Wisconsin AFL-CIO Gives Biden's 2014 Election Campaign a Boost

Source: Racine County Eye

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO

8-15-23

 

I am reading a report from the president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, Stephanie Bloomingdale and it's far from inspiring, angers me to be honest.  She is one of many women rising in the ranks of organized labor and the first to head the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. The head of the national AFL-CIO, to which most unions are affiliated is Liz Shuler, also the first woman head of the organization. Another woman in a leadership position of organized labor is Sara Nelson of the Association of Flight Attendants. Like many of today’s up and coming labor officials they are from working class backgrounds and have moved up the ranks of the labor bureaucracy. But it’s not simply the class we are from that matters, it’s the class we defend.

 

The liberals/progressives salivate at the news that a woman, a person of color, or a member of some other marginalized group (as long as they’re nor white males) rises to the head of a major union and consider it a huge step forward for the working class.  Unfortunately, while it is important for the leadership of our organizations to reflect the diversity that exists among the working class, what is crucial is how they view the world, their sense of class identity and solidarity and the path forward for workers. Central to this is opposition to the Team Concept, the ideology that says workers and capitalists have the same interests and instead stressing that independence of the working class in the workplace/economic struggles and in the political arena is a given. As the preamble to the founding constitution of the IWW asserted, the working class and the employing class have nothing in common.

 

Sister Bloomingdale reports on President “worker Joe” Biden’s visit to a Milwaukee Wisconsin manufacturer whose unionized workers (IBEW local 2150) “produce the only wind turbines completely made in the USA.” It’s thanks to Biden and his Inflation Reduction Act, this is happening she says.  Leaving aside that this form of protectionism is a disastrous position for workers to adopt as both protectionist measures and their opposite, free trade, are capitalist solutions to capitalist problems. We can’t build international working class solidarity while we join with our employers in their ruthless competition for market share with their class rivals. This leads to a race to the bottom for working class people.

 

 With the present leadership atop organized labor, it’s no wonder that millions of unionized workers have moved to the right, many supporting people like Trump. One thing that shows the so-called progressives in the labor movement are no different from those they aim to replace, is their continued pushing of a political party on their members and the US working class that millions have abandoned. Voting for this lesser of two evils has proven time and time again that when push comes to shove, big business and profits come before workers and our living standards. We have suffered under both Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

 

Sister Bloomingdale is “proud” to welcome Biden to Wisconsin to celebrate his Inflation Reduction Act, “…..all the Biden Administration has done to support working people in Wisconsin.”  There could be a cabinet position for her if she keeps this up.

 

As always there is much talk about the “American Middle Class” in Sister Bloomingdale’s report and how it is the backbone of America. “My economic agenda is about strengthening our economy by growing the middle class and making things in America.”, the former Senator from Du Pont tells the IBEW members. If you’re over thirty you’ve heard this same rhetoric from the Democratic Party many times in the past from numerous candidates for the prized office of president of the US. And Biden is in Wisconsin for one reason and one reason only; he doesn’t want to make the same mistake as Hilary Clinton did in 2016 when she never bothered to visit this important state that can decide US elections, and 2024 is around the corner.

 

“We are investing in America,” Biden tells the workers, “My economic agenda is about strengthening our economy by growing the middle class and making things in America.”

 

This is so insulting to working class people; it’s, to put it bluntly, the same old garbage. It is one of the principle reasons that close to 100 million eligible voters opted out of the electoral process in 2016. And opting out has been a long-time trend.

 

US trade union officials like Bloomingdale, who are considered a new direction for the labor movement, are well aware of alternatives to the two Wall Street parties in election cycles. They attend international conventions and are, in some cases delegates to these bodies from the US. They are aware of the labor, socialist and communist parties that exist in other countries. They are aware that there are parties independent of the parties of big business like we have here. As I have stated many times and apologize for the repetition, it is not corruption, bribes, or criminal activity that prevents them from using their positions as leaders of an organization with 14 million members in key industries to provide a political alternative to the two capitalist parties. For them, to do so would place them in the driver’s seat. They could no longer blame the Democrats, the pressure on them to produce the goods would be immense and, as worshipers of the market and capitalism, they have no answer to it.

 

Lastly, where are the thousands of individuals and members of various socialist, anarchist and other organizations that consider themselves anti-capitalist. The trade union movement, particularly its staff and the lower level of this stifling bureaucracy, are filled with lefts and ex lefts from this milieu, yet, in my experience over 30 years, for one reason or another most of these elements refused to wage an open campaign against the existing leadership’s policies and practices. Some make the argument that they are “building a revolutionary party” which is an excuse for doing nothing. Others argue the unions are not even workers organizations, or that the leadership cannot be moved by any movement of the rank and file and that the members should join their insignificant little grouplet, another excuse for avoiding a confrontation with the leadership that is inevitable for any force wanting to transform our unions.

 

Either way, this is a cop out. If you are active in a union especially in a leadership position and you are not in a struggle on these two fronts, against the bosses, the easy one, but also a political struggle against the leadership of our organizations and their class collaborationist policies then you are failing not only your members but also working class people as a whole.

 

The IBEW members with Sister Bloomingdale’s lead should be booing Biden. Only three months earlier he denied rail workers the right to strike in order to protect the railroad investors (and Warren Buffet is one I believe) and he has his agents involved in the ILWU negotiations with the port bosses here on the US West Coast, and will also have them in the auto workers contract negotiation this month not to mention the strike in the entertainment industry.

 

We are in a different period here and time is not on our side, capitalism cannot advance society and certainly is incapable of re-producing the “American Dream” that was never a dream for all Americans anyway.  Biden’s promises are empty promises as always. I understand why a voter feels it necessary to cast a vote for the lesser evil; but let’s not portray this as the way out for working people. I think this commentator is fairly accurate in describing what drives folks to the polls on election day:  “….both of these braying, boorish old men are fraudsters and fabulists” but, “These vices do not matter to their furious followers, who love their man precisely because he is not the hated other” From this article.

 

And this is the apex of civilization?