Each year in the US, the labor unions get smaller and weaker. What is the cause of this since life is certainly not getting easier for the working class of our country?
Will the unions finally just evaporate into thin air? At this time they are providing about ZERO protection for the population from the corporations and their corporate run government.
In this blog we have talked at some length about the problems of ‘Peace’ organizations run as small businesses rather than as democratic community organizations opposed to war. We have the same phenomena in the Labor Movement and with the same results which are the demobilization of people rather than their mobilization. Organizations with small paid office staffs that separate themselves from the people they supposedly are serving lead to organizations that do not inspire people to move themselves. Why should they? They have no control over the organizations they are in. Apathy, disinterest, and demobilization results.
We also have to factor in the corporate control over trade unions themselves, which is achieved through the Democratic Party. Once again, this process parallels what happens with the “peace’ groups run by paid office types. In both types of organizations, trade union and ‘Peace’, the Conservatives office milieu that is cultivated by business models of organization see themselves a lobbyists, and lobbyists to the politicians. That becomes their principle focus. These types often talk about ‘speaking truth to power’, but what they mean is that they should spend all their time in some form of lobbying of Democratic Party politicians.
As a result, demonstrations and independent organizing are deliberately kept from happening, and excess value is given to hobnobbing with the corporate press currying ‘reporting’ and visiting the offices of political insiders with pleas in hand. This is activity that is seen as needing paid organizers separate from community control, whose folk are only seen as potentially messing up this lobbying effort.
This method of using business models inside community organizations has paralyzed the antiwar movement, and has beaten down the Labor Movement into non-existence. Ads a result, unions can hardly be found any where actually engaging in organizing. In fact, they can hardly be found in actually hanging on to the membership that is left. What it will take is a completely different model of organization to ever be able to rebuild these organizations. That is not presently on the scene and it will not occur in an easy manner, but will require much sacrifice and effort.
BTW, that foto of workers at the head of this column is taken from a day labor company site. These are some of the many workers abandoned by business unionism’s failed model of unionism.
