Why the Democrats Need Labor Again [View all]

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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/democrats-need-labor-again-113583.html#.VKhfJSvF-So

Thomas Geoghegan is a labor lawyer and sometime journalist and author best known for his 1991 book, Which Side Are You On? Trying To Be For Labor When It’s Flat On Its Back. Geoghegan’s new book, Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs A New Kind of Labor Movement, is a sort of sequel. Like the earlier book, it’s part Spalding Gray monologue — equal parts comic and despairing — and part policy tome, full of provocative prescriptions for a patient that’s only gotten sicker during the past 23 years. POLITICO Pro Labor & Employment editor Timothy Noah interviewed Geoghegan by e-mail recently.

Timothy Noah: Your book appears at a notably bleak moment for the labor movement. Union density has fallen below 7 percent in the private sector. In the midterms, the AFL-CIO targeted six Republican governors and managed to defeat only one. Nearly half of all states are now “right-to-work,” meaning workers don’t have to pay union dues or their equivalent to a union that bargains collectively on their behalf. Would it be fair to describe this book as a last-ditch effort?

Thomas Geoghegan: For labor, it’s past the last-ditch stage. I think of it as a last-ditch effort for the Democrats. I’d say the book is addressed not just to labor but to the Democratic party — and to the left in general. Without a real labor movement in place, the Democrats will not be the party of the working people. And until it is such a party, it will not be a governing party.

At least in my view, the GOP is just not able to be a governing party — to stop the decay in our institutions, the continued growth in inequality, and a kind of hopelessness among people who just feel abandoned by our institutions — our political ones, corporate ones, and, yes, often labor too.

FULL story at link.