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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (88730)	9/5/2010 3:28:19 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	3 Recommendations Respond to of 224729

Choices Ahead For Today's Unions Posted 09/03/2010 07:14 PM ET Politics: Less than two years ago, everything seemed to be breaking unions' way. Now they're on the defensive. Something went very wrong on the road to the liberals' idea of paradise. This Labor Day weekend is the official kickoff point for what AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka calls a "massive mobilization" to elect Democrats in November. To hear him tell it, voters face a choice between "a fundamentally different economy that values hard work and a strong middle class" or a return "toward one that puts corporate interests before people." But the labor movement faces a choice, too. It can keep going down the road to political disaster, or it can wise up and realize that a "fundamentally different economy" is not really what people want. They want prosperity and jobs, not a government-led war against capitalists. And they have a bone or two to pick with the unions themselves. Big Labor is in political trouble, as Trumka well knows. And its fall has been swift. Less than two years ago, it saw its allies gain the presidency and strengthen control of Congress. There was no Tea Party movement, and the Republicans were in disarray. It looked like clear sailing for the labor agenda. Things haven't work out that way. Unions didn't get card check. They got something close to universal health coverage, but without the public option that they wanted; what they got instead were more job-killing employer mandates, which do them and their members no good. The global crash blocked their protectionist agenda; no one in power wanted to do another Smoot-Hawley on an ailing world economy. They couldn't get China to raise the cost of its labor by strengthening the yuan. Despite failing to deliver for unions, labor's friends from Barack Obama on down still managed to touch off a firestorm of dissent. The people were just not ready to embrace a new era of big government, though labor was fine with the idea. Even now, it's not clear if the unions understand how out of step they are with the public on this point. Trumka's rhetoric certainly suggests that he's still clueless. Or if not clueless, maybe just trapped. After all, the labor movement continues to depend on the public sector for its growth. Last year, in fact, the number of union members in government jobs (7.9 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) passed the private-sector total (7.4 million) for the first time. This is likely to continue as long as unions price their U.S. private-sector jobs too high and send them overseas. Public sector jobs generally can't be exported. There's also no competition, since every government is pretty much a monopoly in its own sphere. So government is labor's lifeline until labor figures out how to compete in a global market. This situation is no problem for hard-core progressives whose idea of a workers' paradise is a vast public sector that pays its workers and retirees lavishly. But most Americans still see government as a provider of services to the taxpayer, not as a ticket to the upper middle class. Old-school liberals, moderates and conservatives can all agree on that much. Voters can now see that the gold-plated deals between unions and friendly legislatures are sapping money from the most essential of services, such as schools and police. In the California governor's race, for instance, this backlash against public pay and pensions is probably one reason Meg Whitman has pulled even, at least, with Jerry Brown despite Democrats' huge edge in registration. As a former eBay CEO, Whitman symbolizes those "corporate interests" that, to Trumka and other unionists, are working against the people. But Brown's liability now looks worse: He signed legislation to cement the public employee unions' power back in the '70s, and he needs them too much now to run away from that part of his past. The two months from Labor Day to Election Day are a long time in politics. The GOP could get too complacent, its candidates could bomb on the trail and — anything is possible — the economy might even turn up. So it's not over for labor. But the outlook isn't good, and labor doesn't yet seem to grasp why it's in so much trouble.