Labor losing its power?

[delldude]

The US labor movement is on the ropes. Membership is way down and they are having huge problems gaining public support.

As leading SEIU activist Stephen Lerner told a March 19, 2011, Building Solidarity through Community Power: Community-Labor Coalitions panel at New York’s Left Forum

Unions are almost dead we cannot survive doing what we do but the simple fact of the matter is community organizations are almost dead also

They don’t dare let you know that though.

More:

 

[SparrowHawk]

More:

Given what's happened in WI, NJ and other states as well, unions aren't losing their power they've already lost it. The Tea Party is their scapegoat & their leaders Larry Cohen & Richard Trumka are more problem than solution. These so called leaders are fighting the last war. Trumka when it comes to thuggery in the UMW of A is no better than the company gun thugs who shot at his ancestors.

First mistake was embracing one political party. Their votes should have been sold to the highest bidder, meaning the Party that promised AND delivered the most. Once they were safely (or thought they were) in fold of the Democratic Party. Time and time again the party of big Labor sold them down the river in order to keep the money flowing from Big Business.

Corruption has also aided in their downfall. This resulted in the Landrum-Griffith Act among others. One of Trumka's predecessors at the UMW of A was convicted of murdering his rival and his wife & daughter in PA. Not to mention his looting of the pension plan. It happens time and again where a national union will throw a local right under the bus. Happened with the UAW and Mark Trucks and in Austin, MN with the Hormel workers.

It's nearly impossible for a union to win a strike by any definition as while they weren't looking their so called friends in Washington, the Democrats were busy undermining them at every turn. Floating bills that had no chance of passing in order to hoodwink the Unions into complacency while gently pulling the rug out from under them.

Americans have an innate sense of fair play and no time for con jobs, these two factors are while GW Bush and Labor are where they are. Bush conned us on Iraq and the banks and Labor conned the American public into thinking that 40 years, a gold watch and a pension were realistic expectations in a capitalistic system where the only constant is change. Looting their own members dues for personal gain didn't help either.

This country is where it is because the last 2 President's are con artists. Unions are where they are for similar reasons. To me, the 2010 elections were a political Pearl Harbor in that the Congress aided and abetted by Bush and Obama tried to pull the wool over our eyes and this time the public reacted much in the way Yamamoto predicted from his quote after Pearl Harbor, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

10% Unemployment and $4.00/gal gas will awaken sleeping giants.