Union rights and the death of the left

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.dakotastudent.com/opinion/union-rights-and-the-death-of-the-left-1.2159676

By Aaron Wentz

Published: Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Updated: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 13:04


This past week I attended a solidarity event in support of Wisconsin workers' fight against Gov. Scott Walker's attack on public sector labor's right to collectively bargain. The event, hosted by the Northern Valley Labor Council, was held at the local IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) headquarters in Grand Forks. Amidst the sloppy joes, electrical workers, teachers and elderly folks, two speakers outlined the stakes of the fight in Wisconsin and what it means for the rest of the country. For example, there are 60 bills on the table in the Minnesota state legislature with organized labor in their sights. In some parts of the country there have been attempts to make it illegal for organized labor to collect and donate money to political campaigns, while corporations are allowed to make such donations.

The message is clear—there is a war breaking out across the country against organized labor. Some would argue that it's about time, unions are outdated inflated behemoths, corrupted organizations sucking up dues, not suited to our post-industrial economy. There's a moment of truth here; it's clear that the US economy has shifted away from industrial work to a more service-based workforce in the past 40 years. Unfortunately, attacks on hard-won labor victories over the decades haven't ceased (G.W. Bush was still trying to get rid of the 8-hour workday less than a decade ago, for example).

This war against organized labor is nothing new. Whatever rights workers have were paid for in blood by militant workers in the labor movement in the century prior to WWII. This history is not a phenomenon limited to coal mines in West Virginia. In Minot, ND IWW workers were involved in "free speech fights" in the first quarter of the 20th Century, battling against city ordinances that made it illegal to speak in public to crowds in the streets by making themselves subject to arrest (in assembly line fashion), until the city was pressured by the population to repeal such ordinances.

The event I attended on April 4th illustrated why we need the Left in this country. Without an organized Left, the foundations of Democracy will not hold. Without an organized Left, our options are facile Liberals who amount to lapdogs for power, criticizing everything, but not lifting a finger to do much accept buy whatever the corporations tell them will save the planet, whatever the NGO's tell them will save the children, whatever Starbucks tells them will save the world. Without an organized Left, our other option is a sectarian Right, split between the old guard business class (and their apologists) and the new wave of Teabaggers for whom the footings of the modern state are simply more wood to be thrown on the fire. Faced with these two options, is it any wonder that over the last 50 years the US has dropped from 1st to below 20th in test scores among industrialized countries. Is it any wonder that wages have stagnated over the last 30 years, but the income gap between the richest few and the rest of the population has increased?

FULL story at link.