some of the very best campaign support for Democratic candidates comes from the unions ... not only do unions provide financial support to the Democratic Party but they also provide tons of people to lick envelopes, make phone calls and help get out the vote on election day ... unions have been good and loyal friends to the Democratic Party ... but now, all that may be at risk ...
no, union workers are not going to abandon the party and start voting for republicans ... that's not the problem ... the problem is that a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) could put an end to unions altogether ... you probably have NOT heard the Democratic Party raising this issue and making "the deciders" understand that the American people are watching them ... political pressure, especially during an election year, might have altered the final decision ... instead, the Dems were silent and the recent NLRB decision could be the final nail in the coffin for unions in the US ...
the battle has always been about class warfare ... Democrats only seem willing to fight the little battles but never seem willing to frame the larger issue ... Dems fight for lots of pro-worker issues like minimum wage or Family Leave Act or worker safety but they never seem willing to put these laundry list items in context ... THE ISSUE is class warfare ... the battle is between the wealthiest shareholders and the workers ... we've seen the death of manufacturing in the US ... we've seen whole towns disappear as their one manufacturing plant moved out of the country in pursuit of cheaper labor ... we've seen communities destroyed and families forced out of their homes because they could not pay the mortgage ... we've seen globalization and NAFTA and the WTO and CAFTA ... Democrats have NOT been a friend to big labor or to small labor either ... many so called white collar professionals thought they were immune to the suffering of their blue collar co-workers ... they didn't believe they needed to unionize ... they were free agents ... they were their own men raking in the bucks ... fools!! ... to quote John Lennon: "you're all f*king peasants as far as i can see" ... a working class hero is something to be ...
the Democratic Party proudly hails the accomplishments of its key fundraisers ... they point to the great inroads they're making raising corporate cash ... well, given the corrupt system where money buys power, that still may be necessary ... but that corporate cash translates directly to policy ... does anyone believe that corporate cash comes without strings attached??? quid pro quo ... a bargain with the devil ... and the devil wants nothing more than to see labor's power diminished ... the devil does not like environmental regulations ... the devil does not want restrictions on mergers and acquisitions ...
the Democratic Party needs to commit itself to labor, i.e. to all workers, on a scale much grander than just fighting for the minimum wage to be increased ... because failing to so is going to destroy an important constituency ... and it's going to destroy an important component of virtually every Democratic candidate's campaign ... labor has been a friend to Democrats; and we have failed them ...
here's an article on the NLRB ruling that could spell real trouble for the Democratic Party as early as 2008 and certainly beyond ... and still, the Party's voices are silent ...
source:
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21485Busting the Party
NLRB Kentucky River ruling could cripple Dems in 2008Lost amidst the wall-to-wall coverage of Predatorgate last week, yet another bunch of political appointees from the Bush administration quietly destroyed a hard-won right for millions of Americans: the right to unionize. The political implications are greater still. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling should have been front-page news for days; it wasn't. Organized labor in the U.S. has become so marginalized, and mainstream media so routinely ignores labor issues, that practically nobody noticed.
The NLRB ruling came as a long-awaited response to a series of cases, which I wrote about in July, collectively known as Kentucky River. In the cases,
employers were bidding to break nursing unions by having the nurses reclassified as supervisors, which, under the notoriously anti-union 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, are legally prohibited from unionizing. The attempt came despite the fact that the nurses in question didn't hire, fire, set policy, mete out discipline, or set schedules. The logic was that more senior workers "oversaw" the work of less senior ones and employees with less training, such as nurses' aides.Such a ruling, it was feared at the time, could be applied widely as precedent to almost any employee who worked with apprentices (i.e., most of the trade unions), less experienced workers, or colleagues with less training in a particular skill. AFL-CIO organizing director Stewart Acuff estimated in July that the worst possible scenario, in which the NLRB would issue the broadest possible ruling, could disenfranchise eight million American workers from the ability to organize. Organized labor in the U.S., decimated by free trade, loss of manufacturing jobs, and decades of membership erosion, these days only has 12 million members. So how did the ruling turn out? "It's the worst decision they could have made," Acuff says now. "It's the worst single labor board decision since there's been a labor board, the single worst union decision since the Taft-Hartley Act. It confirmed all of our fears. It took eight million people who could form a union out from any possibility of forming a union." <skip>
Ah, yes. Labor, elections, and the Democrats. For decades, organized labor in the U.S. has relied on the Democratic Party to do its legislative bidding, and the results (as with, say, free trade) have been mixed at best. Amazingly, however, Democrats on Capitol Hill were almost completely MIA in either publicizing the pending ruling, pressuring the NLRB, or reacting last week to the ruling itself. Why is it amazing? Not because Democrats are stiff-arming organized labor; that's old news. But this ruling both affects and is aimed at not just unions, but the Democrats themselves. "There's no justification for this decision; it's just a way to weaken the labor movement," says Acuff. "These guys (the politically appointed NLRB) are actively trying to weaken worker power and worker strength and lower the standard of living for workers." <skip>
Let's hope the Democrats can take advantage of it this year, and then have the cajones to dare George Bush to veto a bill overriding the Kentucky River ruling. Because if they don't, at least one or another dim bulb in the Democratic leadership must realize, Democrats will soon either have to completely reinvent themselves structurally -– something the activist base very much wants anyway –- or face such a structural and financial disadvantage that they won't be very competitive in 2008.