Facepalm

I’ll have several posts about Netroots Nation up over the next 2-3 days. But one thing I found myself doing was defending unions against the charge that they only look out for their own members. My general theory (and this is the way quite a few unions operate) goes like this: Yes, unions look out for their own members’ interests. That’s what they are supposed to do. But then they also look out for the collective working-class interest though their contributions to the AFL-CIO and the federation’s political campaigns to pass important legislation. But generally, though not always, they understand their role in the larger collective struggle and try to do the right thing.

And then I read this:

Backed with millions of dollars in contributions from business, the Committee to Save New York has been Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s most important ally in his battles with public-sector unions over government spending, pensions and teacher accountability.

But the committee turns out to have another source of money: a group of building trade unions who contributed $500,000 last year. Their decision to back Mr. Cuomo — and help finance an offensive against their public-sector brethren — illuminates a deepening fissure in the labor movement.

Labor officials said the union contributions to the business group in 2011, which were revealed in records filed with the federal Labor Department and interviews with people familiar with the donations, reflected workers’ deep unease about a slowdown in the construction industry in New York and their hope that Mr. Cuomo and the business committee could persuade voters and lawmakers to support publicly financed building projects and encourage growth.

Sigh.

It should be said that the building trade unions have traditionally been the least progressive unions within the AFL-CIO. These old, old, ancient AFL locals can be very craft-based with little sense of solidarity with other unions or progressive movements. After all, it was workers from the Building Trades and Construction Council of New York that participated in the infamous “hardhats vs. hippies” incident in 1970 that gave labor such a bad name with the anti-war movement (I know it was more than this but this was the worst moment). These unions are still awful. That anyone with any sense of labor solidarity would side with Andrew Cuomo over public sector unions is pretty sickening. Glad to know the New York building trade unions are as reactionary as they were 40 years ago.