Cross posted from CWA's Resistance Growing blog:
CWA President Larry Cohen recently talked to The America Prospect's Harold Meyerson about the future of America’s unions. He warned:
Mitt Romney will wipe out what’s left of collective bargaining if he’s elected. But even in the Democratic Party, precious few elected officials understand the effect that the collapse of collective bargaining has had on the economy. Nancy Pelosi gets it; George Miller and Tom Harkin get it. But in the mainstream of the Democratic Party, every other issue comes ahead of reforming labor law so that more workers can bargain collectively.
Things like the Senate rules, which require 60 votes to pass any serious bill, are not a question the labor movement can deal with separately from the question of worker rights. Senate rules, voter suppression, denying a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants, the dominance of money in politics have made the idea of American democracy a laughing stock in the global South. Labor has to help build a democracy movement in the United States – political democracy and economic democracy. If all we do is fight for our issue, if all the other progressive groups do is fight for their issue, we’ll all be blocked by these limits on our democracy. We need to invest the resources and have a common narrative to build a movement of 50 million Americans for democracy, in the tradition of the civil rights movement and today’s movement of immigrant kids.
Read the rest of their discussion here.