NEXT KCDW MEETING – APR 27TH  For our April meeting, we will return to the AA China Buffet located at 3583 Wheaton Way. Our speaker will be Tawnya Weintraub from the Kitsap Council on Aging. She will talk about services available for seniors and how the budget cuts are affecting them.

WHY UNIONS MATTER
by Jo Fox Burr

On April 8th, Washington State Labor Unions held a rally in Olympia with about 7000 in attendance. Kitsap County Democrats were there holding our banner high. And when the crowd was asked to chant – first “We are [union, seniors, or whatever we were that brought us there] followed by “We are One.” We chanted “We are Democrats. We are One.” There were at least two other Democratic Groups there as was the Chair of the Washington State Democrats – Dwight Pelz. Republican Party representatives were, of course, nowhere in sight.

Why were we there? Because the very existence of unions is under attack by the likes of Wisconsin’s Governor, Scott Walker, and his puppet masters, the Koch Brothers and their cohorts. Because the strength of unions directly correlates to the well-being of the working middle class. And because the greed of wealthy oligarchs has driven the Walker puppet types to so overplay their hand that a window of opportunity has opened that we cannot afford to waste. 

Since 1979, the average income of the top 1% has risen from half a million to about $1.75 million before taxes, while the average income of the bottom 80% has virtually stayed the same. In the mid-1950’s, 35% of the private sector workforce were union members. The actual number of union members peaked in the 1970’s. In 1979 unions began a decline that has never been recovered. Currently, only about 12% of the workforce is unionized. Clearly, this decline is a factor in the growing gap between the rich and poor. Strong unions raise wages not only for themselves, but for nonunion workers, as employers are forced to match union wages to compete for competent workers. Strong unions also increase the safety and quality of the workplace. As unions have weakened, the middle class has suffered and their income has stagnated.

What started this slide? According to James Kwak in the The Importance of the 1970s, the super-rich businesses began pooling their resources in the early 1970s to gain political dominance. The number of companies with registered lobbyists in Washington was 175 in 1971. By 1982, there were nearly 2,500. Through these lobbyists and other political approaches, corporations strengthened their political muscle. The Republican Party, at least in the early years, was the vehicle they used to enact their agenda. To increase their dominance they had to crush union power.

In 1981 Ronald Reagan became President. Using his voodoo Trickle Down Economics as justification, he lowered the tax rate for millionaires from 53.3% to 47.7%. Using the same excuse, Bush II reduced this tax rate to 32.4%. In 1981 in what was likely the first blow of the oligarchs against unions, Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers’ Union. Then there was his famous statement that “Government is not the solution… Government is the problem.” This cast a cloud over government workers because, among other things, they enforce the laws passed by federal and state legislators to protect the common good. Reagan convinced many people that instead of being industrious government servants working for the betterment of our country, they were lazy bureaucrats living high off tax dollars, enforcing regulations that interfered with corporate freedoms. By attacking the unions, the oligarchs weakened the enforcement of regulations.

In Wisconsin as in several other states, this attempt to undo government regulations merged with a concerted attempt to decimate state worker unions. Using the budget crisis as an excuse, Walker blamed “excessive” pensions and health care benefits of state workers for the deficit crisis. Of course, no mention was made of the unethical activities of Wall Street which actually caused pension funds to lose about a third of their value. Wall Street’s culpability for the recession was forgotten by Walker. What a surprise it must have been to find much of the public did not accept this thin veneer of an explanation! What a surprise it must have been that 14 courageous Wisconsin Senate Democrats managed to impede enactment of this law! What a surprise it must have been to find these 14 heralded as heroes, while Walker became a villain.

Unions are not perfect institutions. They are not without corruption and some of their policies may benefit from revision – but they are the force which drives the well-being of the middle class and the middle class is vital for the health of any Democracy. Right now, thanks in large part to Walker, the recognition of the intrinsic value of unions is growing. We as Democrats must do whatever we can to support them and encourage their growth. If we don’t, big business wins and with that a whole slew of disastrous events will follow.

“You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.”  Paul Krugman