Is Big Labor Done with the Democratic Party?
The relationship between "Big Labor," especially the AFL-CIO, and the Democratic party over the last few years has been painfully one-sided. Unions raise large sums of cash for Democrats in federal elections, help them whip up support for major votes, and get nothing in return. Is labor finally ready to reconsider this terrible deal? Perhaps!
Probably the most stinging backstab national Democrats gave labor was when they had 60 votes in the Senate a couple of years ago but still couldn't manage to pass card-check, a piece of legislation that would have made it easier for workforces to organize and which big unions considered their last big opportunity on the federal level to save private sector unionization from its rapid slide into extinction. The problem was that one Democratic senator, Blanche Lincoln — who technically represented the entire state of Arkansas but was essentially a voting lobbyist for the company Walmart — didn't want it, and it died. Blanche Lincoln still managed to lose her reelection bid in 2010 by double digits. So allowing her to get away with that, while perhaps dealing a death blow to the last decently organized liberal group in your national coalition, seems to have been a miscalculation.
Then this year, when teachers' unions became public enemy #1 and the source of all deficit problems and earthly evil according to new Republican (and even some Democratic) state legislatures across the country, national Democrats barely opened their mouths.
Rest of story: http://gawker.com/5834384/is-big-labor-done-with-the-democratic-party
The relationship between "Big Labor," especially the AFL-CIO, and the Democratic party over the last few years has been painfully one-sided. Unions raise large sums of cash for Democrats in federal elections, help them whip up support for major votes, and get nothing in return. Is labor finally ready to reconsider this terrible deal? Perhaps!Probably the most stinging backstab national Democrats gave labor was when they had 60 votes in the Senate a couple of years ago but still couldn't manage to pass card-check, a piece of legislation that would have made it easier for workforces to organize and which big unions considered their last big opportunity on the federal level to save private sector unionization from its rapid slide into extinction. The problem was that one Democratic senator, Blanche Lincoln — who technically represented the entire state of Arkansas but was essentially a voting lobbyist for the company Walmart — didn't want it, and it died. Blanche Lincoln still managed to lose her reelection bid in 2010 by double digits. So allowing her to get away with that, while perhaps dealing a death blow to the last decently organized liberal group in your national coalition, seems to have been a miscalculation.
Then this year, when teachers' unions became public enemy #1 and the source of all deficit problems and earthly evil according to new Republican (and even some Democratic) state legislatures across the country, national Democrats barely opened their mouths.
Rest of story: http://gawker.com/5834384/is-big-labor-done-with-the-democratic-party
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