Union leaders throw $200 million of their members' money at the Democrats leaving betrayed and angry voters the only alternative---vote Republican.

Organized Labor’s hierarchy wasted $200 million of their member’s dues money on the 2010 elections. My former Union, AFSCME, spent $91 million including taking out loans. This is criminal; there is no other word for it.

As they do when they call defeated strikes or concessionary contracts “defensive” victories, the heads of organizations with 12 million members pat themselves on the back for saving the Democrats a few seats here and there. They refer to the Democrats as candidates that care about "working families." They use this term to avoid any reference to class.

Clyde Weiss, writing in AFSCME’s publication, “AFSCME Works”, writes “Wall Street and its ideological allies want to shrink the size of government, reduce or evade regulation, depress public worker wages and benefits so their own workers won’t demand better treatment…” The ideological allies Weiss is referring to are the Republicans although he doesn’t come right out and say it. The Union leaders’ get out the vote campaign is phrased this way because most workers, including Union members see very little difference between the two parties and are so disgusted with them, and their own leaders, that they’ve withdrawn from politics altogether, so the Labor officials try to avoid being openly partisan.

Weiss writes that these ideological allies (Republicans) “..prefer to manipulate workers in the private sector who have lost their pensions (or never had one) in to resenting those who do have pensions.” But Weiss ignores the main point. The reason the bosses’ tactics can have any effect at all on the millions of unorganized and private sector workers is that people like him and his employers ignore them. When I was active in AFSCME before I retired, the position of the international with regard to the Team Concept was “competitive bidding”, in other words, we public sector workers had to show we could work more efficiently than our private sector (and non-Union) brothers and sisters. The entire leadership of organized Labor supports the Team Concept which pits worker against worker with the goal of helping each particular employer gain market share over their rivals.

The heads of organized Labor make no effort to counter the employers’ divisive tactics, consequently, many workers do fall prey to them.

We have lost ground under Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Democrats controlled both houses and the presidency under Carter and not one piece of legislation important to Labor was passed. The same with the first two years of the Clinton administration that kicked working class women off welfare in to part-time and low waged jobs and screwed us with NAFTA. In an interview with Business Week in 1995, Al Gore boasted to his corporate masters how his administration was more aggressively eliminating public sector jobs than Republicans: “Cabinet departments don't get created by accident. Below that level, there are many agencies that we have eliminated. In one year, we downsized by 100,000 employees. We have locked in place plans to eliminate another 200,000 workers. That's a bold start.” *

Obama dumped EFCA and screwed them on health care reform not to mention spending $30 billion sending 30,000 more of our youth to Afghanistan at one million dollars per person. How many jobs could you create with that, building schools infrastructure and a hospital here and there? The Wall Street Journal reports today that Obama “offered an olive branch to US corporations which he said must feel they’re, ‘always painted as the bad guy’”.  There you have it.  While the Tea Party is made up of various groupings including some corporate interests as well as racist and crazed elements, one can understand they get a bit of an echo when they say, “Large corporations are leeches sucking the blood of the people”, or GE is an “opportunistic parasite feeding on the expansion of government”
The right wing has a clearer understanding of the anger people feel towards the corporations, banks and the rich and are exploiting it.

The Labor hierarchy is to blame for the Republican victories this week by failing to provide an alternative, a party that workers and middle class voters as well as the millions of people who abstain from politics could turn to.

Leo W. Gerard, president of the United Steelworker’s Union, responded to the election results saying, “Strong leadership in Washington, D.C., is needed immediately to regain the trust of average Americans.”

“It is time now for members of both parties to work with the President to develop an agenda that will rebuild the economy by revitalizing manufacturing through investments in our infrastructure and small businesses, and a major commitment to renewable energy….[W]e must also stop trade deals that give away good paying American jobs.”

What is he talking about, "The leadership of both parties"? This is as an earlier blog commented, childish nonsense. The effects of this strategy for workers though are catastrophic.

The Labor leadership as I have stated many times before see the Unions as employment agencies with themselves as the CEO’s. They accept capitalism and provide Labor power for it. The electoral defeat means that the Union leaders will be turning their efforts toward “agencies like the Department of Labor or the National Labor Relations Board.” writes the Wall Street Journal. The idea of turning to where the power is, the members, and mobilizing that power is a terrifying thought for heads of organized Labor, it can only lead to chaos and will be avoided at all costs. Until they are forced from below they will continue with the same failed policies that have set working people back decades.

When he was running for office back in 1995, Richard Trumka now AFL-CIO president, said , “While we are always willing to negotiate as equals, the era of union busting, contract trashing and strike breaking is at an end. Today, we say that when you pick a fight with any of us, you pick a fight with all of us! And that when you push us,we will push back."

This was mere election rhetoric and the employers are not frightened by it; they have heard it many times. Trumka like all of them considers pushing back, electing a Democrat here and there. Why would Wall Street be afraid of that?

For those of us active in our Unions, we are in a war on two fronts, one against the capitalist offensive and the other against the policies of the Labor leadership who support in one way or another the goals of this offensive. This is the more difficult of the two but cannot be avoided if we are to move forward.

*Getting Smaller With Al, Business Week 1-23-95