How Unions Gave My Redneck Family a Chance at the American Dream

By Joe Bageant, AlterNet. Posted June 22, 2009.

In fact, things are worse than ever. Employers can now force employees to attend anti-union presentations during the workday, at captive-audience meetings in which union supporters are forbidden to speak under threat of insubordination. Back in 1978, when I was working to organize the local newspaper, the management was not even allowed to speak to the workers on the matter until after the union vote results were in.

Then there's President Barack Obama, the guy soft-headed liberals think is going to turn this dreadful scenario around. He talks a good game about unions, when he is forced to. But Obama is working on the things that will "create a legacy," such as health care (which is simply a new way to pay the insurance industry's blackmail) or the economy (by appointing the same damned people who fucked it up to fix it), and immigration reform, a nicely nebulous term that can mean whatever either side of the issue wants it to mean.

Obama's not going to publicly ignore the unions. But he's not going to sink much political capital into this corporatized nation's most radioactive issue either. For him, union legislation is just a distraction from the "legacy building" of a very charming, savvy and ambitious politician. That is the assessment of Glenn Spencer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the most anti-union institutions in America. (Many thanks to Washington writer Ken Silverstein for publishing Spencer's astute observations.)

Things are changing though. Union membership climbed 12 percent last year. Twelve percent of 12 percent ain't shit, but at least it's forward motion. At that rate, it will only take us 21 years to get back to the 1956 level of union membership.

We can expect no miracles, top union leaders are still among the Empire's elites. And they are still technically accountable to whatever membership will still have jobs when the 2012 elections roll around. The least they could do is make it harder for Obama to lick off those millions of hard-earned union-support dollars from the top of the campaign contribution ice cream cone as he did in '08.

But who can be sure? Because the new union elites and their minions are lawyers and marketing professionals. They've never come down off the mountain with both stacks red hot, or gathered on the porch of a crappy but new roadside bungalow, proud because they owned it, and stood up straight because, "Boys, your daddy is coming home."

I'm not going into the current brouhaha about the Employee Free Choice Act or the "card check" bullshit here. Because what it's gonna take to restore dignity to laboring America ain't gonna be more legislative wrangling. What it takes won't be pretty, maybe not even legal in this new police state, and sure as hell won't be "within the system." Because the system is the problem.

So it will be up to us, just like it always has been … the writer, the Nicaraguan janitor, the 40-year-old family man forced to bag groceries at Wal-Mart, the pizza delivery guy, the welder and the certified nurse … the long-haul trucker and the short-order cook. And they will snicker at us from their gilded roosts on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Some people are bound to get hurt in the necessary fight. In fact, people need to be willing to get hurt in the fight. That's the way we once gained worker rights, and that's the way we will get them back. The only way to get rid of the robbers' roost is to burn the fucker down.

Anyone got a match?

See more stories tagged with: labor, unions, teamsters

Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (Random House Crown), about working-class America. A complete archive of his online work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on his Web site.

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