American Unions Bare Their Teeth Again

Ultra-right Republicans wanted to destroy the American labor union movement once and for all. Instead, they’ve contributed to its rebirth.

For decades, the American labor union movement has belonged to that exclusive club of things already long since considered dead and buried. And, like Ernest Hemingway and Mark Twain, it had to regularly announce that rumors of its demise were premature. But the labor union movement has not had to pull its denials out of the drawer recently. Both Wall Street and Main Street are talking about the stunning revival of labor unions.

The fact that a series of faux pas committed by conservative powers in U.S. business, politics and the media have aided in this revival must add to their grief.

This is because what they had planned was nothing less than the complete destruction of labor unions. The global economic and financial crises, nearly $5 trillion in national debt, near double-digit unemployment, as well as an underlying opposition to almost everything that looked remotely like collective representation of any kind, was supposed to settle the fate of labor unions forever.

Premature Partying

According to the script, Scott Walker, tea party lawyer and newly elected governor of Wisconsin, was supposed to open the fight with an anti-collective bargaining law to be followed up with a one-two punch delivered by his conservative legislature.

When Walker presented his legislation to the state Senate, it became apparent that he and his friends weren’t as interested in reducing government debt levels as they were in gutting the unions’ negotiating mandate. Thus, unions would henceforth only be permitted to negotiate their members’ wages; increases had to be commensurate with the inflation rate and raises decided by vote.

Last November’s acclaimed election winner thought he was already on the road to total victory. But the celebrations were premature. First, fourteen democratic senators blocked Walker’s plans by an “empty seat” policy, which they enacted by fleeing to neighboring Illinois and preventing a vote. Governor Walker and his Republican majority responded to that tactic with an equally dubious legislative trick.

In order to restore the Senate’s ability to legislate, the Republicans removed everything that was financial in nature from the bill and passed it with their majority. This made clear that destruction of the labor unions was apparently more important to them than an unassailable legal and political parliamentary procedure.

The courts will undoubtedly test the legality of the Republican maneuver, but the Republicans may find it tougher to deal with public reaction to their actions. A poll by CBS News and The New York Times revealed that 60 percent of respondents opposed scrapping the collective bargaining clause, with only 33 percent in favor of its removal. Another 57 percent opposed any attempt to balance the budget by cutting salaries or pension and health insurance benefits.

The survey also showed that in order to avoid pay cuts, a majority of respondents were also willing to accept higher taxes to help pay down the national debt; they saw it as a matter of fairness.

A Turnaround of Opinion

Pubic opinion in the United States has turned. While 60 percent of Americans during Ronald Reagan’s presidency felt that labor unions had become too powerful, that number has now fallen to only 37 percent. The fact that only 10 percent of all workers today are unionized (compared to 30 percent in the 1950s) has contributed significantly to this assessment.

Conservative Republican governors have apparently decided to ignore this current change in opinion, just as they ignore the socio-political and socio-economic changes in U.S. society. They stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that “working Republicans” and “Reagan Democrats” don’t support this anti-labor union campaign.

Republicans must find the results of research by party analysts Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat upsetting. They concluded that “working Republicans” quite easily accepted liberal values such as increasing the minimum wage, adopting stricter environmental regulations and increasing taxes on the wealthy in order to fund universal health care.

Obama Keeps a Low Profile

Randy Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, sees a potential to convert the current snapshot into a real movement. The minimum goal would be to have closer cooperation between private and public sector unions, and the creation of united coalitions. The first joint action should be a membership push for the 45,000 airport security personnel.

The question of whether the more union-sympathetic Democrats are able to exploit this favorable moment in time remains unanswered. While national resistance to the destruction of the labor union movement forges ahead, President Obama maintains a low profile.

He points out the destructive influence of “special interests” and continues to complain about the ever-increasing gap between rich and poor, as well as the disappearance of the middle class. He also holds Wall Street responsible for the current economic and financial misery, the destruction of trillions of dollars and millions of jobs.

The View to Election Day, 2012

But union members will only learn whether Obama knows how to intervene with “the big stick” when it comes to their survival should legal conditions for them begin deteriorating. That’s when this president dedicated to “balance” will have to realize that his conservative opponents aren’t interested in “getting rid of special interests” in general, they’re only interested in protecting the special interests of their industrial and Wall Street clientele.

As they occupy themselves with trying to destroy their only serious opponents, Democrats and union members, as well as moderate conservatives and independents, will have to fear for their nation’s social peace — and likewise for Obama’s re-election in November 2012.