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bjo59

(1,166 posts)
Mon May 23, 2016, 11:35 PM May 2016

Labor's Sell-Out and the Sanders Campaign

MAY 23, 2016
Labor’s Sell-Out and the Sanders Campaign
by PAUL BUHLE
Counterpunch

Early last Fall, I received a surprising circular email from a high union officer and erstwhile leader of SDS, way back in the early 1960s. It contained an urgent appeal: get behind Hillary, because this is an era for defensive struggles. The letter-writer had also been an early and articulate opponent of the US invasion of Vietnam. I puzzled at his conversion to the War Candidate. I winced, some months later, as his union staffers crossed the border from my own Wisconsin to work feverishly in Iowa against….the labor candidate, Bernie Sanders, who lost by a hair (perhaps a hair that did not exist!). And again back in Wisconsin, where the best or worst efforts of his union, joined to the purported idealists of the labor movement, SEIU, failed somehow to keep the state in line for Hillary. They could not carry the working class vote.

Echoes of 2011, the year of the great conflict in Wisconsin. Shortly before the occupation of the capitol building, setting off months of intense struggle, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (the earliest of unions to support Hillary and oppose Bernie in 2015) came to town to warn AFT members on campus against rash action. The AFT, whose pet Shanker Institute functionary was the union’s attack dog against opponents of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, could not act otherwise. It has been dominated in every respect by the New York affiliate, UFT, where Shankerism is never out of style, and where domestic reform demands, never be aimed seriously at prestigious neoliberal Democratic officials like Rahm Emanuel, takes second place or last place to the hawkish global agenda. Which is to say: war, war, war, Albert Shanker’s favorite subject as he urged the US on and on toward an elusive Victory in Vietnam. He could not accept the loss, and it troubled him to his last days, when his allies had been driven from AFL leadership and he devolved personally into a symbol of hawkery and of opposition to Affirmative Action within the labor movement. (All credit goes to the AFT membership at the grass roots, especially but not only in Chicago, which has resisted Command Central.) It is easy to imagine that Hillary Clinton channels his ghost, howling for victory in all the next Vietnams, at whatever loss of civilian blood and tax-payer treasure. ...

continued at http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/23/labors-sell-out-and-the-sanders-campaign/

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Gman

(24,780 posts)
1. Why is this garbage even posted
Mon May 23, 2016, 11:48 PM
May 2016

The labor candidate. What bullshit. What the hell has Sanders ever done for labor? Not a damn thing.

zalinda

(5,621 posts)
3. Just 2 of the many things he has done.
Tue May 24, 2016, 01:13 AM
May 2016
Require full disclosure of outsourced employees.
Sanders co-sponsored requiring full disclosure of outsourced employees


OFFICIAL CONGRESSIONAL SUMMARY: Transparency and Responsibility for US Trade Health Act (TRUTH Act): Requires a US national that employs individuals in a foreign country, either directly or through subsidiaries, to take necessary steps to provide transparency and public disclosure in all its operations.

EXCERPTS OF BILL:

Be it enacted:
A national of the US that employs one or more individuals in a foreign country, either directly or through subsidiaries or licensees (including any security forces of the national), shall take the necessary steps to provide transparency and disclosure in all its operations, including the full public disclosure of the following:
Information relating to location, address, and corporate name of all facilities abroad
Applicable financial agreements and investments of partners and subcontractors
Worker rights practices and labor standards, including any complaints from employees and violations of local labor laws.
Age, gender, and number of employees in each facility.
Wages paid to employees, including policies on overtime pay.
Working conditions based on current OSHA standards for similar operations.
Environmental performance, including toxic release inventory.
The human rights policy, any complaints received from local communities, and any human rights lawsuits filed.

LEGISLATIVE OUTCOME:Referred to House Committee on International Relations; never came to a vote.
Source: TRUTH Act of 2001 (H.R.460) 01-HR0460 on Feb 6, 2001

Rated 100% by the AFL-CIO, indicating a pro-union voting record.
Sanders scores 100% by the AFL-CIO on union issues

As the federation of America’s unions, the AFL-CIO includes more than 13 million of America’s workers in 60 member unions working in virtually every part of the economy. The mission of the AFL-CIO is to improve the lives of working families to bring economic justice to the workplace and social justice to our nation. To accomplish this mission we will build and change the American labor movement.

The following ratings are based on the votes the organization considered most important; the numbers reflect the percentage of time the representative voted the organization's preferred position.

http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Bernie_Sanders_Jobs.htm

For many, many more reasons he is the labor candidate, you can go to the link, but I doubt you will.

Z
 

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)
2. The Clinton Family has amassed $150,000,000 from corporations not labor unions.
Tue May 24, 2016, 12:20 AM
May 2016

And that just her personal wealth. It doesn't count the billions in her Retirement Foundation.

We must end this culture of corruption that the Clintons represent.

Nitram

(24,251 posts)
6. I don't understand why you thinmk it's a bad thing that Clinton hasn't profited from labor unions.
Tue May 24, 2016, 09:28 AM
May 2016

I'm all for taking corporate money to advance liberal causes.

 

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)
7. How naive to think that the millions given to a presidential candidate would be used to advance
Tue May 24, 2016, 10:49 AM
May 2016

liberal causes. It's as if some don't believe in quid pro quo.

Is fracking a liberal cause or the TPP, TPIP, NAFTA, etc? Is spreading "democracy" via war a liberal cause? The working class recognizes that she will kill more and more jobs so the corporations that have made her wealthy can make more profits.

Is denying people suffering in pain, medical marijuana a liberal cause? Nope it's catering to big pharma. Is keeping the min wage down a liberal cause? Is clamping down on minor drug crimes and filling the Prisons For Profits, a liberal cause?

There are two sides fighting this war, and Clinton and her minions are not on the liberal side.

 

jtuck004

(15,882 posts)
5. Good article. Most don't seem to know of the work of Gompers on behalf of the industrialists, and
Tue May 24, 2016, 02:24 AM
May 2016

how they worked with the government to kill off progressives and the IWW. Gompers was a traitor to the American worker and his country.

Conveniently for worker control most of that history has been hidden. In books. Clever, eh? The stories are in the autobiography of Mother Jones, the biography of Big Bill Haywood, Them and Us by Matles and Higgins.

Just because they use your label doesn't mean they are on your side.



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