Leaders Betray Labor

Here is a 2008 address to the UC Berkeley law community on the state of the economy and labor law by a top man at the AFL-CIO.

The sad part is he is representing labor. In his article he notes the PATCO strike of 1981 in which Pres. Reagan busted the air traffic controllers union. (Never mind the contradictions of government employees forming a union.) While Reagan was busting that union, I was sitting across the table from ILWU negotiators settling the 1982 Longshoreman's Master Contract. The Longshoremen are considered the most militant union. Indeed, at least two people were killed within the union during these events, and several others injured in violence. I had a newborn daughter at home, so I considered arming myself but the violence seemed to be union-centered.

The strike issue was "unfunded pension liabilities." The unions had done an excellent job of getting labor into the middle class by forcing a cut of the profits from the USA system to come their way. Being the last man standing in a world wide war, USA was bound to experience tremendous growth as outsized tribute flowed to the victor. Labor got their fair share of the flow. (The problem of empire and exploitation of others is not addressed, but at least USA labor got a cut of the action.)

Would that man could control all things, then all would be well. The actuarial tables supporting promises made in union contracts regarding pension funds proved too optimistic (a problem seen today, and we'll continue to see).

It appears to me that as big labor and big business joined big government, they conspired against the rank and file to feather their own beds and steal the hard-fought gains of the rank and file. I persoanlly believe the reasaon Jimmy Hoffa was murdered is that Hoffa saw this happening and was opposed to theft of the workers income. Hoffa had the power to stop it. Thus he sleeps under some Detroit suburb strip mall parking lot. In the decade after Hoffa's disappearance, USA truckers lost a lifetime of gains, and have never recovered. Consumers got the benefit of deregulation, but increase generated was directed to the government in new taxes and big business in profits. With Hoffa there would have been blood in the streets. Without Hoffa, the game plan is being replayed time and time agains. Boom gold, bust Patco pensions. Boom S&L, but truckers pensions. Boom dotcom, bust pilots. Boom housing, bust just about everyone. That might be too greedy, so just in case we now have Marines and Army on patrol in American cities, like in Iraqi cities. What goes around comes around.

The death of the USA union movement came when government workers were allowed to organize. House unions are a contradiction in terms, and when the government forms house unions, you get the double whammy of the people organizing against themselves, which is unsupportable in law and logic. The clear inevitability here is as this system helps ruin the economy, and government repudiates its promises to government labor, the government unions have no one to turn to for redress. Think PATCO strikers.

For the longshoremen the problem was that a wave of longshoremen were retiring by 1975 and finding their pensions were not keeping up with inflation and the pension funds no longer pencilled out to cover future obligations. Thus "unfunded pension liabilities."

This fellow is arguing that laws should be written to benefit labor, and take into consideration: global warming, single payer health care, auto bailouts, you name it, he argues labor should be secondary to the will of the politicians.

How sad. When Pacific Northwest laborers (Washington and British Columbia) volunteered to fight the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet agents found their views unacceptable, and their independence of mind dangerous. The powers that be abused these volunteers, at one point going so far as to confiscating the Canadians' passports. Why? It turns out one Canadian looked like a Soviet assassin, so his passport was given to the assassin to gain entry into Mexico to murder Leon Trotsky. Thus beginning a long history of Canadian passports used by state thugs for disguise.

This independence of mind is well reflected in the Seattle area, where two separate longshoreman unions exist, one in Seattle and one in Tacoma, that have materially different contracts with the stevedoring companies, something unheard of in lesser unions.

Fascism is simply the system in which business and government are one. And here a top labor advocate is arguing labor should be subservient to government, as though the two have anything to do with each other. A fish and a bicycle would have more in common.

With the lockdown on labor in USA, workers do not have the freedom to organize and advance their cause. AS in business and politics and religion and academia, the top people have irresponsibly sold out, and there is no recourse for those who object.

As in every field, labor action is wide open for innovation.

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