Waging class war upon the workers

America's aristocracy is flourishing, at the expense of exploited workers.

In 2011, federal and state governments plan major social services cuts and other ways to address deficit and budget problems through less social spending, layoffs, and other draconian measures. Incoming House Republicans promise budget cuts of $100 billion, largely on the backs of working Americans. However, achieving it requires 20% cuts across the board. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as education, transportation , according to House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, "That's where you get the savings."

The National Conference of State Legislatures forecasts $83 billion in combined state deficits, requiring greater cuts than earlier, absent federal government help or too little. As a result, major public spending cuts, wage freezes, and lower benefits are planned. Moreover, public employee unions are targeted, threatening organized labor overall.

New York Times writer Steven Greenhouse wrote:
"Faced with growing budget deficits and restive taxpayers, elected officials from Maine to Alabama, Ohio to Arizona, are pushing new legislation to limit the power of labor unions, particularly those representing government workers, in collective bargaining and politics."

Lawmakers in Indiana, Maine, Missouri and at least seven other states plan legislation to bar private sector unions from requiring rank and file members to pay dues or fees, reducing union treasury funds. Ohio's new Republican governor, like others, wants public school teacher strikes prohibited, and in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker is targeting the right of state employees to form unions and bargain collectively.

According to Stewart Acuff, Utility Workers Union of America chief of staff:
"This is a very serious effort by the radical right wing to cripple the American labor movement and remove it as a serious force in American life. They want unfettered, unrestricted corporate power, and the only thing standing in the way of absolute corporate domination of our society and what's left of our democracy is the American labor movement."

[But] Not the way it's been run for years as a result of corrupted union bosses on the take, siding with business, getting big salaries and fancy perks, and being more concerned about their own welfare than rank and file members.

Labor historian Paul Buhle sees organized labor in a state of collapse and in the March/April 2010 Against the Current issue writes "....a paucity of anything like solidarity, let alone a strategy for a repowered, reorganized, 21st-century labor movement" haunts American worker struggles going forward. Moreover, recent reports suggest possible bankruptcy for "any number of the international unions as well as the AFL-CIO at large, a situation made only worse by in-fighting. This is a bleak irony, indeed, following so much enthusiasm" over Obama's election.
In 2008, Big Labor contributed over $400 million to Democrat candidates and tens of millions more in 2010. In return, Obama and congressional Democrats waged war on working Americans, endorsing layoffs, wage and benefit cuts, gutted work rules, lost pensions, and promised hope from the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The Democrat-controlled Congress rejected it. It would have been the first pro-labor reform since the landmark 1935 Wagner Act, letting workers for the first time bargain collectively with management on even terms. Though modest by comparison, it promised progress at a time organized labor is virtually impotent, because union bosses, like Democrats, side more with business than their own rank and file.

Compounded by huge budget cuts, layoffs, and other social sacrifices, American workers face greater poverty, extended hard times, disenfranchisement, and bleaker futures. Moreover, their pensions are under attack. States wanting liability shifted from them to workers, leaving them vulnerable on their own. It's consistent with destructive neoliberal "reforms," wanting all public benefits eroded and eliminated.Working Americans are being downsized toward extinction through loss of high pay/good benefit jobs, labor rights, political empowerment, standard of living gains, personal freedoms, and retirement futures.

Stephen Lendman
Adapted from here