Labor & Employment Law

Trumka: Working-Class Anger Fueled by Right?s ?Deeply Dishonest? Message

By Mike Hall

With the economy continuing to stagger and job creation not moving quickly, ?working people are justifiably angry and frustrated? as they approach the Nov. 2 elections, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

Trumka and Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, Eric Alterman, journalist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and moderator Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of the Nation, led a panel discussion?Which Way for the Working Class? Elections 2010 and Beyond?Friday afternoon in New York City.

More than 400 people attended the event at the Great Hall at Cooper Union.

Trumka said it is vital to channel working-class anger away from Fox News and Tea Party extremists who are delivering

a cynical, deeply dishonest and incoherent message?that big government is somehow to blame for the current crisis that the budget deficit will eat our children, and that illegal immigrants took all the good jobs.

However, he added, ?The good news is they haven’t bought into right-wing ideology. They are just confused about who to blame.? But:

We have to offer working people something other than the dead-end choice between the failed agenda of greed and the voices of hate and division and violence.

Alterman said workers are so beaten down by the economy, ?[p]eople don’t ask for raises anymore.? He also said that the labor movement and the progressive community face a tremendous challenge because

there is an alliance of the corporations and high-powered government politicians against the interests of working people.

Working America canvassers knock on thousands of doors every night, Nussbaum said, and find that there is a huge vacuum of facts and unbiased information about the root causes of the nation?s economic troubles?and working-class voters? opinions can be shaped by the barrage from the likes of Fox News, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

But those are not deeply held beliefs and can be swayed, she said, when presented with a more balanced view and a look at the Bush/Boehner economic policies that tanked the economy and are now at the heart of the Republican agenda if they win a congressional majority. That, said Herbert, is

why the work [Working America] is doing is so critical. I would just strongly urge everyone to get to work organizing on the local level because I think it’s the only way we’re going to turn things around in this country.

In the short term, said Trumka, the labor movement has to ?recapture the moment and take control of the national conversation.? Building for the future,

we need to fundamentally restructure our economy and re-establish popular control over the private corporations which have distorted our economy and hijacked our government.  That?s a long-term job, but one we should start now.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 27, 2010 (boomark / email).