Labor & Employment Law

Jobs, Economic Fears?Not Love of Right?Fuel Workers? Anger

By Mike Hall

The nation’s working families “are understandably frustrated, anxious and angry,” says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker.

“They are angry at Wall Street and the government…they don’t see anybody out there fighting with passion for good jobs…the forces of the right are at work to turn that anger in a dangerous direction.”

Holt Baker moderated a panel discussion?Working Class Anger: Does it Go Left or Right??this afternoon at the America’s Future Now conference examining the roots of the anger that the mainstream media often portrays as the fuel that feeds the right-wing Tea Party movement.

Pollster Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners says people’s distrust of government is at an all-time high. That distrust stems from their economic concerns and fears that the government hasn’t been able to sooth, but is not an endorsement of the radical anti-government stance of the extreme right, she says.

There is job anger and paycheck anger. It’s directed at big banks and corporations, too. They want to see the changes they were promised in 2008 and they want to see someone address their economic concerns.

Lake says the faltering economy has cut a wide swath across the working class with 38 percent of those recently polled saying either they or someone close to them had lost a job, seen their wages fall (43 percent) or lost their health care coverage (27 percent).

But just 13 percent say the government’s Wall Street bailout and other actions have moved down to Main Street and helped working  families, and even fewer, 11 percent, say small business have benefited. Sixty-two percent say it was Big Banks that got the most benefit.

Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum says Working America organizers going door to door often find people who identify themselves as Tea Party followers or Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh fans. They don’t necessarily embrace the hard core, right-wing philosophy?they are just really mad.

She told of an Ohio woman who said she “listened to Glenn Beck, supported the Tea Party and hated Obama.” But when the Working America canvasser talked about the role Big Banks and Wall Street played in the economic collapse and the power corporations wield over the economy, the woman wrote a letter to Sen. George Voinovich (R) supporting Wall Street reform legislation. Then she joined Working America.

We can connect with these folks. They are open to alternatives that make sense. We can compete with the right-wing message machine.

Working family voters want to see government and lawmakers turn their focus away from Wall Street to creating jobs for Main Street, says Lake.

People who demonstrate a working families’ agenda are the ones who will be elected this fall.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 07, 2010 (boomark / email).