Public Employee Press

A stronger future for U.S. labor?

This time it will be different. "We usually dismantle political operations the day after the election," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. "This time we have budgeted for a two year cycle to keep people accountable."

Job creation, infrastructure development, youth outreach, fighting government downsizing and financial regulation now top labor's agenda, he said Sept. 24 at a panel discussion held at the Cooper Union, "Which Way for the Working Class? Elections 2010 and Beyond."

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine, moderated the program, which included New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, Eric Alterman of the Center for American Progress and Karen Nussbaum, the head of Working America, an AFL-CIO project to mobilize nonunion workers.

"We are sleep-walking," Herbert said. "Most elected officials and major media do not see how severe a problem we are facing."

Nearly 45 million Americans live in poverty and 15 million are out of work. Since January 2009, total government payrolls have fallen by 350,000.

"The public has to be mobilized," Herbert said. "If you don't have progressive leaders at the top, you have to mobilize from the bottom."

Alterman said progressives must defend public-sector unions: Business and the right "demonize public workers because public-employee unions have been one of the institutions they have been unable to destroy."

Labor must address workers' despair and the feelings of powerlessness that result from fearing layoffs after decades of falling real wages and shrinking benefits, panelists said.

Working America's outreach has found widespread anger among workers directed at unions and government, Nussbaum said. "Glen Beck is on their TV," she pointed out.

Herbert and an audience member said the AFL-CIO should support a labor newspaper and cable TV channel.

"I'm with you, man," Trumka said. "Help us find the money."