This is a post simply suggesting we ponder what it means to live in a conflicted, grey world. Yeah, I hate that. It would be nice if everything was clear cut. But, it isn't. Especially for people who are trying to survive in a corrupt economic system.
On the one hand, I am a movement person who does not believe we ever wait around for salvation from any political leader. Anyone. So, I find the debates about the president somewhat irrelevant. He is not the issue.
BUT.
We live in a grey world. Consider this, via The Wall Street Journal:
The National Labor Relations Board is hurrying to push through a raft of decisions by year's end, when a pair of vacant board seats could leave an important part of the agency hobbled indefinitely.[emphasis added]
And:
Among the issues pending at the NLRB are an overhaul of the rules governing union-organizing elections and the agency's challenge to a decision by Boeing Co. to locate a jetliner-assembly operation in a nonunion factory in South Carolina.
Other cases test whether unions can organize multiple, small groups of workers in a single facility, and whether employees should continue to have a 45-day window in which to challenge workplace unionizations that use a "card check" vote instead of a secret ballot.
And:
Both arms, run by Obama administration appointees, have angered business groups and Republicans in the past two years with a series of decisions they say grant unions organizing power at the expense of companies and job creation.
Sen. Tom Harkin, (D., Iowa.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, has said he would fight Republican efforts to stymie the NLRB in connection with the Boeing case.
"Republicans in this Congress have shown an alarming willingness to disrupt the basic functions of government to advance their partisan, antiworker agenda," Mr. Harkin said through an aide. "With nominees pending from both parties, I hope that we can reach a fair compromise and confirm a package of nominees."[emphasis added]
So, two points to make first. First, I support those who have been broadly critical of the White House on a raft of issues--from the stupid focus on the phony debt and deficit crisis to pushing bad trade deals to caving on taxes. Those voices are important and must not shrink back in response to the calls for "unity".
Second, the labor laws in this country, even in the best days, stink. Even with the changes being pushed for, the labor movement is in deep, deep trouble.
Those two points make a unified point, at least for me. It's not about rules or a political leader. It's about us. About the lack of a powerful, progressive movement that shakes up the country and stops the robbery.
BUT. BUT. BUT.
I also live in a grey world. And, in that grey world, who runs the NLRB makes a difference. If you doubt that, look at the unhinged right wing response to the Boeing issue, in a debate I had on CNBC in June. The tip off is the title of the debate on the screen: "NLRB's Assault on Capitalism":
So, we know this: a Republican president, with a Republican Congress, will do everything possible to entirely eviscerate the remaining labor laws that are, admittedly, on life support. All in the name of "job creation" which is simply a euphemism for actually companies to do as they please and continue the robbery of working people. It is hard to imagine the class warfare getting worse--but it can, and will, for a lot of people if the NLRB is handing out Supreme Court-like decisions on behalf of business.
No doubt this is a very slim ledge workers stand on: holding on with their fingernails and looking up above for help from a few government officials who are holding off the advancing hordes of Bachmann-Walker et al who would love to reach that ledge and stomp on the fingers trying to hold on from a deep fall into the void below.
I have not generally embraced the "we should let the whole thing go down and let it get worse because only then will people revolt and rise up"--though I certainly know the impulse from where such a feeling comes. I typically find that most people, not all of them, arguing that view are either personally wealthy and/or have a secure job in academia and/or have never actually done on-the-ground organizing.
Letting things get worse hurts a lot of people--now. Today.
I am actually torn, and furious, that we have to live in this grey world. But, it helps to be able to live and work positively by being able to live with two conflicting ideas at the same time:
The corrupt economic system, held up by both major parties, must be defeated AND along the way we have to make sure that as many people as possible can survive and make it to a better day.