US elections: A nauseating affair, over one billion spent so far

Left: Jerry Brown Democratic and Labor leaders' candidate for California governor.  In the US there's no working class, just working families.

The highly glossy, very expensive mailings from my former Union,AFSCME urging me to vote for Democratic candidates on November second are still coming fast and furious. As a blog pointed out yesterday, AFSCME officials are quoted in the Wall Street Journal boasting about all the money they’re spending as if our lives depended on it, $85 million so far.

The latest brochure today tells me to vote for Jerry Brown for governor because, “California’s public employees can trust Jerry Brown. He’s been a fierce advocate for worker’s rights and our jobs in tough times.”

But just a couple of weeks ago, Jerry Brown was debating his Republican opponent (if you can call these circuses debates) Meg Whitman and outdoing her, boasting about how tough he’ll be on the Unions and how he’ll scale back public pensions.

On Brown’s website, he talks about his record as governor before, “I am the only governor to veto pay raises for state employees (I did so twice) and I even rejected my own pay raise. I was also the first California governor to propose pension reforms and a two-tiered pension system that reduced pension costs to the state for new employees.” Browns intention is to increase the years we have to work to get a decent pension and increase the amount we contribute to our pension fund. For the next generation they’ll have to do with less and the Union tops are quite happy with that set up. There’s nothing that terrifies them more than the thought of a mobilized rank and file, this would threaten the relationship they’ve built with the Democratic Party and the employers over the years that’s based on Labor peace.

Top Union officials like AFSCME’s Gerald McEntee have no problem supporting anti-worker candidates like Brown. It will not be Gerald McEntees pension that is affected. McEntee is backing Rahm Emmanuel for Chicago mayor referring to his record as on balance for “progressive forces and ideas”. Like most top Union leaders who hang around the corporate politicians in Washington DC (It’s no accident most Unions have their national headquarters in DC. It’s better to be near your friends) McEntee backed Emmanuel in 2006 saying afterwards that, “For our aid and participation in that effort, particularly working close with him, he on two different occasions sent me a cheesecake from Eli’s,”. That’s nice., Eli’s is a famous Chicago pizza eatery I understand.

McEntee earned almost $585,000 in 2008 according to Allison kasic at the Independent Women’s Forum. This is another part of the problem albeit a secondary one, the obscene salaries that some Union officials earn. No paid Union official should earn more than the average pay of the worker’s they represent. McEntee has been the president of AFSCME for a long time. Any organization that has the same president for thirty years is an unhealthy one.

As any rank and file Union member is aware, top Union officials have no problem with two tier anything either. Two tier is a way of eliminating, for future workers and Union members wages and benefits that took years of struggle to win. Future workers can’t vote on contracts so they can’t object to a concessionary contract. Brown intends to reduce the living standards of future workers and the Union leaders call this defending workers. It is dividing workers is what it is. It causes resentment and division on the job as the new people see that their co-workers, “the Union” sold them down the river, abandoned them without a fight. Brown’s program of concessions fits in perfectly with the Union leadership’s program of concessions.

Brown’s main campaign slogan is that we have to “Live Within Our Means”, that we have to think of ourselves as Californians first. Remember that statement about living within our means because it is workers who are going to be doing it and the means will be decided for us by “experts”.

It is incredible the amount of time and money spent on these elections in California alone. Every few minutes there are ads on TV with one calling the other a liar and other nastiness. The politics is childish. But they all accuse each other of sending jobs abroad so acute is the unemployment problem. They are all trying to portray themselves as the workers’ friends with the heads of organized Labor standing side by side with the other millionaires’ party, the Democrats.

No wonder so many American workers simply withdraw from the process and hate all of ‘em. It’s been a nauseating few weeks.