Posted by: Dale Franks on Tuesday, July 26, 2005 The editors of the Wall Street Journal are trying to offer some helpful advice to AFL-CIO big shots John Sweeney and Andy Stern. Those two gentlemen are on the brink of tearing the AFL-CIO in half due to their disputes, and the editors of the WSJ are viewing with alarm. Yeah, yeah, I know. When the Journal—generally regarded as the mouthpiece of corporate America—gives friendly advice to organized labor, it's a lot like hiring a fox to give self-defense training to chickens. You wonder if his heart's really in it. Actually, in the Journal's case their heart is in it, and in pretty much the way you'd expect. In the wake of the GOP takeover of Congress the year before, Mr. Sweeney promised to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into electoral politics to stop the Gingrich revolution. He staffed AFL-CIO headquarters with activists from the political left—environmental groups, culturally liberal outfits—and made the union consortium a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.True enough. Sweeney put all the union's eggs in one basket, just in time to watch the Democratic party go into the minority. As Zaphod Beeblebrox might say, "Ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?" In the end, Sweeney made the AFL-CIO a powerful arm of an impotent party. making the union the political equivalent of the toughest guy in the high school chess club. Meanwhile he managed to completely alienate Republican lawmakers, who, even if they weren't particularly keen on Mr. Sweeney's ideas about labor before he whored out the AFL-CIO to the Democrats, are certainly not keen on Mr. Sweeney now. So, Mr. Sweeney and Mr. Stern find themselves engrossed in vicious infighting over the 8% of the American workforce that remains unionized. Sharp analysis. But what do the Journal's editors suggest? Essentially this: Become Republicans. What's missing on both sides, however, is a vision of economic opportunity that might actually make workers want to join a union in the first place. Tactics aside, both factions continue to believe in the idea of unions that arose in the Industrial Age: Greedy management versus the exploited working man, seniority over flexibility, fixed benefits and strike threats over working with management to keep a U.S.-based company profitable and innovative in a world of growing competition. On the political front, both factions favor trade protection, higher taxes and government help to enforce restrictive work rules. This is the agenda of Old Europe, where jobless rates are above 10%, and it merely offers more economic insecurity in the U.S. as well.Yes, forget about all that tedious labor action, and striking. Does no one any good, you know. You know what American workers should get involved in? School vouchers. Yes, that's right. Don't worry about your fellow working people. Their jobs are toast anyway, so you might as well write them off. Oh, and while we're on the subject, if you could help deliver us, your employers, from the responsibility of providing health care for you—maybe by, you know, buying it yourself—that would be nice, too. The stockholders would be pleased by the jump in earnings. And you know how you could be a really good "partner" with your employers? Take a pay cut. That'll really help keep us afloat, too. I mean, we gotta pay for that Gulfstream V that we take to Barbados for our corporate retreats somehow, am I right? Whether the Journal is right about any of this may very well be a matter of interest, academically speaking. Textile jobs are going the way of the buggy whip and carriage maker trades. School choice is a vital issue. But expecting organized labor to roll over like weasels and expose their softest parts is just a fantasy. It would kinda obviate the entire point of organized labor, and I'm just not sure we want to do that. Oh, sure, I gotta admit that unions irk me. There are high-school dropouts making $22.50 an hour slicing deli meats at Safeway, and getting full medical and dental. That's a pretty good gig, no matter how you look at it. And, let's face it, it isn't Safeway thats paying for it, I am. Union-boy is making it harder and more expensive to feed my family. But—and this is an important "but"—I don't like the power of corporate America, either. Being a good libertarian, I distrust aggregations of power. I distrust them in the private sector, and I distrust them in the public sector. Power corrupts, no matter who gets it. Give power to gentle, meek, God-fearing Churchmen, and the next thing you know, they're burning lonely old ladies at the stake for talking to their cats. Give power to corporations, and before you know, they're dumping gallium arsenide in open pits that soak into ground water, because it's cheaper than having the stuff hauled away to be disposed of properly, and then Lake Erie catches fire. Give it to unions, and in short order, high school dropouts will be slicing luncheon meats for $60 an hour, with options to put unlimited cocaine and hookers on their corporate expense accounts, and a head of lettuce will cost $15. Aggregations of power are bad. Unionized labor can serve as a very useful counterbalance to the power of corporations. That might just be worth something, even something intangible, that we shouldn't want to give up, because corporations are not our kind benefactors, no matter how warm and fuzzy their TV commercials try to make them seem. The trouble is, we're kind of limited in out ability to watchdog corporations. We can either do it through private organizations, like unions, or we can do it publicly, through government. There are plenty of advocates for both methods. But one notes that the politicians who would be responsible for regulating corporate America also tend to need political donations, often from corporate executives. Do the math. If given a choice between organized labor watchdogging corporate America on a private basis, and the government doing it on a public basis...well, then all other things being equal, I'll choose unions every time. And Andy Stern, for all that he is reputed to be a big ass, is right about Sweeney. Sweeney put labor in the pocket of the Democrats. I mean, they've been there for years, really, but Sweeney made it explicit. That's not a good thing, because it undercuts both the ability of organized labor to be seen in a non-partisan corporate watchdog role, and the willingness of about half of America's workers who are not Democrats to join an organization that's connected to the Democrats at the hip. A more bipartisan organized labor movement might be a most interesting and useful thing to have lying around. |
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