I'll try again. I wrote a diary two days ago giving some history of the May 1st worker's holiday. Evidently people are so concerned about Senator Obama getting the labor vote that they are not interested in the history of labor, because it received little attention. Tomorrow countries around the world will be paying tribute to the workers who are the only ones who produce wealth in the world. American workers are in need of some drastic changes if they are ever to be justly rewarded for their labor. Harold Meyerson has some things to say about this in today's WaPo column. Take a few minutes and see how he relates this to the Obama campaign.
The column, entitled: "Landing the White Whale" speaks to the issue of the elusive working class using Captain Ahab's pursuit of the critter as a metaphor for Obama's quest for their votes. When I was young the idea that workers would be hard for a Democrat to land was rather silly. But now we see two Democrats competing for the worker's votes with every trick in the book. This may be a bit of an overstatement of the problem, but it gets the idea across:
In state after state (Ohio, Pennsylvania and now Indiana), Obama sets out to reel in his working-class quarry, and, in state after state, it eludes him. As Obama is still the likely nominee, many Democrats fear that come November, working-class whites will pull Obama and their party down to defeat.
Why should this be happening at a time when the Republicans' disdain for workers has cost the laboring producer of wealth so very much? Meyerson tells us:
Obama's problem, and the Democrats', goes well beyond the malignant nonsense of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Ever since the New Deal coalition was smashed on the reefs of race in the mid-1960s, working-class white support for Democratic presidential candidates has hemorrhaged. Though he won a plurality of the popular vote, Al Gore lost the white working class by 17 points in 2000; John Kerry lost it by 23 points four years later. Even though, as Ruy Teixeira of the Brookings Institution and Alan Abramowitz of Emory University demonstrated in a recent paper, the white working class is becoming an ever smaller share of the overall electorate, it will remain large enough through the middle of the century that the Democrats cannot afford to lose it by Kerrylike margins. But how, Democrats wonder, can they secure the white working-class vote?
I might try a naive answer: "By taking positions that might help them", but Meyerson has a more specific answer:
Well, they could start by re-unionizing it.
For the past 40 years -- ever since working-class whites began defecting from Democratic ranks -- the voting behaviors of unionized and non-unionized whites have differed radically. In every election during this period, union members have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate at a rate about a dozen points higher than the general public and about 15 points higher than the non-union sector. In 2004, for instance, Kerry won 61 percent of union members while getting just 45 percent support from nonmembers.
That doesn't mean union membership is the crucial determinant in all parts of the electorate. Single young African American women, for example, are likely to back the Democratic nominee at a rate in excess of 90 percent, whether or not they belong to a union. Where membership matters is among white voters, men in particular. White male union members gave Kerry 57 percent of their vote; white male nonmembers, 38 percent -- a 19-point gap. Fifty-seven percent of white male union members who didn't go to college voted for Kerry, while only 34 percent of white male, non-union non-collegians backed him -- a 23-point gap. Equivalently gaping differentials are present in exit polling clear back through 1972.
What do unions do that has such an impact? Chiefly, they remind their members what's at stake. In this primary season, the unions are split -- some for Obama, some for Hillary Clinton, some sitting it out. But come fall, they'll be telling their members that the election is about shoring up the American economy; that the free-trade, pro-corporate, deregulatory proclivities of John McCain will only weaken the nation more; and that the Democratic candidate's support for universal health care, managed trade, green-collar jobs and more affordable college is what the nation needs.
Now would be a good time to try the link above to my diary about Haymarket and May Day for it vividly describes the blood in the streets when workers faught so desperately for their rights. Image the audacity! They asked for (and eventually won) an 8 hour work day. How many have that now?
The social contract is all about everyone giving up something for the common good because they know that in the long run it will come back with dividends (no pun intended). What I am talking about here will probably get me in trouble, but when was the last time non-union people ever supported the unions or the right of workers to form unions? The right wing issue framers have done such a number on this one! Everyone knows that unions drive up prices for all of us and that they are corrupt and yadda yadda yadda. No, my friend, the absence of strong unions is the one biggest factor in our present mess. War, right wing dominance, and so much more are a result of our having sold out on the workers. Meyerson says it this way:
By every available measure, this messaging works. The problem for Democrats is that American employers have waged a hugely successful campaign against unions for the past 35 years, abetted by a dysfunctional labor law that imposes negligible penalties on employers for violating its terms and their employees' rights. For decades, as union membership declined from 35 percent of the workforce in the mid-1950s to 12 percent today (7.5 percent in the private sector), Democrats stood by and failed to strengthen workers' rights to organize.
It is good that the party seems united behind the Employee Free Choice Act. It is importand that workers be able to join unions again without fear of being fired. That is but a small step and so badly needed, yet it seems like a monumental task right now. There certainly must be a link between this situation and what has been happening at the polls. Meyerson tells us that:
Until such time as the EFCA is enacted, however, what can the Democrats do to avoid, or at least mitigate, the kind of working-class white wipeout that could cost them Ohio or Pennsylvania? Since 2004, the AFL-CIO has conducted a door-to-door membership drive in white working-class neighborhoods of key swing states, signing people up not for workplace representation but for certain union benefits -- and to enlist them in the federation's political program.
The program is called Working America and encompasses over 2 million workers in the midwest. Is this a worker's issue or an issue that belongs to every progressive? Is building organizations that will be there after the November election not a good model for other sectors of the population? As we watch the hanky panky take place during this crazy primary, maybe it would pay to remember the words of Joe Hill:
Don't mourn for me, organize!
It is not too late to incorporate into the efforts so many of us will be expending between now and November a dedicated effort to build lasting organizations that will work in solidarity with unions and others between elections to fight for things we all have lost in these dark years. Tomorrow is a good day to give this matter soome serious thought. The Haymarket massacre happened in Chicago. Yet it takes the rest of the world to remember as we forgo any National participation. Shame on us!