Nauseating: Joe Biden Speaks to IBEW Tops. Bring Me the Vote

Richard Mellor

 

Here is Genocide Joe Biden speaking to a meeting of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) last Friday, 4-12-24. I have to say it was not bad in the sense that he didn’t appear to be out of it, slurring his speech, walking in the wrong direction when he entered or left the podium or forgetting which country he was in.

The mass media and his opponents, including the serial sexual predator and rival for the White House Donald Trump, like to focus on the issue of Genocide Jo’s memory but that is a side issue; it’s not the reason workers should see him for what he is, an enemy of the working class, both here and abroad.  He will go down in history as the man who could have stopped the genocide in Gaza but instead, armed it and wore the Zionist badge with pride.

 

It's nauseating listening to it. Kenneth Cooper, the IBEW Secretary Treasurer, on around $400,000 a year for his efforts keeping the books, gives him a heroes welcome. He's the "strongest champion" of the working class, the "Man the IBEW can rely on every day". Cooper goes on, "He's the most union friendly pro-labor president in the history of this great nation"

 

What Cooper means is he is the man the union hierarchy can rely on, people like himself. The Democratic Party and its leader, in this case Joe here, the former Senator from Du Pont, is the party of the clique that sits atop organized labor, not the members who pay the dues and the obscene salaries most of them earn. For decades the union leadership at the highest levels have been been, as De Leon once said, the labor lieutenants of capital within organized labor.

 

In response to this heroes welcome Biden spews out protectionist and nationalist language about how great the IBEW is, America is and so on. The IBEW has about 800,000 members, it is one of the most sort after unions to join given the pay and benefits its members enjoy.  That is a good thing, the living standards the IBEW members (those who do the work) have should be had by all. All workers have lost ground including union members.

Biden is speaking to them because the IBEW and the other building trades will benefit from any infrastructure or social spending that comes out of Washington as these huge projects require union labor. In addition, if non union labor is used it has to comply with the Davis Bacon Act that requires all contractors pay the "prevailing wage" for the area. This sounds good but as wages decline, so does the prevailing wage. Not only that, as I see it, it is very popular with the labor hierarchy as it gets them off the hook from having to  organizing new members. It's some free time for them.

The labor officials that do the rounds for the Democrats (and organized labor has spent billions over the years in campaign contributions) often find a way in to lucrative government office through the Democratic Party, a reward for using their members' money and resources; there are numerous political figures that rise this way in Democratic Party Administrations.

This has gotten harder and harder over the decades though as union members' response to their leaders pushing a party they have abandoned, either opt out of the electoral process altogether or turn to more conservative alternatives or a degenerate like Trump. With the absence of any labor or left alternative, and the failure of groups like Labor Notes or TDU to offer one, the growth of the right wing or the search for a "strongman" to take a hold of the reins can become a serious option.

Openly supporting Democrats is not such a useful tool for political purposes as workers have suffered under Republican and Democratic regimes alike. I remember first noting this change in the mid nineties when I attended National Conventions of my union AFSCME

when the focus changed and the issue became not supporting a Party  but the candidate as an individual. We support those that are best for "working families".

 

The IBEW leadership like all of them, will ignore the fact that Biden denied the rail workers the right to strike last year despite having the "legal" right to do so. Biden and Pelosi and the rest of the gang in Congress introduced legislation overnight that took that right away. Profits come first folks and the rail workers were forced to accept a contract they'd already rejected.

Biden's language about American jobs and American greatness sounded more like a return to the Smoot-Hawley era prior to the Great Depression and the advent of WW2. And he used the term Malarkey that proves he's just a regular Joe and and Irishman at that. It was just a show where everyone would agree.

And the fate of workers in other countries, those in Vietnam, China, Bangladesh, Cambodia or anywhere else where unions  are illegal and violence against union organizers rife ,never came up. Nor did the Genocide in Gaza and it should, after all, it's one of Joe's successes. But international issues have nothing to do with our wages and conditions here so why mention them? There will have to be some turmoil within organized labor to root out the present pro-market clique.

So suffer a little nausea on a Sunday and watch Biden in action here.