The Right Wing Has a Vast, Secret Plot to Destroy Unions for Good. Here’s How to Fight Back.
The vast right-wing network of Koch brother-funded “think tanks” is now plotting to finish off the public sector labor movement once and for all. In a series of fundraising documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy of Madison, Wis., and published in the Guardian, the CEO of a cartel of 66 well-funded arch-conservative state capitol lobbying outfits promises funders a “once-in-a-lifetime chance to reverse the failed policies of the American left.” Tracie Sharp, the leader of the States Policy Network (SPN), goes on to explain that the pathway to permanent right-wing victory is to “defund and defang” unions that rely on the legal protections of state labor law. Though less well-known, the SPN is something of a sister organization to the American Legislative and Exchange Council (ALEC), which writes cookie cutter “model legislation” for right-wing state legislators. SPN affiliates, like Michigan’s Mackinac Center and Ohio’s Buckeye Institute, promote […]
Trump Wants To Privatize Air Traffic Control. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Promising “cheaper, faster and safer travel,” the Trump administration announced a plan this week to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system. The announcement Monday marked the first day of the administration’s “infrastructure week,” a series of publicity events around one of the only areas of the president’s agenda that has intrigued some union leaders and Democratic legislators. What they had hoped for was an increase in public spending to create good jobs and repair our nation’s transportation systems. What Trump wants is to give public assets away to corporate interests, while reducing pay and benefit standards for workers. The official justification for privatizing air traffic control is to speed the conversion from a radar-based system to a more accurate GPS one. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been converting the system, but it does not anticipate finishing the job until 2020. An actual investment in infrastructure could give the […]
What the Big May Day Strike in a Small Pennsylvania City Teaches Us About Organizing
The first May Day of the Trump era saw scores of major actions in cities across the United States, but perhaps the most impressive demonstration of worker power took place in the small city of Reading, Pennsylvania. There, 127 stores—about three-quarters of the businesses in the city—shut down in protest, and an additional 500 mostly agricultural and construction workers participated in the general strike, according to organizers. The protest even spread to nearby Allentown, where two dozen more stores closed for the day. Spearheaded by Make the Road Pennsylvania, a community group that organizes working-class Latinos, the strike was a protest of the county sheriff’s plan to authorize his deputies to act as immigration agents, in cooperation with the Trump administration’s assault on immigrants. While Berks County is one of the economically depressed areas that carried Trump to a win in Pennsylvania, the people of Reading are as unlikely to […]
From Company Town to Rebel City: Richmond, California Shows How Progressives Can Win
Rebel cities have long been laboratories for progressive policy experimentation. Specifically, the small Bay Area city of Richmond, California has stood out for its boldness. It’s now the subject of a new book by Steve Early, Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City, set to be released next Tuesday by Beacon Press. A long-time labor activist and frequent writer for In These Times, Early moved to Richmond five years ago. After “thirty-two Boston-area winters,” the placid weather was more of a draw than the city’s vibrant urban reform movement, Early writes. But, naturally, he soon got involved and began taking notes, eventually producing a lively read—an intimate, warts-and-all look at how a small band of activists fought for and won a slightly better world at home. His book is a ray of hope for anyone wondering how to survive, and possibly even thrive, under […]
Fighting Trump Isn’t Enough—We Must Also Wage War Within the Democratic Party
What reasonable American does not feel some amount of bitterness about the stunning election win of the short-fingered vulgarian scion of an outer borough slumlord, who squandered a billion-dollar casino fortune, and reinvented himself as a reality TV star and racist demagogue? There’s plenty of acrimony to go around. The cadre of technocratic campaigners, pollsters and pundits trained to campaign on promises of “we’re not as awful as the other guys” is already pointing fingers at millennials, working-class whites, old people and Jill Stein voters. Then there are those of us who understand that we have a world to win and that we need to actually energize and motivate people to vote for something. We’re pissed that the Democratic establishment—including union leadership—manipulated the primary process to guarantee the human embodiment of “The Establishment” would win the nomination because it was her “turn.” And we’re pissed that she didn’t turn her […]
When the Hell Did the NLRB Become More Activist Than Labor?
When the hell did the federal government get bolder than most labor unions about asserting the legal rights of workers? On Monday, in a 3-1 ruling, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reversed a Bush the Younger-era precedent that gave employers a say over whether temporary and subcontracted workers can be included in the same bargaining unit as the regular, full-time employees with whom they work beside. Go figure, most employers said “no” to the proposition that people who work shoulder to shoulder, but are paid from separate checkbooks, could bargain together in the same union. But the new Miller & Anderson, Inc. decision could force subcontractors to bargain with a certified union over the wages and working conditions determined by the controlling employer. The ruling comes hot on the heels of the Board’s American Baptist Homes decision. That case re-established a balancing test for whether a boss’ employment of […]
Making Abortion Rights Real
The week began on a surprisingly strong note for reproductive justice advocates, as the US Supreme Court, by a 5–3 margin, overturned Texas’s draconian House Bill 2. The law, which Wendy Davis famously filibustered in her pink tennis shoes, purported to protect women’s health by requiring that health clinics providing abortion services “meet the standards for ambulatory surgical centers, including regulations concerning buildings, equipment and staffing” and that “doctors performing abortions . . . have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.” These regulations, which the Supreme Court found on Monday to be an “undue burden” for those seeking an abortion, would have shuttered half of the Texas facilities that perform abortions. Activists are rightly celebrating the ruling as a win for abortion rights. In Texas and elsewhere, women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies likely won’t have to contend with the anti-abortion statutes passed since the 2010 Tea Party wave. But […]
What Will It Take To Wake Up the ‘Sleeping Giant’ of the New Working Class?
The American working class has been dissed and dismissed. Our unions busted, our wages slashed, our homes foreclosed and our rents raised. We’re blamed for the rise of Trump, but otherwise do not exist in the media landscape. But the working class is a sleeping giant that is beginning to stir and will soon instigate a great campaign for racial and economic justice, according to a new book by Tamara Draut. A vice president of the liberal think tank Demos, Draut’s previous book, Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30- Somethings Can’t Get Ahead, explored the how the high cost of college, housing and health insurance, combined with stagnant wages and made the usual milestones of adulthood increasingly out of reach for millennials. Her new book, Sleeping Giant: How the New Working Class Will Transform America, attempts to connect the dots between the struggles of those millennials and the politics of […]
Bernie Sanders Wasn’t Our First Socialist Mayor: Remembering Milwaukee’s Socialist Party History
As the country’s politics take a right turn, an unlikely progressive wins office as mayor of a major U.S. city. In an era marked by conformity and the primacy of business interests over the common good, he has the temerity to call himself a socialist. Both locally and nationally, his example serves as a beacon of hope for the waning left and a lightening rod of criticism for the resurgent right. His fundamental decency and fealty to the democratic process and the public good see him continually reelected, with most voters regarding him on a first-name basis. He goes on to run a quixotic campaign for President. If this sounds familiar to fans of Bernie Sanders’ career, it should. But I am describing Frank Zeidler, the socialist mayor of Milwaukee who served three terms from 1948-1960. When the producers of the television series Happy Days wanted to cast a nostalgic […]
Our Political System Is in the Midst of a Massive Realignment. Here’s How the Left Should Respond.
America needs a New Democratic Party. No, I don’t mean a Democratic Party made new by a restored commitment to liberal idealism (although that would be useful, too). I mean an American version of Canada’s NDP: an explicitly socialist party that can win on a regional basis, credibly compete on a national basis and actually win on issues that matter. The leftist debate on electoral activism is depressingly reductive. It’s either be the “left-wing of the possible” within the Democratic party or immediately form a third party, as if we are not capable of sorting out complicated solutions for complicated times. We have a historic opportunity. Whether one realizes it or not, we are in the midst of a profound political realignment that could make a third party conceivable. The right-wing realignment and its pull on the Democrats A political realignment happens when the two main parties significantly alter their […]