MUST READ: Labor’s failure
By James Carroll | Monday, September 3, 2007 | The Boston Globe
A Labor Day history lesson on organized labor that all of us should read. It’s full of great stuff, including this jewel:
“…In the United States, the most revealing failure of the labor movement to live up to its foundational ideal involves labor’s role as a pillar of the military-industrial complex. The engine of the American economy is defense spending. For two generations, but especially since the end of the Cold War, the nation has cannibalized itself by investing its best minds and most of its treasure in a profoundly counterproductive military establishment.
Usually this is blamed on the so-called “iron triangle” of corporations, Congress, and the Pentagon, which keep trillions of dollars circulating through the unbroken loop. But the labor movement has long been an essential part of this corrupt system, with union lobbyists playing their crucial role in keeping the lucrative defense contracts coming.
What would have happened at the end of the Cold War, when the expected “peace dividend” might have rescued education or rebuilt the nation’s infrastructure, if union leaders, backed by the grass-roots labor movement, had demanded an end to the Pentagon boondoggle? The conversion of a military-based economy, serving no real purpose beyond its own enrichment, to an economy of authentic productivity would have transformed foreign policy in the nick of time (no war in Iraq), and provided resources for homefront infrastructure (no failed dikes in New Orleans, or collapsed bridges in Minneapolis)....”…BS
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/03/labors_failure?mode=PF
This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 6:46 AM and filed under Economics, History, Politics. Follow comments here with the RSS 2.0 feed. Skip to the end and leave a response. Trackbacks are closed.
