Give the right wing credit for how skillfully it has used
the long recession as a vehicle to generate envy between working people, and as
a scapegoat for the financial woes ailing cities and state governments.
It takes a concerted campaign by think tanks, media outlets,
political toadies and lobbyists to drive a wedge between private sector workers
struggling with low wages and paltry benefits, and public sector workers with
union representation, rights guaranteed in collective bargaining agreements,
and humane benefit plans.
If only the American left were half as adept at planting the
seed of discontent and watering it every day.
On this Labor Day I salute the right’s opportunistic genius.
They artfully shifted the focus from the bankers, hedge fund managers and
financial vultures who tanked our economy (with ample assistance from both
political parties), and redirected it toward teachers, firefighters, police,
city workers, and all the other public servants whose work keep our cities,
towns and schools operating. In essence they said: ignore the CEO paid obscene
bonuses to run his company into the turf, he’s a faultless hero of the American
free market. Focus on the real culprits, the parasites, the overpaid, pampered
public employees who live in luxury on your tax dime. Their greed is the cause
of our misery, just as borrowers, not lenders, caused the housing bubble to
burst.
The forces of corporate greed, the US Chamber of Commerce,
the Republican Party, and billionaires like the Koch brothers were never
content to rest on their laurels. Having rendered private sector unions
impotent through trade agreements and outsourcing, they turned their collective
power against the only sector where unions still have a modicum of strength and
political leverage. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin is their poster boy.
Unions, private sector or public, are far from perfect. But
when it comes to protecting working people from caprice, inequity and
exploitation, unions are the best hope we have for achieving a modicum of
workplace democracy and growing the middle class. Except by banding together,
how else can workers share in the fruits of their productivity? The right
excoriates and dismisses any talk of “collective” action, but that is precisely
what’s needed to restore balance between the masters of capital and the
laborers who build or serve.
I’m not optimistic for a resurgence of organized labor.
After playing a large role in getting Barack Obama elected in 2008, union
members watched as the new president turned his back on them. When workers made
a stand in Wisconsin, Obama was nowhere to be seen. As happens every four
years, many working people will troop to the polling place this November and
vote against their own interests. Do they really believe Mitt Romney and Paul
Ryan have their back? Have they forgotten the Bush era, when tax cuts and less
regulation were touted as the road to an “opportunity” society of plentiful
jobs and higher wages? Net job growth was flat under Bush as were wages. The
Ayn Rand Kool-Aid will not work for Romney any better than it did for Bush.
In this country it used to be that organized labor was at
the center of the discussion of how to lift all boats on a tide of prosperity;
we used to talk about expanding the economic pie, not shrinking it. The only
vessels that rise today are of the luxury variety; they ride high on the water
and their captains look down with disdain at the masses in their dinghies and
rowboats and rubber rafts.
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