The reason for the withdrawal of 1.8 million union members is ironically due to a precipitous drop in membership over the past three decades. How a split in the AFL-CIO will become conducive to a stronger labor movement is not known. What this is; is this is another victory for the Republican ruse over the working man.
Conservatives bubble over with glee when talking about labor's love affair with the right. Their concern is oozing with glibnesss, though. The truth is that the Republicans have been so successful in winning over the working man and farmers, not by giving them a concrete message to win them over, but by muddling the message. The GOP knows that elections cannot and will not be won by any exercise of rational reasoning. Instead, the "3 G's" are liberally slathered all over the Great Plains and the Bible Belt. Screaming GUNS, GAYS, and GOD! reverses any logically thinking and allows for the voters to, as Thomas Frank called in his book, What's the Matter with Kansas?--"vote against one's economic self-interest."
What's this how to do with the dwindling labor roles?
The disconnect between labor's economic well-being and their election day votes is the problem with labor unions. Couple that with the illogical argument many spout and mimic from conservative leaders that the union's merely take their dues and funnel it to leftwing causes. Well, the leftwing cause IS the worker's cause!
During the 2004 Presidential election, Bush vowed not to subsidize corn used to make ethanol while in Iowa, one of the nation's largest producer of corn and he still won the state.
As the AFL-CIO president, Jim Sweeney said:
At a time when our corporate and conservative adversaries have created the most powerful anti-worker political machine in the history of our country, a divided movement hurts the hopes of working families for a better life.
The Republicans friendliness to labor is akin to a friend serving you filet mignon and lobster laced with arsenic. Working man Republicans fashion this faux, barely alpha male bravado around the GOP's homoerotic love of guns and anti-gay rhetoric while their jobs increasingly offer fewer or non-existent benefits, lower wages in return for longer hours and few opportunities for overtime. Go figure?
The number of workers with union cards will only increase when the electorate comes to the realization that the good friends in Washington are actually enemies to their quality of life.
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