D'Souza, Dinesh - Death of a Nation by D'Souza Dinesh

D'Souza, Dinesh - Death of a Nation by D'Souza Dinesh

Author:D'Souza, Dinesh [D'Souza, Dinesh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2018-05-31T04:00:00+00:00


TAMMANY ON THE POTOMAC

He found that support in the unions. Here the progressive account gets romantic and dewy-eyed. Even Katznelson indulges in rhapsodic descriptions of how FDR empowered unions, giving them the power to negotiate with management, to get a better deal for workers. Since union membership was voluntary—workers had to vote to start a union—how could anyone deny that this was an arrangement that combined freedom of choice with a more just outcome for workers?

I deny it. My basis for doing so is that this was not the arrangement that really matters. Once again we have to look behind the mask of progressive concealment. The truly significant deal was not the one between unions representing workers and management; rather, it was the one between unions on the one hand and the Democratic Party on the other. Let’s try to see the arrangement from FDR’s point of view.

Here’s the deal that FDR and the Democrats offered the unions: We will pass laws that not only enable unions to exist but also force workers who don’t want to join unions to join them as long as a majority of workers approves the union.

We will also enable unions to collect dues, again from the willing and the unwilling. We will thwart the ability of employers to fire union workers who strike, and force them to hire those workers back after the strike.

Even more, we will use the government to force management to give in to union demands, in effect putting the full power of the state behind the unions. What private corporation can resist Uncle Sam? The good news, from the government’s point of view, is that we don’t have to raid the treasury to fund union demands. Rather, we intervene to make the auto industry or the energy industry or the construction industry pay. The government is simply the “heavy” that beats the private sector into submission.

And there’s more. We don’t want the unions to focus narrowly on worker benefits, as they historically have. Now we want them to join with other Democratic groups in pressing for greater welfare benefits, the whole New Deal package. This means that union workers benefit not merely through higher wages and unemployment benefits but also through more lavish Social Security payments to more lucrative welfare programs.

Unions, in short, were given the opportunity to facilitate not merely the rip-off of the employer but also the rip-off of the taxpayer.

It was a good deal for unions. Since nothing in the world is free, however, the Democrats wanted something in exchange for all this federal protection, or to be blunt, for running this extortion racket. They wanted the unions to pressure their members to vote for Democratic candidates—saving politicians the trouble of having to persuade them individually—and to use a significant portion of union dues to fund the campaign war chest of the Democratic Party. This would ensure Democrats could stay in power so the racket could continue indefinitely.

Ironically it was a Tammany man, New York senator Robert Wagner, and not FDR, who first spotted the potential for a union racket.



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