Tag: Public Unions

This article was provided exclusively to the New York Analysis of Policy and Government by the distinguished retired judge, John H. Wilson.

THE RISE OF PUBLIC UNIONS

“Public workers formed unions without waiting for legal recognition. For instance, letter carriers established the first postal union in 1889. The American Federation of Teachers formed in 1918, the same year that several independent unions of firefighters merged to form a national union. AFSCME was born in Wisconsin in 1932, the same year as the American Federation of Government Employees, a union of federal workers.”   

It has been widely reported that President Franklin Roosevelt was opposed to the organization of public unions, however, his opinion was more nuanced than that.  In fact, “in 1937, Roosevelt wrote to the President of the National Federation of Federal Employees…that employee organizations have a ‘logical’ role in government. Roosevelt believed that government employees should organize in order to ensure ‘fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions . . . and impartial consideration and review of grievances.’  However, Roosevelt…believed that collective bargaining agreements were incompatible with public sector work…FDR’s issue with government collective bargaining is that in our system of government, ‘we the people’ set public policy through the democratic process. Binding the people to a collective bargaining agreement takes authority away from the people.” 

On the state and local level, these views of collective bargaining by public unions have been largely ignored.  As long ago as 2010, one problem was recognized by Professors John O. McGinnis and Max Schanzenbach in an article published by the Hoover Institution –  “State and local governments today are, with few exceptions, in deep financial distress…indeed, California’s travails began well before the recession, and warnings about the financial health of Illinois and New York predate the present crisis. It is no secret that the primary cause of the states’ long-term problems are their bloated public sectors — particularly their public pension obligations…Public employees unions have wielded huge influence to gain perquisites for themselves at the expense of the public. Early retirement, job tenure, high wages, and generous defined-benefit pension plans have gained increasing attention from commentators and voters, though many public sector perks are intentionally shrouded and confuse the public debate.” 

Now there is an even greater issue involving public sector unions – the Marxist influence prevalent in these unions.  

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MARX AND THE PUBLIC UNIONS

Chloe Asselin’s 2019 Dissertation, referenced in yesterday’s article, is particularly instructive.  In great detail, she provides proof that “caucuses form as a result of a small group of like-minded union members who come together because of dissatisfaction with the actions of union leadership…school activists, who demand the labor movement look beyond the collective bargaining process, with its narrow focus on issues of wages and working conditions, and instead partner with parents, students, and progressive social groups and organizations to engage in social justice struggles beyond the workplace, compose social justice teacher union caucuses. Educator activists, in partnership with other members of school communities, use their power as workers to be change agents in their public schools.”    

There is nothing secret or hidden about these Marxist-inspired organizers – they operate in the open, and have clearly influenced groups like the Los Angeles Teachers Union, and other Public Unions, to turn their back on the “collective bargaining process” and seek to “engage in social justice struggles beyond the workplace.”

Yet, as Beth Baumann of Townhall writes in regards to the demands made by the Los Angeles Teacher’s Union, “things like defunding the police, providing financial support for illegal aliens and passing a wealth tax doesn’t have anything to do with what happens in the classroom. The teachers union is abusing the coronavirus pandemic to push their own political agenda.”   

Much as American Trade Unions did in the middle of the 20th Century, it is time for Public Unions to recognize the Marxist “change agents” within their ranks, and expel them.  Failure to do so will allow those agents to continue using these unions as fronts for their agenda of “social transformation.” 

Illustration: Pixabay

This article was provided exclusively to the New York Analysis of Policy and Government by the distinguished retired judge, John H. Wilson.

In my article discussing the Marxist underpinnings of groups like Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, I correlated the demands made by these groups, and their stated goals, with the beliefs of the 19th century German philosopher, Karl Marx. In general, these groups support “free” public housing, “free” education, open borders, and defunding the police, with the intention of redistributing those funds to various social service programs.

Generally, in making these demands, these groups express their belief that the “evil” system of capitalism must be replaced with another system, collective in nature, along socialist or communist principles.  Where capitalists expect people to pay for housing and education, and maintain secure borders and police services, a Marxist “will seize the major means of production along with the institutions of state power—police, courts, prisons, and so on—and establish a socialist state that Marx called ‘the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.’”  This dictatorship would include “public ownership of the major means of production and distribution of goods and services according to the principle ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’”

These radical groups are not the only organizations in America that have openly adopted communist theory.  Public Unions have also become riddled with proponents of Marxism.

Recently, the Los Angeles Teachers Union issued a group of demands they expect to be met before their members return to teaching school children in the Fall.  Among these demands are a series of items that have nothing to do with education – they seek “Medicare for All,” based upon “the boundless greed of the for-profit health industry, combined with this country’s deeply ingrained racism, (which) has led to race-based health disparities that have resulted in excess deaths especially among Black communities long before the pandemic further widened the health gap”; “Defund the Police… we must shift the astronomical amount of money devoted to policing, to education and other essential needs such as housing and public health”; “Housing Security…students need stability, and cities have the power to pass ordinances to prevent evictions and provide rental relief funds”; and “Financial Support for Undocumented Students and Families…even if their children are US citizens, in the era of ICE raids and mass deportations, many undocumented parents are too fearful to apply for benefits for their children.” 

Los Angeles is not alone in having a teacher’s union that advocates for social change.  During a 2019 strike, The Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU) demanded “that the school district ‘address deficient sanctuary policies and instead create real sanctuary schools for immigrant and other students,’ and (advocated for) more affordable housing in the city of Chicago.”  Further, “on June 2, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education Support Professionals held a rally outside the school board meeting calling for police-free schools. They demanded the school board pass a resolution cutting financial ties with the Minneapolis Police Department that killed George Floyd. The resolution passed.” 

As described by Chloe Asselin in her 2019 Dissertation, Tensions, Dilemmas, and Radical Possibility in Democratizing Teacher Unions: Stories of Two Social Justice Caucuses in New York City and Philadelphia, “a movement of social justice caucuses is growing within teacher unions… this study finds that social justice caucus activists…have critically engaged the project of democratizing their unions…(S)ustaining cultures of solidarity, and participating in protest activity, all while developing a sharp analysis of the larger political context in which the caucuses organize that enables educator activists to raise the consciousness of those around them.” 

MARX AND THE BIRTH OF LABOR UNIONS

In his 1865 work “Value, Price and Profit,” Karl Marx stated “that wage levels can only be ‘settled by the continuous struggle between capital and labor, the capitalist constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum, and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction.’”    But while reading these words, it is important to remember that the Industrial Revolution was occurring in England during the same era that Marx was formulating his views.  

There is no dispute that Marx was describing a very real problem, with mid-19th Century capitalists squeezing every ounce of work out of men, women and children over long hours, while paying these people as little as possible, and providing them with no benefits of any kind.  A worker of the 19th Century did not have health insurance, paid time off, or even a retirement plan – and woe to the worker who was injured on the job!  There was no such thing as Workers’ Compensation or Disability.  Any reader of Charles Dickens is fully familiar with the plight of the Working Class in England between 1830 and 1860.

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Out of this unfair and frankly, inhumane system was born the idea of Labor Unions – “British workers in one trade after another began to form permanent combinations and to wage strikes to protect and improve their conditions of employment. Later, as capitalism developed in Europe and America, workers there formed organisations similar in character to the British trade unions…Marx attached considerable importance to the role and functions of the trade unions. He realised that they represented the first steps in the organisations of the workers as a class.” 

Thus, though not all organizers of Trade Unions were Marxists, Marx and his followers took a keen interest in, and participated extensively in, the development of Labor Unions.  According to Union Organizer Tom Wetzel, “Marx thought the unions could at least potentially become revolutionary mass organizations…in a letter he wrote to the American Workingmen’s Party in the 1870s, he pushed that party to support the unions and he said that the unions had the potential to be a social base for the party. So here we see sort of the early beginnings of the social-democratic (as it was called in late 1800s) view of the unions as subordinate to a party in the movement for social transformation.”   

In particular, Marx saw the rise of labor unions in the United States as fertile ground for communist infiltration.  In a letter to Frederick Engles dated July 25, 1877, Marx wrote “what do you think of the workers in the United States? This first eruption against the oligarchy of associated capital which has arisen since the Civil War will of course be put down, but it could quite well form the starting point for the establishment of a serious labour party in the United States…a fine mess is in the offing over there, and transferring the centre of the International to the United States might, post festum, turn out to have been a peculiarly opportune move.” 

While this influence has always existed, when American Trade Unions were formed, their organizers chose not to be “subordinate” to communist plans for “social transformation.”  The organizer of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, “is noted for having shifted the primary goal of American unionism away from social issues and toward the ‘bread and butter’ issues of wages, benefits, hours, and working conditions, all of which could be negotiated through collective bargaining,”  that being, the “process of negotiation between representatives of workers and employers to establish the conditions of employment.” 

Collective bargaining is the real power of a union, coupled with the power to strike if demands are not met.  The leader of the union speaks for the workers as a whole, and can negotiate on their behalf with the companies that employ those workers.  This remains the singular power of any union.

Of course, the unwillingness of American labor unions to become communist fronts did not stop socialists from trying to influence and dominate those unions.  However, “the expulsion of…eleven left-led unions from the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) in 1949-50 marked the end of major communist influence in the American labor movement. Perhaps of even greater significance, the expulsions emphasized the willingness of virtually all segments of American labor to join the bipartisan cold war consensus.”   

For the most part, American labor parties have remained free of communist influence.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Public Unions.

The Report Concludes Tomorrow

Illustration: Pixabay