re unions

i'm not ready to make a final judgment on the afl-cio split, but it looks to me like it may work out for the best. 2 umbrella groups competing to organize new members might be just the shot in the arm labor needs to put steel back in its spine—where it was 50 years ago.

i don't think it's john sweeney's fault things have gone as they have. at the same time, he shouldn't view it as a betrayal. it just looks to me as if unification may have sapped much of labor's vitality over the years.

as soon as i heard about the split i looked up the stats on union membership as a percentage of the work force: the peak came during the 10 years or so following ww2; the number of members kept growing till the reagan era, but percentage of the work force began to fall right around the time of the 1955 merger of the afl and cio; conversely, the most rapid growth, winning the first major contracts in the auto and steel industries, and passage of the first minimum wage law took place during the years immediately after the 1935 founding of the cio.

the phobe counterattack got a boost in 1947, when the gop congress overrode truman's veto of taft-hartley. voters put the dems back in control of both houses in the next election, but gops—convinced organized labor was part of an international commie conspiracy—used the cold war to do all the harm they could. much of mccarthyism/nixonism/hooverism and eventually reaganism was not much more than unionphobia disguised as anti-communism and later as anti-liberalism. both of them—especially the latter—are phobias too, so it's not really surprising.

during the vietnam era, the new left embraced inclusiveness and defied j.edgar hoover's claim that a few communist members made an organization "communist-dominated"—and it worked: commie domination became such a weak argument that cops and g-men instead resorted to such tactics as planting marijuana and having their infiltrators put sand in gas tanks to get biker gangs to start fights with peace groups.

but the war took its toll, causing much antagonism between radical students and self-proclaimed "patriots," including "hard-hats"—workers supporting the war who showed up at anti-war rallies mostly just to heckle, but sometimes to use muscle. many folk who should've been on the front lines of the anti-war movement—fearing being thought un-american—got alienated by the left's attacks on imperialism &c. that perception of anti-americanism on the left moved a number of Old Lefties—including communists—to become early neocons.

reports to the contrary notwithstanding, the gops never literally foamed at the mouth, but a lot of spittle flew.

it still does. see for yourself. watch c-span.