Wisconsin fight isn't about benefits

Organized labor acts as a counterweight to the political aims of corporations and Wall Street.

The Washington Post:

Political scientists explain how weakening unions will gut the middle class

Although they want "more" for their members, they also want to make good middle-class jobs the norm. And the most important way they pursue this larger goal isn't by demanding concessions at the bargaining table, but by operating as a counterweight to the demands of corporations and Wall Street in the corridors of power. That is precisely why opponents of organized labor are seizing upon state fiscal troubles to try to destroy its remaining clout.

Republican politicians haven't always been anti-union. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower declared: "Unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice."

When Eisenhower spoke, unions were a critical source of political capital for ordinary Americans who lacked substantial financial capital. Indeed, according to a number of political science studies, the effort by unions to get sympathetic voters to the polls was one of the main forces behind the high rates of voter turnout - regardless of income or education levels - in the decades just after World War II.

Unions also carried the battle beyond the ballot box. Organized labor was on the front lines during the struggle for universal health care and the fight for Medicare for the aged. They were the main champions of organizing rights for workers and of the gradual transformation of Social Security into a strong foundation for a dignified retirement. Unions even lent crucial support to the civil rights movement, leading one congressional champion, Missouri Democrat Richard Bolling, to later observe that "we would never have passed the Civil Rights Act without labor. They had the muscle; the other civil rights groups did not."

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