The Wisconsin union fight isn't about benefits It's about labor's influence

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/04/AR2011030402416.html?fb_ref=NetworkNews

By Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
Sunday, March 6, 2011

The battle between Republicans and labor unions in Ohio, Wisconsin and other states is ostensibly about public workers' pay, benefits and bargaining rights. What is really at stake, however, isn't labor's income. It's labor's influence - not just in the American workplace but in American politics.

Critics of unions cast them as exclusive clubs for which the rest of Americans pay the dues. Wisconsin's GOP governor, Scott Walker, likes to say that unions are the "haves" and everyone else the "have-nots." And it's certainly true that unions aggressively pursue their own interests - sometimes to others' detriment. When asked in the early 20th century what the American Federation of Labor wanted, the union's gruff head, Samuel Gompers, famously replied, "More."

But unions play another role, too - one more like that of civic groups than private associations. Although they want "more" for their members, they also want to make good middle-class jobs the norm. And the most important way they pursue this larger goal isn't by demanding concessions at the bargaining table, but by operating as a counterweight to the demands of corporations and Wall Street in the corridors of power. That is precisely why opponents of organized labor are seizing upon state fiscal troubles to try to destroy its remaining clout.

Republican politicians haven't always been anti-union. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower declared: "Unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice." His words remind us that America's leaders once overwhelmingly believed, happily or reluctantly, in the power of organized labor.

When Eisenhower spoke, unions were a critical source of political capital for ordinary Americans who lacked substantial financial capital. Indeed, according to a number of political science studies, the effort by unions to get sympathetic voters to the polls was one of the main forces behind the high rates of voter turnout - regardless of income or education levels - in the decades just after World War II.

FULL 2 page story at link.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Even on the surface this obvious, since nobody ever offered a single figure

for how much this move would save in budget in the short or long term.