Prospect via Ezra Klein's blog: What Max Baucus Can Learn from the Labor Movement

[flpoljunkie]

Emphasis mine.

What Max Baucus Can Learn From the Labor Movement

As Labor Day approaches, Richard Trumka gets tough with uncooperative Democrats.

TIM FERNHOLZ
September 2, 2009

Unless you are among the 27 percent of American workers who don't get Monday off, you're probably looking forward to next week's Labor Day holiday, with its barbecues and back-to-school sales. But organized labor -- which earned us the holiday in a political sop after soldiers and U.S. marshals killed striking workers in 1894 -- sees no respite in the day as it fights an uphill battle for tangible political victories in Washington. <snip>

Health-care reform negotiations have stalled in the Senate as Republicans involved in Sen. Max Baucus' bipartisan talks have gradually revealed they don't want a deal at all but would prefer to kill reform efforts. The Employee Free Choice Act, an effort to make it easier for workers to join unions, lost steam last spring as conservatives made hay with mendacious claims that the bill would take away workers' secret ballots. Health-care reform could, in theory, be passed with a simple majority, but EFCA is at the mercy of a filibuster that could only be broken with a united Democratic caucus -- an unlikely outcome, given the loss of Sen. Ted Kennedy, the illness of Sen. Robert Byrd, and the wavering of various moderate Democrats from states including Arkansas, Colorado, and Nebraska.

That puts labor in a pickle. They've spent a lot of money and time helping elect a Democratic government, but they haven't yet seen much return in policy changes, despite dark conservative whisperings that labor is somehow running the show in Washington. But in two weeks, at a national convention set to include a speech from Obama, John Sweeney, the venerable president of the AFL-CIO, will step down after 14 years, in favor of Richard Trumka, the organization's secretary-treasurer. Trumka gained notice last year with a fiery, plainspoken speech endorsing Obama and frankly urging white voters to get over their racial discomfort with the candidate.

Recently, Trumka delivered another union hall stem-winder, this time against the moderate and conservative Democrats who have been the chief opponents of the White House's progressive agenda: "We need to send them a special message: It's that you may have forgotten what the labor movement did to get you elected, but, by God, we never will! And if you stab us in the back on health care this year, don't you dare ask us for our support next year!" (Labor unions have been the largest contributors to conservative House Democrats this year.)

more here...

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=what_max_baucus_can_learn_from_the_labor_movement