Why the Left needs to stop attacking unions [View all]

[Willie Pep]

Erik Loomis over at Lawyers, Guns and Money has a great post on the devastating impact the judiciary has had on organized labor.

As I have said repeatedly, for all that so-called union reformers want to blame unions for their own problems today, it just doesn’t fit the evidence. Even if many union leaders were (or are) lame and making questionable decisions, it’s far more accurate to place labor’s demise at the hands of the government.

You can read the entire post here: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/09/courts-devastated-organized-labor

I think this is an important post for Labor Day weekend because there is a strong tendency among some left-wing people today to blame unions and union officials for all of the problems of the labor movement. Some on the Left like to repeat talking points about union leaders that you would likely hear on talk radio or Fox News, including attacking unions for being too close (some would say subservient) to the Democrats and spending more time on politics than organizing. But as Loomis points out, whether organizing is successful or not is heavily dependent on the legal environment that unions find themselves in, which means that unions have to care about things like who makes appointments to the judiciary and the NLRB which means that unions have to care about politics whether they want to or not. This is why labor unions are usually close to the Democratic Party, because they need political allies and most Democrats are much more receptive to labor than are most Republicans.

Finally, in a related piece Loomis throws some cold water on the tendency of some on the Left to romanticize working-class activism. Many working-class people are not liberals and this includes many union members, so the theory that unions just need to be more radical is a bit unrealistic when you take into account the fact that many union members are far from being liberals, let alone left-wing activist types.

See: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/09/labor-historians-white-working-class-trump-voters

I am not trying to argue that all union leaders are super liberals either or that corruption and incompetence doesn't exist in the ranks of organized labor but union leadership is usually more liberal than the rank-and-file and tends to understand the importance of needing political allies and getting people to the polls for the Democrats in most cases. Some people on the Left are naive about the prospects of working-class radicalism and they would be wise to stop attacking the people who are in the trenches doing most of the fighting these days. Honestly, I am tired of seeing the Left spend more time attacking the Democrats, unions and other allies instead of the Republicans, the Koch brothers and other right-wing forces.