Socialism campaigning in disguise

It was just a quiet knock on the door. I opened it to see a lovely young woman in a bright red t-shirt with WORKING AMERICA across the front. She was carrying a clipboard, gathering signatures, and quickly rattled off some meaningless phrases about affordable health care. I didn’t ask her how she got into our security building. I quickly learned that WORKING AMERICA is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, but I was unable to learn anything more than they wanted my signature and mailing information, and that it was, of course, to benefit all of us. She did make it clear that it wasn’t part of the AFL-CIO, but was just "affiliated". I declined signing without more information, so the young woman gave me some printed material that pointed me to their website.

WORKING AMERICA, self-described as a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, has a subtitle of Building a Better Future for Working Families. Their BIG BULLET POINTS are GOOD JOBS, HEALTH CARE, RETIREMENT, and EDUCATION.

Well… who doesn’t want those things? Naturally, I wondered “how can WORKING AMERICA, maybe with my help, produce those good results? ” OK, I didn’t really wonder that, but that’s what I was supposed to be wondering. I know too much about the history of the AFL-CIO to be that naïve. I was justifiably suspicious.

Certainly, my participation in WORKING AMERICA would be accepted, even though I’m not working, have never belonged to a union, and have never been considered a “working man”. I’ve always worked as a “professional” and the only time I’ve ever even been approached by the idea of unionizing was by some total idiot that thought that free-lance illustrators should unionize. I suspect that if I had always lived off welfare, or even listed my occupation as "thief", my participation would still be welcome.

Of course, Americans already have GOOD JOBS, HEALTH CARE, RETIREMENT, and EDUCATION, so WORKING AMERICA must be looking to produce better jobs, cheaper health care, longer retirement, and better education. No problem there, I’m as greedy as anyone else… I want more of everything. Maybe WORKING AMERICA has some big answers to contribute?

Well… it quickly becomes apparent from the website, once one digs through the meaningless pablum, that WORKING AMERICA wants all of these improvements from government… more and better government is their answer. In fact, socialism is what they strive for. They want all-of-us to help all-of-us with government as the go-between and enforcer. Naturally, GOOD JOBS is first on their list, because unions want to be seen as being in “the jobs business”.

Unions have lost most of their influence in the U.S., thanks to their internal corruptions and unreasonable demands, and the AFL-CIO has been among the biggest and baddest. So, they’re making another side run, through WORKING AMERICA.

Their huge website is a masterpiece of deception and political finagling. In one massive deceptive move, they point out, with charts, that American productivity has risen steadily and much faster than wages. The conclusion we’re expected and coaxed into reaching is that BIG BUSINESS is ripping off workers, who are working harder and better than ever, and not being paid enough.

How many people will question the “productivity” graph? How many will assume, as the website hopes, that it means each worker is just doing a much better job, or is working his hands to the bones to produce more? In general, productivity indicates how much is being produced. Labor done by humans is only part of productivity. There are a thousands ways a business can increase productivity, and most of them have little to do with the effort or skill of workers. Increasing productivity is what businesses always strive for… doing more with less. Less productivity means failure soon… which also means loss of jobs, doesn’t it? I'm not belittling the effort workers put into their work, but the environment they work in and the tools they use have a lot more to do with productivity than does their effort. I doubt that any worker would claim that he or she works harder than their grandparents did. Unions have long viewed business as their opponents, and so many times have pushed that opposition to the point of actually destroying a business... and the jobs.

Take a look at the WORKING AMERICA website political section and it will be abundantly clear that it is a thinly disguised political website… showing what they like about Obama and what they hate about McCain. It’s as one-sided as if the Democratic National Committee had created it. [Interestingly, since I first looked at the WORKING AMERICA website, the political sections have been removed... now no mention of either Obama or McCain. Believe me, that was a major revision!]

The AFL-CIO seeks to renew its former power and influence, while refusing to admit that one of the reasons it lost it is that it did not represent the political views of its members. It has always sought to increase its own organizational power through government, by means of force, and WORKING AMERICA is not new… just a sort of sidestep to try to sneak up on people wearing a lovely mask in a red t-shirt.