Thirty Years Ago

From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, “When did this all begin, America’s downward slide?” They say they’ve heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent’s income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how “lowly” your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.

Young people have heard of this mythical time — but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, “When did this all end?”, I say, “It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981.”

Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to “go for it” — to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.

And they’ve succeeded.

On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who’d defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.

It was a bold and brash move. No one had ever tried it. What made it even bolder was that PATCO was one of only three unions that had endorsed Reagan for president! It sent a shock wave through workers across the country. If he would do this to the people who were with him, what would he do to us?
~ from 30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died by Michael Moore ~

It would be easy to pin the sole blame on Reagan and the Radical Right, but as Moore points out later in his column, the one group that made Reagan's bold move successful was one you wouldn't readily think of. It was the AFL-CIO. Exhibiting extreme shortsightedness, they told their members to CROSS the picket line!

I have always been a steadfast supporter of the union ideal. Workers SHOULD have a say so about their working conditions. While I support everyday union members, I can't say the same thing about union leadership. There have been so many times when they seem to turn their backs on the concept of solidarity. Like politicians, they often make decisions based on what's best for them, not the millions of people they serve.

Moore asks a very important question.

What if all the unions had said to Reagan, “Give those controllers their jobs back or we’re shutting the country down!”? You know what would have happened. The corporate elite and their boy Reagan would have buckled.

Of course, that's not what the AFL-CIO leadership team did. By deciding to cross those picket lines, they helped to usher in a 30 year period of union decline and ineffectiveness. By not standing up for fellow union members, they not only shot themselves through the heart but they helped to kill the dreams for the middle and working class.

Reagan and the oligarchs may have fired the first volley, but the AFL-CIO helped to load the guns!