Growing pains for the unions

The break-up of the AFL-CIO looks like a disaster for the Democrats and maybe in the short-term, it is. But let’s remember that unions were formed to protect and promote the worker, not the Democratic Party.

Perhaps this disbanding is exactly the kind of shake up the nation’s unions could use—instead of sinking their resources into fruitless political campaigns, unions can go back to their roots—organizing labor. Focus on places like Wal-Mart instead of Washington, D.C.

For too long the unions have supported a party that’s forgotten working Americans by joining the Republicans in promoting free-trade disasters like NAFTA and the more-recent CAFTA, international agreements that only benefit multinational corporations who then say thanks by shipping jobs overseas where they can exploit Third World workers.

Maybe with the threat of losing a political revenue stream it has come to take for granted, the Democrats will remember who their true base is—the working men and women of this nation.

In the face of the corporate-coddling Bush administration, American workers need all the help they can get. And it’s not coming from the Democrats.