Here's the email I shot over to Tapped:

Tapped,

I was one of Newman's readers who criticized your earlier post on the Democratic Party's relationship with unions and what to make of that.

First off though, full disclosure, I'm an organizer for the Illinois Educaiton Association the teacher's (and higher ed.) union. So that will probably slant my view a little.

It seems like the gist of your piece focuses on the idea that the presidential candidates need to focus not only on "workers" (as defined by union membership) but rather folks with jobs who find themselves isolated and with no one on their side.

I'll put this as simply as I can.

THE REASON THAT DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ARE PAYING ATTENTION TO UNION WORKERS IS THAT THOSE WORKERS ARE ORGANIZED INTO GROUPS THEY CAN TALK TO. THE UNORGANIZED ENJOY NO SUCH RELATIONSHIP. HOW THE HELL ARE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES SUPPOSED TO ADDRESS THEIR FORUMS, PLEASE THEIR PAC'S, OR GO TO THEIR FUNDRAISERS?

Sorry for the caps, but I thought that little blinding flash of the obvious might need to be drawn.

In other words, the reason that other workers need representation (which you correctly point out) is because that in groups, people have power.

Now for the 86% or so that don't have union representation, the AFL-CIO is looking at forming a group called "america works" or somesuch that will try and organize their issues in some format, even if it not's the traditional collective bargaining unit. I think it might be good if the heady power you all posess were to help this process out, since you profess to care about it.

Lastly, maybe I'm a little paranoid here, but I sensed a snide comment about how labor folks are no longer the proletariat continuously oppressed by the greedy industrialists smoking cigars plotting the overtake of the world.

Well, in my experience the folks on top don't wear top hats or smoke stogies anymore, but they're nonetheless just as determined to keep people in their place. Even the public sector, for too many employees, the wages suck and the benefits can be taken away with a snap of the fingers. Which is why they organize. I think the point that union workers do better is not to indicate they're fabulously wealthy labor aristocrats, but that they do better in their respective industries. So unionized bus drivers in Illinois do better than the ones who work for Laidlaw. Home health care workers who have SEIU contracts do better than the ones without. But none of them get invited to clatches at the DLC headquarters.

Get it?

I worked for a grocery chain for 17 yrs(non-union). Many of the workers would say, " What do we need unions for, we're treated pretty well as it is". It never dawned on these people why management treated them well, TO KEEP THE UNIONS OUT. By the way, read an article in my areas Sunday paper last week, it was about the "transplant" auto factories down south, and the UAW's difficulties in trying to oraganize them. Again, the company's involved (Honda, Toyta, Nissan) treated their employees well just to keep the UAW out.

Nathan,

I agree with you: it's a bit better. I also agree with you that their tone really is astonishing given the Democratic nominees' unprecedented focus on employees' right to organize. One would think they were writing a weblog for Business Week, not the American Prospect.

In response to your previous post on TAPPED, I wrote -- somewhat inelegantly -- that TAPPED "sucks." Unfortunately, I grew up without the benefits of the rarefied upper-class upbringing and education of the folks at TAPPED. Hobbled by those disabilities, I'm reduced to proclaiming that TAPPED bites. :-)

Nathan, keep at it. I've seen TAPPED swing its vote on previous issues after hearing convincing arguments. Remember that TAPPED's mother publication, the American Prospect, publishes plenty of pro-union pieces. Maybe you can used those in your favor.

Anyway, I think the mission you've set out for yourself, of not only promoting unions but convincing the online elite - the vanguard of the newly emergent and politically powerful "creative class" - of labor's importance is incredibly important and worthwhile. Progressives need more bridge-builders like you.

What makes the "labor elite" comment from TAPPED even more puzzling is that Harold Meyerson, who is listed as Editor-at-Large [meaning that they haven't captured him yet?] knows better, He gave the keynote address last Friday at a fundraising dinner for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a research and agitation group that has succeeded in passing good living wage and neighborhood impact laws in Southern California and which is closely [to put it mildly] aligned with the labor movement here. His whole point was that we needed more ladders for the working poor--and that LAANE and the labor movement in Los Angeles are providing them.

Of course, the other theme of his speech was Los Angeles exceptionalism, so perhaps he does not see this same social unionism when he is hanging out in the hallways at the AFL-CIO's meetings. I can’t speak for the union movement elsewhere, but I know LA was not the first to pass a living wage ordinance and I know that Justice for Janitors and other grassroots/community/political organizing drives have succeeded elsewhere. So let’s temper our pessimism a little.

I second all the previous comments, but raise one question: is “bites” a preppier version of “sucks”? Learn something new every day.

And double kudos to the Illinois poster. Great name; I'd go off into a discussion of Myles na gCopaleen, but that is not what this site is about.

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