Reply #86: "The U.S. labor movement's fight for relevancy" [View All]

[bread_and_roses]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/02

Cracks in the American Way, as Labor Stands Strong in Europe

by Michelle Chen

A report published by the International Trade Union Confederation (submitted, ironically, to that pillar of the postwar American hegemony, the World Trade Organization) takes a critical view of the U.S. workforce in the context of global human and labor rights. The ITUC's findings expose many of the cracks in the American Way, from a persistent gender wage gap to a failure to uphold child labor protections to a disturbing prevalence of human trafficking. One of the key systemic problems is the institutional weakness of the labor movement:

... The greater challenge looming over the One Nation campaign isn't just the optics—it's defining a weakened movement in an increasingly unstable political arena. And it's tapping into the public outrage that the right has shrewdly exploited in galvanizing new constituencies. So the groups carrying the “One Nation” banner might want to focus a bit less on projecting an aura of middle-class liberal harmony, and instead learn from the mass appeal of European union militancy.

We're running into one of the most dangerous aspects of the myth of American Exceptionalism: the concept that American workers somehow operate outside historical class antagoisms. Folks are lulled into the belief that deep social crisis can and should be resolved by individual upward mobility and by negotiating within establishment institutions (like Election Day or corporate-controlled collective bargaining).

I am not excited about yesterday's call to GOTV. Surely I am glad to see so many of "us" show up - and glad to see the Labor movement standing side-by-side with organizers for civil rights, anti-war, environment, but to see all that organizing effort used for a message to go out and vote does nothing for me - didn't we do that in '06 & '08? Actually, haven't I been working that line for years and years and years?

No. The only thing that's going to work is if ALL those Pols are "afraid" of "us" - if we are creating so much agitation that they don't dare sit in their bubble and call us "retards" and give away our lives and livelihoods to the Oligarchs. That's one thing that Obama and his Merry Band of Corporatists accomplished that even the illegitimate little Tinpot Dictator Wanna-Be couldn't - finally disabusing me of any last shreds of "hope" that electoral politics could make a real difference. I don't thank them for it - it was a comforting illusion. Elections were fun - the strategy, the fight, the intensity - it's seductive, and hard to give up. Too bad it's a waste of time.