Lying To Make Friends

When I started reading this Harold Meyerson piece, comparing the  advance of democracy in Egypt to the attempt to roll back workers’ rights in Wisconsin, I worried that the analogy might be a little overdramatic.  But the more I learn about what’s going on in Wisconsin and why it’s happening, the more I realize the importance of emphasizing just how high the stakes are.  While it may not be a matter of dictatorship vs. democracy, how the fight in Wisconsin, and similar fights that are likely to play out across the country, are resolved is going to have a huge impact on the shape of our democracy, who has influence over it, and who has the upper hand between democratic institutions and capital.

First, it’s important to emphasize what isn’t happening in Wisconsin.  This is not, as Governor Scott Walker and his allies would have people believe, simply a matter of dealing with a budget deficit and asking state employees to give back during tough times.  The unions have offered to make concessions to deal with the state’s budget crisis, as they were prepared to do before Walker even took office, and the offer has been rejected.  While employee benefits are obviously more difficult to pay during tough economic times, public employees and their unions are not the cause of the budget crises states are in.  States without collective bargain powering for state workers are in the same or worse financial straits as states with collective bargaining.  If Governor Walker’s concern really were balancing the budget, he wouldn’t have just wrecked the state’s financial situation for the coming years by pushing through corporate tax cuts.  No, this is part of well-funded right-wing effort to crush organized labor, which remains the most effective counterweight to corporate influence over government.

Conservative claims that public sector employees are overpaid or doing better than private sector counterparts simply aren’t true.  The sad thing is that, to the extent that public employees do have it better than private sector workers, this is more a sign of how much pay and benefits have deteriorated in the private sector than a sign of “sweetheart deals” negotiated by public sector unions.  As the percentage of the private sector workforce belonging to unions continues to decline, fewer and fewer private sector workers have access to the wages and benefits that unions deliver.  If public employees have not suffered rollbacks in benefits the same way private sector employees has, this is as it should be.  The policy of our government should be that workers are entitled to a certain level of dignity, and that your labor should give you the ability to provide for your family, visit a doctor when necessary, stay home when your sick, go on vacation every now and then, and be financially secure in retirement.   And if there’s no political will to pass laws mandating a living wage or paid sick leave in the private sector, then government should at least do what it can to set standards for how workers should be treated through the treatment of its own workers.  (The most disturbing reports from the competing protests in Madison were of pro-Walker protesters carrying signs saying “Your Gravy Train is over– Welcome to the recession.”  It’s a sad sign that anyone would react to widespread economic misery by seeking to drag down those who have been spared rather than lift up those who are suffering.)

Opponents of unions are quick to dismiss them as special interests.  And of course that’s true.  Unions’ primary responsibility is the welfare of their members.  But we all should be thankful that unions are as powerful a special interest as they are and lament that unions aren’t as powerful as they once were.  Of all the institutions with the resources and interest to influence the government, none shares the broad interests of the majority of  Americans to the degree that organized labor does.  Every federal law dealing with quality of life in the workplace:  the 40 hour workweek, the minimum wage, health and safety regulations, etc., owes its existence to the support of organized labor.  Even though labor is not as strong as it once was, its hard to imagine either health care reform or financial regulation making it through Congress without organized labor pushing back against the insurance industry and the Chamber of Commerce.

And this is why the attack on labor is something that should terrify all progressives.  Labor is the muscle behind the progressive movement.  With its roots in organizing and its emphasis on solidarity and strength in numbers, no one understands the importance of coalition building better than organized labor.  For instance, in the 1960s the UAW, at the height of its power, provided critical support to other factions of the growing progressive movement.  In the past decade, labor has sought common ground with environmentalists and changed its immigration policy, two areas in which labor had been in conflict with other branches of the progressive movement.  And that’s the reason the right wing is so interested in how Wisconsin closes its budget deficit.

We’re a long may from a perfect democracy where each citizen has an equal say in how we are governed.  As long as special interests are going to have massive influence over our government, we need to make sure the special interests that answer to millions of nurses, firefighters, teachers, etc., have the same say as the special interests that answer to twelve guys in a boardroom.

-AR