Geaux4it
Intensity Factor 4-Fold
- May 31, 2009
- 22,873
- 4,296
Republicans Sure Love to Hate Unions
A paradox of American politics is that Republicans take organized labor more seriously than Democrats do.
The right sees unions as a mainstay of the left, a crucial source of cash, campaign manpower and votes.
“Unions are the largest player in American politics and they will be for some time,” Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, declared in March at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “Fourteen million Americans have to pay union dues. If they average $500, and that is a low estimate, that’s a $7 billion slush fund for the left.”
Republicans are willing to go to great lengths to weaken the union movement, especially at the state level. Even as the strength of organized labor as a whole declines, conservatives view unions that represent public sector employees, in particular, as anathema. They are desperate to gut the power of the 7.2 million organized government workers — who range from teachers, to clerks in the Department of Motor Vehicles, to social workers, public hospital employees, meat and poultry inspectors, road workers, property tax auditors and civil servants in general. These are the employees who populate the extensive bureaucracies that the right loathes.
But even with labor unions no longer the force they were — and in fact in part because of their decline — the pressure will fall on both parties to more effectively represent the interests and rights of economically struggling voters, who at some point will refuse to tolerate their eroding income and lack of opportunity.
More: Republicans Sure Love to Hate Unions - The New York Times
It is no secret why Conservatives hate unions.
Because unions are worthless
-Geaux