On Liberals and Unions ☀
But when you see what Unions have done to America…it’s hard to feel for the folks in Wisconsin. Have you been to Detroit? Have you really dug into the US Public School system? Utter disasters.
Detroit will come back. The school will be saved. But unions need to go in order for this to happen.
If you believe “unions” are the culprit for the malaise of American rustbelt and the main source of what ails the public school system, then you are simply ignorant of history.
I do not have time to launch into an extensive essay on the folly in the lament about “unions” destroying the auto and steel industry in America (based in large part on having worked in executive level of a major steel manufacturer). Suffice to say for now, it’s a patently false assertion, though one that a bamboozled public has swallowed, despite the plain contrary evidence.
And, by and large, school teachers are not the problem with the US public school system. To claim otherwise, is to direct scorn at a class of lower (mostly, though I realize there are those that do not fit in to this qualifier) paid, noble professionals motivated primarily by the love of the craft and worse, excuses administrator hindsight, ignores funding disparities, enables corporate pilfering and shenanigans. Worse, it completely disregards factors that study after study show are the largest — parents and poverty.
So, when I see this refrain, the castigation of working people for the plundering of oligarchs, it is simply shuddering—and I equate it to assent of sentiment for neo-feudalistic order. I believe it has been established that over the past 40 years (there is another post with an exploding reblog tally about wages, car/home price comparisons that illustrate this truth), wages have been stagnating (and actually, on the downslope, when you remove the top 10-20% of the economic pyramid from the aggregate), GDP has risen steadily and worker productivity has skyrocketed (even in the 21st century, albeit at not an equivalent 20th century rate).
Finally, liberals and unions have never been traditionally enthusiastic coalition partners. In the New Deal Coalition, unions, represented by working class folk, were just one element, along with intellectuals (the true “liberals”), and minorities. This coalition was torn asunder after civil rights conflict in the 1960s. Then further assaulted with the demise of unions, with the dawning of the Age of Reagan.
