As some of you know, I teach communications part-time at Prince George’s Community College. This morning, in honor of Labor Day, I looked back 40 years and played one of the great broadcast jingles of all time, “Look for the Union Label.”
You don’t hear that jingle anymore. When it was broadcast, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, 70% of all the clothing Americans wore was made in the U.S. Today, just 2% of the clothing you and I wear is made here.
Americans, as The Wall Street Journal noted this weekend, just couldn’t resist the lure of low prices. The result was that not only workers but also the environment, suffered as trendy, inexpensive clothes are swiftly mass-produced in subcontracted factories and sold in chain stores.
That happened in one trade after another as jobs were shipped overseas. It’s a major reason why Donald Trump won the election in 2016. “Trump did better among union members than any president since Ronald Reagan,” the Journal notes, There’s a lesson in the entire saga.
As the Journal reported today, unions are mobilizing to stop Trump. Our question is why? Unions have been losing members for at least 30 years. Union leaders are, it seems to us, making the same mistake they have made for the last three decades: Reflexively supporting Democrats.
The question they should be asking is, what have Democrats done for their members recently? During the Obama presidency, they took some actions intended to make it easier for unions to organize. But – how did that help their members?
And, what will Democrats do in the next four years to help union workers? Not help union leaders, but workers. Years ago a self-made millionaire told us, “If you take care of the customers, the customers will take care of you.”
Unions have supported Democrats politically. But, have Democrats have taken care of workers in the 30 years since the ILGWU went out of business? The answer is no. So why have union leaders supported Democrats?
Insanity, they say, is doing the same old thing again and again and again.
About the time the ILGWU folded, Ron Sarasin addressed that question with the National Beer Wholesalers Association, which he headed as president. Ted Kennedy will never support you, he told them, asking, “So why would you give campaign contributions to him.”
Sarasin instituted a process whereby NBWA asked candidates their positions on issues important to its members. The candidates whose positions were closest to NBWA members won the trade association’s support.
Unions have lost touch with their members. Maybe they need to learn from NBWA.