different cultural and ethnic background. The whammy here is that the elite American Left was more anxious to wage in-group warfare than to help unions via more cultural solidarity, so they spooled up the anti-Whitey Man rhetoric and enlisted women and people of color in their quest to smash lower class and lower middle class whites.
“The Solution
Bertolt Brecht
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?”
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Hard to follow some of your theory r-s-f, but if I understand you correctly the “elite American Left” diluted the unions with women and ethnic non-whites, causing an internal class struggle, and loss of effectiveness and power. Yea? Non?
Were these saboteurs an external force of leftist capitalists, or upwardly mobile, former laborers? Or something else?
Unions also merged, formed a centralized hierarchy, merged some more, creating their own internal economic and social strata that ultimately resembled the structure of companies that prevented workers from getting a decent wage and working conditions. With centralized power comes corruption and internal rot.
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The elites are indifferent to unions. Think general disdain for the lower classes and you’ve got it.
Think Robert Reich saying the stimulus money was not for “White male construction workers”. Think Section 8 housing vouchers that import crime and school deterioration into lower class White neighborhoods. Think of Blue state elites sneering at Red staters “clinging to their guns and religion”. Think of illegal immigration that decimates lower skilled wage rates. Think H1B1 visas that displace natives.
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Hey Mark, must of missed this one.
http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/premiere_plants.php
Run with it.
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