Unions Facing the Trump Era by Jonathan Rosenblum January 3, 2017 [View all]

Beginning in 1979 in Seattle, WA, Jim Levitt expertly fabricated custom aircraft parts and tools, helping make the Boeing Company one of the most successful businesses in the world. But in 2013, corporate executives issued a threat: They demanded that Levitt and his fellow machinists surrender their pensions, and that Washington State political leaders hand over a record $8.7 billion in tax benefits. In exchange the company promised to keep production jobs in-state. The Democratic governor of Washington, along with virtually the entire political establishment, caved in to the blackmail. So did Levitt’s international union leadership – they had bargained the deal secretly with the company. The capitulation cost 32,000 Boeing workers their pensions.

“We’ve lost collective bargaining, for all intents and purposes,” Levitt observed in the wake of the corporate blackmail. In recent weeks we’ve seen no shortage of reasons – and excuses – for why Hillary Clinton blew the election and Donald Trump will be our next president: the Russians, an unfair Electoral College system, FBI Director James Comey, xenophobia/racism/sexism, a weak Democratic candidate, Wikileaks, and faked news. Some Clinton backers even blame the “tough” primary run that Bernie Sanders gave their candidate. What’s barely given any attention in the mainstream media is the role that decades of destruction of union power played in the 2016 election debacle. But it’s no mystery to Levitt, his fellow Boeing workers, and millions of other workers from all walks of life who’ve justifiably grown cynical about a political establishment that repeatedly has failed them over the years.

This, my friends, is the difference between third way and New Deal socialist Democrats. A lot of people are cynical, and we blame them for that, particularly if they voted Trump or worse, did not vote at all. But Levitt and his fellow union machinists were betrayed, simple as that. They have every right to be cynical; they had a reasonable expectation that our party to help them when Boeing made the attempt to steal their pensions, but our party did not.

Decades of Democratic leaders caving in to corporate crimes has so eroded our party's base that it has made the entire American public a bit cynical. It is sometimes difficult to understand what our party actually stands for, particularly when we can observe that much of our leadership has the same corporate donor base as the other party.

We have to learn, people, to better articulate our positions (and please don't say we did a good job of that, because we did NOT). We must also learn to stand up against the immorality and odiousness of corporate greed like the Washington Dems DID NOT. We need to call things like what Boeing did what they are - horrible moral wrongs foisted off on innocent people so corporate coffers can become even more swollen with profits.

Start doing that and backing it up with deeds, legislation, and votes, and we will begin winning elections. Most Americans HATE living and functioning in this dog-eat-dog 'real world.' They yearn for something else, leaders who at least try to mitigate the worst of the corporate greed, employee, consumer and environmental abuse, and who address the yearning we all have within our hearts for a kinder, gentler world where we can at least sometimes believe justice will prevail.

I don't, in short, want to be told that my way isn't even feasible because that's not how the world works. blah blah blah.

Because to that I say, "WHY????"

When our party leaders hear messages like this, and act on them, then we will begin winning elections and we together will create a better world.