In Bed with the Devil
Answering the age-old question, "If I jumped off a cliff, would you?", nearly 1500 sheep leapt, one by one, from a cliff in Gevas, Turkey, as the town's shepherds watched in stunned disbelief. 450 of the initial jumpers died on the rocks below "in a billowy white pile," reported the Turkish Aksam newspaper, cushioning the fall for the others who followed.
Which leads us to our next story, that Organized labor is rethinking its position of automatically supporting Democrats for office. Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, said in an interview with the Associated Press, that "We can't just elect Democratic politicians and try to take back the House and take back the Senate and think that's going to change workers' lives . . . electing Democrats and taking back the House or getting rid of Tom Delay is not enough."
But not enough for what? And if they aren't going to try to take back the House, what are they going to try to take in its stead?
The AFL-CIO has seen a steady downward slide in membership and membership dues for the past 50 years. Whereas they used to represent over 30% of all private-sector workers at the height of the second Red Scare, they now represent a little more than just 12% of all U.S. workers, and even less than that in the private sector.
A 2001 article in the World Socialist Website laments that only around 9% of American workers belonged to a Union, dramatically reduced from the nearly 36% of workers back in 1953, and this was not due to recession, high unemployment, adverse economic conditions or a hostile administration in the White House, as the 90's saw the longest period of uninterrupted growth ever and the AFL-CIO established its closest ties with the Democratic Clinton administration, which it supported politically (i.e financially).
Younger hi-tech workers, and younger voters in general who are said to be skewing conservative in their politics, see no need for jumping off the cliff of Union membership, with its forced dues, stringent political ideologies and corrupt, 1984 style leadership, especially when those dues are more often paying for $450,000 a year salaries and private penthouses for Union Leaders rather than any tangible benefits for the Union members themselves (Barbara Bullock, former president of the Washington Teachers' Union, was arrested for looting the union's treasury, with assistance from Gwendolyn Hemphill, then executive director of the Democratic party in Washington, D.C. Police raided her home and found a 288-piece set of Tiffany silverware; a $57,000 silver tea set; purses by Fendi, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton; scores of shoes by Bruno Magli and Salvatore Ferragamo; mink coats; and a $13,000 plasma television . . . because the Democratic Party is about the workers, you see).
If you want to know why Democratic candidates continue to flog the worn-out and irrelevant class-warfare meme on the national political level, look no further than their spooning relations with the cash spigots of the Union leadership. But what effect would this trend towards Union support for Republican candidates have? I hardly think that Union leaders are as bent on reforming themselves and their organizations as they are on burrowing their way into the Republican party leadership with a tunnel-digger made of cash.
The Unions are in survival mode, desperately attempting to skid to a stop before their billowy white carcasses wind up on the political rocks of the Democratic Party below. And while turning to the Republicans could signal a long-overdue reform within their leadership ranks, it's just as likely that the chummy association with all that Union cash will prove lethal to the GOP, while also helping to explain the steady erosion of limited government Republicans from the national party as a whole.
Comments
I personally wish they would just take the jump and be done with already... wishful thinking I know
Posted by: Jacky | July 9, 2005 8:30 PM
Anybody know the percentage of public sector employees who are Union members? I believe it's extremely high, and the unions do NOTHING except suck dollars out of the public coffers for the benefit of the exalted few who work those jobs. Let the 9% of AFL-CIO types remain. It's the public sector employee unions we need to look at.
Posted by: Anne-Marie | July 19, 2005 2:31 AM
In a larger sense, the labor strife of the era between the end of the Civil War and WWII spawned the "us against the establishment" theme used today by liberals, albeit unconsciously, to generate complaint against everything else. Unions and labor were a viable social issue several generations ago. The issue is gone, but the taste remains.
Posted by: Elliot Essman | July 20, 2005 2:35 PM
Having been a union and a non-union flight I can certainly attest
to the advantage of being a union member based on my experience in that industry alone and it is my only experience as a union member. Some companies really do abuse their flight attendants. W/o union reppresentation we could never have gotten the mandatory one-day-off-a-week FFA reg. Unions fight for fair wages, safety, and fair labor practices that other workers take for granted. But I found that unions don't fight for that stuff automatically; they have to rely on pressure from the work force to take action.
Posted by: Bruce | July 23, 2005 4:52 AM
YOU REPUKES ARE ALL ALIKE. A BIG BUNCH OF BUSH BUTT KISSERS. OR FARTHER.
___________
Homocon sez:
*giggle*
Posted by: BIG JIM | August 7, 2005 6:40 PM