As the unionized share of workers has dropped, the labor movement has tried to retain its political influence by ramping up efforts to contact members, often personally, to urge them to vote....]]> Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500 Mitt Romney may rue the day he called Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal “marvelous,” as if he were describing a splendid buffet at the mansion of a friend. The plan from the influential, youthful Republican chair of the House budget committee does offer people like Mitt and his rich buddies tasty goodies – $10 trillion in preserved and fresh millionaire-friendly tax cuts (over a decade), to be followed later with rollbacks in financial, environmental and every other regulation.

In the likely presidential face-off this fall, President Obama will rely on support from a core of young voters, single women, African Americans, Latinos, highly educated voters, liberals and – though often forgotten – union members. Mitt Romney will count on lopsided votes from social and religious conservatives, wealthy business-oriented voters and the anti-Obama crowd – from virulent haters to frustrated voters ready to blame whoever holds power.

Even if Obama’s new jobs bill, which was proposed in September, did not face a stone wall of Republican opposition (it died in the Senate in early October), it would not solve America’s economic problems. But the ideas in the plan, which the president is now advancing through separate, piecemeal bills, could make enough of a difference to swing a close race. The president proposed a combination of...]]> Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500 Republicans relied heavily in this summer’s debt limit debate on a not-so-secret weapon—disinformation, often less politely called lies. Take, as an example, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)’s five-minute response to President Obama’s prime-time speech on July 25, as the deadline for lifting the debt ceiling loomed.

Boehner started by asserting that “the spending binge going on in Washington is a big part of the reason why” millions are unemployed. In fact, a giant housing bubble burst, its effects were multiplied by a deregulated (and fraudulent) financial sector, and a deep recession followed. Several studies demonstrate that government...]]> Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500 America’s unions are contending with the harshest legislative attack on workers’ rights since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. Labor strategists, their forces in decline, face an urgent question: What should unions do to defend their existence, and to provide workers more power at work and in politics?

The rise of the Tea Party right, recession-induced fiscal crises and Republican midterm victories—especially in many unionized Midwestern battleground states—set the stage. But Democrats’ failure to respond adequately to the economic crisis—in the areas of jobs, home foreclosures and financial regulation—enabled the ascent of the ...]]> Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0600 Not lying down: Illinois advocates and activists rejected the idea of massive service cuts. (Photo courtesy of Responsible Budget Coalition)

Last April, Sandra Wiekerson took a day off from her work caring for elderly people in their homes on Chicago’s northwest side. She joined 15,000 other Illinoisans in the state capital of Springfield for a historic rally and lobbying day.

I found some answers one warm early fall evening as I walked up and down Hawthorne and Longfellow streets in this declining industrial city just west of Cleveland, talking about the midterm elections with the residents of the neighborhood’s modest post-World War II red brick and white clapboard bungalows.

During his 14 years as president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Andy Stern catapulted the union and himself into national prominence. Consequently, his announcement on April 14 that he would retire midterm set off intense speculation about where the union—and organized labor—is heading in a post-Stern world.