Labor Responses to the State of the Union
The general tenor of the labor community is that Obama was typically tepid on labor issues in his State of the Union. He mentioned in passing a union workplace in Milwaukee as an example of jobs being brought back to the United States, but the union was incidental to the point. He praised the UAW for taking concessions in the GM deal. And he talked about his usual teacher reform game, one of only two places Mitch Daniels said there was common ground among the two of them. Given that Daniels is leading the anti-union charge in Indiana (in fact, the right to work a person to death law passed the Indiana House today and is virtually guaranteed to become law), that’s both a very bad sign and quite typical of Obama’s weak support for his labor allies.
Of course, Obama presented a lot of common-sense ideas in his speech and his support for a functioning NLRB is commendable. But even though he needs union support desperately in his reelection campaign, all he’s really offering labor is that he’s better than a Republican. Which is something, but not enough. Despite internal annoyances at Obama, all the unions will fall in line and support the president; many unions sent out press releases praising the speech, though with varied amounts of enthusiasm.
A couple of links:
Timothy Noah calls “unions” the “most conspicuously absent” word in the speech and notes rightly that Obama’s reference to the so-called greatest generation and their successes existed precisely because strong unions forced bosses to shift resources into the pockets of working-class people. Obama either doesn’t get that or is more or less indifferent to it.
Mike Elk provides a good overview to the entire issue, both the disappointments and positives of the speech.
Of course, we might be disappointed in Obama, but he’s vastly better than Mitch Daniels’ pro-capitalist hackery. Josh Eidelson discusses the brazenness of Republicans choosing Daniels to give their response and discusses the issue of his unionbusting in great detail. He also notes the odd appeal that Daniels has to a lot of left-center media types, ranging from Chris Matthews to Ezra Klein.
The most famous line from “Wall Street” is “Greed is good”, which, of course, Michael Douglas never actually says. The better one has always been Martin Sheen’s:
“The only difference between the Pyramids and the Empire State Building is the Egyptians didn’t allow unions.”
I think unions missed their chance in 2008.
If the nationals could have come together to endorse and work for either Obama or Clinton at the beginning that person would have won and perhaps felt they owed the unions.* Instead the unions split their endorsements and became somewhat of an afterthought with the exceptions of Nevada and Pennsylvania.
There doesn’t appear to be much leverage available to the unions at the moment. They will work with whomever the Democratic president is no matter how unsupportive since the Republicans are adversarial.
* Backing Obama might have gotten the better pay off since Clinton was ‘inevitable’
Yes, quite a shame they went counterintuitive and threw their support behind Giuliani.
I was particularly moved by Obama’s establishment of a Unit on Mortgage Origination and Securitization Abuses. He truly is inspiring.
I was also impressed by the way all of the criticism in recent months by Dem pundits and strategists regarding US foreign policy has affected the president’s view on drone attacks, unlimited assassination of suspected terrorists, and the NDAA. If these issues were simply accepted as part of a bipartisan consensus, you would never witness such re-thinking.
Sure, he could have mentioned unions a bit more or the OWS movement, but his real concern was income inequality – and unless, or until, unions and OWS more enthusiastically back his not-quite-yet effective economic policies this disparity will not be diminished.
He also notes the odd appeal that Daniels has to a lot of left-center media types, ranging from Chris Matthews to Ezra Klein.
Now that’s some funny shit. Not quite as hallucinogenic as what the president was peddling, but then I suppose Matthews and Klein bear as much of a resemblance to the left as Obama does to a Democrat.
I’m so old I can remember when Don Rumsfeld wasstill at the top of Ezra’s right-wing daddies crush list.
That Klein tweet isn’t so bad; he just says he “likes” Daniels, which could mean a whole lot of things, and then links to the destruction he wrought as Bush’s OMB director. Nothin wrong with that.
The same can’t be said, though, for a piece he wrote about the rebuttal speech that tries to judge Daniels’ work as OMB director and governor. Klein says all the right things about the national budget, but is an absolute goddamn asshead about his time as governor.
Does Ezra write about how Daniels has quadrupled Indiana’s debt, took $300 million from the schools to use as a tax cut, wasted a billion dollars mismanaging the Indiana social service bureaucracy, shifted property taxes into sales taxes, and created one of the largest discrepancies between tax burden and income level?
No. He has nothing to critique about Daniels’ gubernatorial tenure, but goes deep enough in the weeds of his record to cite one policy and one proposed policy that would make him too liberal for the Republican primaries.
Another Martin Sheen “Wall Street” line is “I don’t go to bed with no whore and I don’t wake up with no whore. That’s how I live with myself.” Not everyone can be Doghouse Riley (though Christ knows we need a lot more like him), but is it really so hard to live up to the morality of a fucking Oliver Stone movie?
I’m not sure there was anything brazen about it – Daniels knew full well he wouldn’t face serious push back.
I think you’re right about the unions falling in line. It strikes me the bigger question is what that means. They could continue to kick up a stink even as they support energetically the reelection campaign (i.e. voice not exit). They could shift more energies to the state level. When you look at all the damage that the GOP has inflicted over the past few years, this approach makes a lot of sense. (Democratic governors haven’t always been great either). I doubt this will happen but it would make sense. If unions could shift to organizing and mobilizing, it would likely have a bigger impact than adding their money to run more ads. In the end, Obama isn’t going to tell the story of labor in making the broad middle class of the post-war period in part because so few other Democrats would.
One would hope the unions would get involved in
the seven races for the Senate where the Democratic incumbent is retiring.
Fuck some of those guys, too.
I was roundly laughed at in 2006 for telling people that Jim Webb (who writes a ripping good yarn, I will give him that) had not actually changed all that much from the days when he was a staunch Republican and would stab us in the back as soon as the country stepped back from the brink Bush brought us to even a little bit.
I had thought said stabbing would take the form of him becoming another Ben Nelson, rather than him taking millions of progressive dollars and man-hours and then bowing out after one term. I suppose that’s marginally better.
Richard Trumka has made it quite clear that the AFL-CIO is going to withdraw its efforts from Democrats who haven’t had labor’s back, and put extra energy into supporting those who have, as opposed to pushing the Democratic line across the board. There are quite a few members of Congress who are going to receive quite a bit less help form the unions in this election than they have in the past.
But here’s the thing: Obama isn’t among those Democrats who will be let go. Labor isn’t a collection of blog commenters. They care about actual, substantive goals like favorable NLRB decisions, much more than about symbolic validation in public forums.