To Salvage Unions, Workers Should Mimic Religious Right

Some doomsayers predict that the anti-union Senate Bill 5 that’s working it’s way through the Ohio Legislature will — like similar proposed laws in other states — signal the end of organized labor in America. That is certainly a danger, but this dark scenario will only take place if working people don’t band together to stop it.

With that in mind, the only relevant question becomes “what can be done now?” to slow down the Republicans’ scorched earth policy toward unions. The suggestion here is that working people and progressives need to take heed of the lesson taught by the so-called pro-life movement following the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

What happened then was that instead of signaling the death of its movement, this Supreme Court ruling actually became the starting point for the Religious Right’s massive impact on American politics. Within a few years of the Roe decision, the misnamed Moral Majority took up arms and, over the past four decades and under various monikers, has used this lighting-rod issue to help elect literally thousands of local, state and federal politicians who have not only chipped away at Roe but have fueled the “Republican Revolution” that has reached into almost every aspect of American domestic and foreign policy.

So if the public unions decide, for example, to stop paying their dues (both monetary and via shoe leather) and choose to shrivel up and die because Republican governors and legislatures pass laws banning collective bargaining, they will have missed the single greatest opportunity in recent memory to truly revitalize working people’s role in American politics. If they bail before spending the next months and years pounding the streets and ballot boxes and rallying their brothers and sisters in the workforce to snap out of their culture-wars coma and start fighting for their economic rights, they will have sealed their own grim fate.

In Ohio, the Democratic Party has vowed to put a referendum on the ballot that would overrule Governor Kasich and the Ohio Legislature’s Senate Bill 5. Whether this dreadful legislation passes or not — and right now it looks like it’s on its way to becoming law — a “protecting workers rights” referendum needs to be put forth and it needs to appear on the 2012 ballot, when there will have been enough time to organize properly and when the impact on a number of elections, including the one for president, would be the greatest.

And speaking of the presidential election, Democrats must do everything in their power to make sure Obama is re-elected. With the GOP almost certain to retain the House and with 23 of the 33 Senate seats up for grabs belonging to Democrats — making a Republican takeover of that body quite probable — the likelihood is that Obama in the White House will be the only thing guarding against economic Armageddon for all but the super rich. If that happens, the far Left’s worries about Obama’s handling of the Gitmo detainees will lose its coffeehouse cache.

While an all-out campaign by the Dems directed at every bloc of the electorate is needed, there is one particular demographic voting group that needs to be targeted and urged to give up their infatuation with the GOP. I’m referring to the over-65 white middle class working folks, many of whom have been duped into voting Republican due to “culture-war” issues at the expense of their own economic interests.

These so-called “Reagan Democrats” need to be convinced to stop proving that there’s no fool like an old fool and return to their Depression-era sensibilities by voting for candidates who support working people’s rights. Perhaps the pro-union events unfolding everywhere will wake them up to what’s happening to their children’s and grandchildren’s future under GOP dictums.

To use a phrase now thundering throughout the Middle East, “This is Our Moment.” Well, this particular moment in history is nothing less than the chance of a lifetime for labor unions to turn looming defeat into victory and then parlay that victory into an endless string of triumphs — both here in Ohio and throughout the nation.

However, if teachers and public safety workers and all types of government employees and blue-collar union members and service workers and the unemployed and underemployed and retirees can’t seize this golden opportunity being handed to them by the reckless and reactionary forces in our society, then they have only themselves to blame for failing to get their priorities straight.

[Photos: Canton Protest of Kasich’s Attack on Middle Class via SEIU District 1199]

Larry Durstin is an independent journalist who has covered politics and sports for a variety of publications and websites over the past 20 years. He was the founding editor of the Cleveland Tab and an associate editor at the Cleveland Free Times. Durstin has won 12 Ohio Excellence in Journalism awards, including six first places in six different writing categories. LarryDurstinATyahoo.com

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