unions (as in labor, not civil)

I think I mentioned to a few of my friends that I toyed with the idea of taking a year off, living out of my car, and traveling the country trying to unionize WalMart. If I didn't have student loans to pay. . . well, anyway, it's probably not going to happen. But I'm thinking of unions in the larger context of current American politics (as opposed to the way they've helped individuals I know, like my mom and my best friend). Unions have always had a big effect on politics (duh!), but lately it seems they're more noticable for their abscence.

One of the memes floating around blogs at the moment is that the loss of union influence (mainly due to the drop in union membership) over the last forty or fifty years is one of the main contributing factors to Democratic political failures on a national level. Apparently, union membership levels correlate roughly with blue areas of the country.

I think there's likely something to that meme, given that working class areas used to be Democratic strongholds, but aren't any more. Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter With Kansas deals with this phenomenon. The core of it is, the American working class routinely votes against it's economic interests, voting instead on what the Repugs like to call "values". If union membership started to rise again, the theory goes, the anti-labor policies of the Republicans would become a voting issue which trumps abortion or prayer in schools.

I'm probably biased on this issue, given the fact that my mom is a union rep for WEAC. I think unions are great, not perfect, but they've done damn good work. If you know people who doubt this, give them a list of things unions did for American workers, for example:

• the forty hour work week


• weekends


• child labor laws


• fire exits


• adequate restroom facilities

Obviously, not an exhaustive list (post a comment if you'd like to add something).

I find it heartening that groups like the AFL-CIO and the SEIU have boosted their efforts to unionize more Americans. The SEIU has even laid out some proposals for how to do this, as well as how to mobilize people who are already union members. Unionizing WalMart, which I admit seems like a pipe dream, may not be impossible. And think what it would mean to the Democratic party to have all the employees of the biggest employer in the world become union members. It would put labor issues back on the front burner at a time when the future of hourly wage workers in America has never looked bleaker. And having labor issues front and center will highlight the screwing of middle America perpetrated by the Republicans over the last decade and a half, with the willing enthusiastic support of middle America.