Union busting and the inequality of wealth

My father was a member of the International Association of Machinists. As a child I remember seeing the IAM newsletter, with its logo, on the bathroom floor.

Times have changed. Union membership has declined. Behind the union-busting of Wisconsin’s governor, there’s an issue larger than organized labor, however. Paul Krugman writes about this in a New York Times editorial. (emphasis added)

[W]hat’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. …

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions. …

[T]hey’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. …

There’s a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.

Rick Ungar at Forbes had a nice comment on what the Koch brothers were accomplishing in Wisconsin: “You really have to wonder how long it will take for Tea Party devotees to realize just how badly they are being used.”

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Image: IAM District 725

Paul Krugman, Wisconsin Power Play, The New York Times, February 20, 2011