New Hampshire GOP Legislators Try to Ban Collective Bargaining

But let’s face it — there’s a significant group of people for whom such an “equilibrium” will not be possible. For example, when the Democrats decided to take the side of civil rights for African-Americans (surely a correct decision), it was inevitable that we would lose some of the working-class white vote.

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p>I don’t disagree with your point about selling the party as the party of the voiceless in a better way, but there are limits to this approach. There are plenty of members of “disadvantaged groups” who will not transfer their sympathies to members of other disadvantaged groups, no matter how much a political party may try.

It floors me that in the 21st century white working-class still shows reluctance to embrace other races.  Specific policies like affirmative action are debatable.  Truth is I’m not the biggest fan of that myself.  We just need to better tailor our messages to our audiences.  I’m not suggesting pandering and I know that in the age of mass media everyone hears everything eventually.  I just think we can talk about civil rights to the NAACP one day and labor rights to the AFL-CIO the next without contradicting ourselves.

Here’s Richard Trumka talking to the Steelworkers Convention before the last election,

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You see brothers and sisters, there’s not a single good reason for any worker – especially any union member – to vote against Barack Obama.
There’s only one really bad reason to vote against him: because he’s not white. And I want to talk about that because I saw that for myself during the Pennsylvania primary. I went back home to vote in Nemacolin and I ran into a woman I’d known for years. She was active in Democratic politics when I was still in grade school. We got to talking and I asked if she’d made up her mind who she was supporting and she said: “Oh absolutely, I’m voting for Hillary, there’s no way I’d ever vote for Obama.”

Well, why’s that?

“Because he’s a Muslim.”
I told her, “That’s not true – he’s as much a Christian as you and me, and so what if he was a Muslim.”

Then she shook her head and said, “He won’t wear an American flag pin.”
“I don’t have one on and neither do you. C’mon, he wears one plenty of times. He just says it takes more than wearing a flag pin to be patriotic.”

“Well, I just don’t trust him.”

Why is that?

Her voice dropped just a bit: “Because he’s black.”
I said, “Look around. Nemacolin’s a dying town. There’re no jobs here. Kids are moving away because there’s no future here. And here’s a man, Barack Obama, who’s going to fight for people like us and you won’t vote for him because of the color of his skin.”
Brothers and sisters, we can’t tap dance around the fact that there are a lot of folks out there just like that woman. A lot of them are good union people; they just can’t get past this idea that there’s something wrong with voting for a black man. Well, those of us who know better can’t afford to look the other way.

I’m not one for quoting dead philosophers, but back in the 1700s, Edmund Burke said: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Well, there’s no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism – and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge.

It’s our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people. We’ve seen how companies set worker against worker – how they throw whites a few extra crumbs off the table – and how we all end up losing. But we’ve seen something else, too. We’ve seen that when we cross that color line and stand together no one can keep us down. That’s why the CIO was created. That’s why industrial unions were the first to stand up against lynching and segregation. People need to know that it was the Steel Workers Organizing Committee – this union – that was founded on the principal of organizing all workers without regard to race.

That’s why the labor movement – imperfect as we are – is the most integrated institution in American life. I don’t think we should be out there pointing fingers in peoples’ faces and calling them racist; instead we need to educate them that if they care about holding on to their jobs, their health care, their pensions, and their homes – if they care about creating good jobs with clean energy, child care, pay equity for women workers – there’s only going to be one candidate on the ballot this fall who’s on their side…
only one candidate who’s going to stand up for their families… only one candidate who’s earned their votes…
and his name is Barack Obama!

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p>The reality is the corporate masters of the Democratic Party, those that have been fighting for control since the loss of McGovern, benefit from the racial divisions in this country.  The presumption that the Democratic Party leads on these issues is preposterous – the national party is FAR to the right of all but a few labor unions on economic and social issues.  

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I think by the 80s, people had long since realized that Wagner Act trade unionism was no longer working.  Too many people either had direct experience with “work rules” or bought a 1970s gas guzzling clunker of an American car, or followed the news about the Teamsters.

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p>At the same time, I think that Democrats realized that admitting that the Wagner Act model was broken and needed reform risked (i) offending what was then still a major constituency; and (ii) opening the door to unwanted “reforms” from the right.  So, they did nothing at all, and as unions steadily dwindled, they looked elsewhere for support.

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p>But it seems to me that the decision to avoid fixing problems, because of the fear of GOP input into the reform process, was an unmitigated disaster.  Because the public perception of the programs had turned so sour, Democrats weren’t perceived as “defending” important thinks, so much as they were perceived as captives of special interests.  Democratic “special interests” were an albatross around the neck of Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis in their campaigns, much to the glee of the GOP during that time.  That was why Candidate Clinton HAD to go find Democratic “special interests” in order to kick them in the shins during his campaign.

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p>Ultimately, I think that the stalwart defense of these programs has been a policy failure as well as a political failure, because, when the reform comes it is more radical than should have been necessary.  This is what I think happened to AFDC, for example.

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p>The Democrats hope is now that the radical reform over-reaches, and the backlash gives Democrats another shot.  But if they use that shot to defend, reinstate, or reinforce the old Wagner Act model, I think this shot will, once again, be squandered.

Folks in the labor movement have been itching for reform of the Wagner Act since it was gutted in 1947, although I don’t think you have the same goals they did.  So I’m curious what you think would be a reasonable reform – although I’d insist that it actually raise the power of the working class, and not just the paycheck – health and safety and paid time off, otherwise, your reform is what I’d call gutting…

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p>As to your presumption that by the 80’s people had realized it “was no longer working” I’m curious how you reconcile that with the essentially constant support for unions among a majority of Americans throughout the 1980’s.

is where my thinking comes from. He writes:

New rules put in place in 1968 led by almost geometric progression to the nomination of George McGovern in 1972, and despite McGovern’s sterling pro-labor credentials, the AFL-CIO refused to endorse him. Not only were labor bosses enraged that the hippies had thwarted the nomination of labor favorite Hubert Humphrey, but amnesty, acid, and abortion were simply too much for them. Besides, Richard Nixon had been sweet-talking them for four years, and though relations had recently become strained, he seemed not entirely unsympathetic to the labor cause. How bad could it be if he won reelection?

Plenty bad, it turned out-though not because of anything Nixon himself did. The real harm was the eventual disaffection of the Democratic Party from the labor cause. Two years after the debacle in Miami, Nixon was gone and Democrats won a landslide victory in the 1974 midterm election. But the newly minted members of Congress, among them former McGovern campaign manager Gary Hart, weren’t especially loyal to big labor. They’d seen how labor had treated McGovern, despite his lifetime of support for their issues.

I recommend the article. I was too small in 1972 to be able to follow politics that closely. I suspect you weren’t even born. These events seem to have been the chicken, that produced the egg you mention.