I was born and raised in a union
household. I owe a lot to my fathers union. I probably would not have gone to
college without it. I have never crossed a picket line in my life and I pray
that I never will. Unions helped create the modern middle class in 20th century
America. Unions did so, by being the champion of middle class values
and American patriotism and exceptionalism.
As an adult I was a member of two
unions. The first was the UFT, the NYC chapter of the AFT. This union or at
least the chapter in one school where I taught Special Education, did not think
much of my students and at times even less about their members who taught them.
Both the AFT and the NEA nationally would initially oppose efforts to mainstream
students with disabilities. Today both would probably deny this but they would
be lying.
So my personal experience with unions has
been mixed as has the experience and perceptions of millions of other Americans
which are reflected in the decline of union membership in the work force to
11.3%. Private sector union membership is now an anemic 6.7% while the public
sector union membership is a healthier 35.3%. while growing in controversy as to
its effect on the size and cost of government at all
levels.
This past weekend workers at the
Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted not to join the UAW
despite the active cooperation of VW management and I G Metall the bargaining
agent for Volkswagen workers in Europe. The UAW has fallen from a high of 1.5
million members to less than 400,000 nationally.
The loss was a shock for both the UAW
and its parent body, the AFL-CIO, whose President Richard Trumpka announced that
going forward labor would coalesce with progressive forces in the south in order
to overcome the distrust of unions. This distrust however stems from organized
labor's past unsavory relationship with organized crime,,frequent union thug
behavior and labors new unsavory alliances with so called "progressive" groups
many of which are anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, covertly racist, anti-American
and either socialist or communist politically.
They include environmental zealots who
seek to destroy union jobs by killing the coal industry, preventing the building
of the Keystone XL pipeline and limiting the drilling for domestic oil and
gas....all which adds insult to injury by dramatically increasing energy costs
for middle class Americans in particular. Predictably the loss in Tennessee is
now being blamed on racism and Nazis by MSNBC. A week later threats are still
being made toward anti union activists.
Unions are now also seen as an integral
part of the Democratic Party. In NYC for example it is now hard to distinguish
where the unions begin and where the party takes over. Public sector unions in
particular have become heavy handed political players in large cities and
heavily unionized states. The Working Families Party which has as one of its
founders, the current Mayor of New York who together with public sector unions
and questionable groups like the former ACORN, is in point of fact in total
control of all the levers of power in the city and to a lesser degree, in the
state legislature. The WFP has all but eclipsed the Democratic Party in the
city even while party enrollment remains overwhelmingly Democratic..the WFP is
now the tail that wags the Democratic dog.
That question is no longer a theoretical
one as the Progressive NYC Mayor emulating his hero the
Progressive US President proceeds to go to war against anything and everything
that unions despise.
The most prominent example of this are
Charter Schools of which NYC has 183, the largest number of any city in the
nation, On the whole these schools, which are public schools not under the
thumb of the UFT cost approximately half per pupil as regular schools and have
60% black children, 30% Hispanic children and 96% low income children on their
rosters, They do markedly better than their non-charter counterparts on
reading, math and science with the % who goes to college or are college
bound also higher than regular schools. Currently there are over 70,000 mostly
minority children, on waiting lists for these schools and the demand for
opening more is overwhelming, particularly in minority areas of the
city.
Naturally the UFT and the Progressive
Mayor hate these schools and are trying to do everything possible to starve
them of funding and ultimately shut them down. Yet considering the pupil
population affected, no one calls these actions racist...which by any objective
standards they are. The moral bankruptcy of public sector unions and their
progressive political lackeys who incessantly identify themselves as champions
of the poor, the minorities and the "children" while simultaneously condemning
all of them to an inferior education and hence a life of struggle and hardship,
is the single biggest example of why government with public sector unions no
longer work... if they ever did.
Both FDR and George Meaney thought public
sector unions to be a terrible idea and anathema to democracy. There is an
inherent conflict of interest when people in elective office are politically
dependent on the workforce for whom they will ultimately make decisions with
regard to pay, benefits and work rules. It is naive at best to believe that
this symbiotic relationship between politicians, union money and union campaign
workers somehow magically also guarantees that the greater needs of the
general public will still be front and center in the halls of power. Instead
evidence mounts as the cost and size of government goes through the roof due
mostly to the increase in the number of union workers along with their pay,
pensions and health care...that the people are ignored and invisible.
Unions, despite all of the above are not
obsolete nor should they be. But if they are to remain relevant they are one
huge special interest that needs to be decoupled from politics in the public
sector and become more in synch with the needs and beliefs of their rank and
file in the private sector. Moreover, if 501 (c) (4) groups can be pushed out
of the public square re even non partisan political activity, then 501 (c) (5)
entities ( unions) should also be restricted out of simple fairness and in order
to level the playing field.
If unions are to both survive and find
comity with the general society, they must return to a state of being about
protecting their members and their jobs without aligning themselves with those
who would destroy these same jobs out of ignorance malice or an unquenchable
thirst for power, They cannot remain the shock troops of a progressive fairy
tale that preaches that wealth must be shared by all, work is optional in
achieving success and prosperity and the state will take care of all your needs
forever. This is not the America that working men and women built. This is
instead the fantasy "social justice" American utopia described in the
old hobo song the "Big Rock Candy Mountain".
ERLANDSSON
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