Crushing the Unions

I'm not a huge fan of public service unions, but they are one of the few remaining institutions with any ability or inclination to resist the big money oligarchy and speak up for what's left of the American middle class. One of the huge Republican successes of the past thirty years was breaking American private sector unions, mainly by shipping the jobs of union workers overseas, but also by anti-labor laws.

That's why Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's plan to destroy public sector unions by denying them collective bargaining rights is seen as a threat by many freedom loving Americans. Paul Krugman puts it this way:

What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.

Walker's plan won't save any money near term and probably not much long term, but that's not the point, says Krugman. The point is power. Power for the super rich.

So it’s not about the budget; it’s about the power.

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy.

Is there much hope for resistance? Not much, I suspect. By doing enough to save the country from economic collapse, but not enough to revive it, Obama gave Republicans a perfect opportunity to counterattack and shift the blame for their economic disaster.