Mondale/Hart: No friends of labor

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In state after state, large blocs of voters show hostility to the unions,' stated nationally syndicated columnist Joseph Kraft in his March 27 column. Kraft gives faint praise to "labor" for enabling Walter Mondale to "claw his way back" against Gary Hart after suffering stunning losses in recent primaries. But increasingly the labor bureaucracy, Kraft argues, is proving to be a liability to aspiring politicians.

Kraft cites Professor Mark Perlman of the University of Pittsburgh, who notes that "several different groups in the population have turned sharply against labor." He lists retired people living off fixed incomes who "blame inflation on big wage increases forced by the unions." He refers to Blacks, Latinos and the middle class, all of whom, he claims, are turned off by positions taken by the unions.

Aside from the false insinuation that wage increases cause inflation, Kraft's theme that labor's positions have allowed its traditional support from these layers to slip away contains more than a grain of truth. But the reasons for this are not the ones given by the apologists of big business.

For example, such advances as unemployment insurance and social security pensions-won by the labor movement in the 1930s and enjoyed by all these sectors of the population-have been allowed to stand still, at inadequate levels, or even shrink. This was a conscious policy carried out by the bureaucrats at the head of the labor movement. Each union has carried out a policy of opting for its own supplementary pensions, unemployment insurance, and private medical plans.

The foolishly narrow-minded policy of cutting a separate deal for each union has left members of weak unions—not to mention the unorganized-to fend for themselves. Ironically, private medical plans are being undermined by profiteering hospitals and doctors who have raised their rates beyond the capacity of employee welfare funds to maintain the existing level of benefits. Fewer workers in every industry further undermine these welfare plans.

The reason the labor bureaucrats have stood by and watched all the social programs get cut back is simple: the capitalist party candidates slavishly supported by the union bureaucrats refuse to take a stand in favor of an adequate program of social security, much less to carry it out! For the labor bureaucrats to organize a campaign around such strategically important social objectives would lead willy-nilly to a break with the Democratic party. Consequently, the labor bureaucracy pursues the disastrous social policy of every union for itself and the working class as a whole be damned.

Self-defeating policy

This suicidal policy continues unabated. The labor bureaucrats have tied their fate to Walter Mondale, who promises damn little and will give even less if elected. History has its way of punishing those who close their eyes to experience. The self-defeating policy of adapting labor's aims to the fundamentally antilabor policy of the best of the capitalist political "friends" has so eroded labor's political standing that its endorsement now appears to be as much a liability as it is a credit.

Joseph Kraft and other labor-haters have good reason to gloat at Mondale's difficulties. Kraft ends his column with the observation: "Soon,' a Democratic senator said of the AFL-CIO, 'they'll be up for sale. They'll go the way of the Teamsters." (The Teamsters supported Reagan in 1980 and seem headed in that direction in this election.)

Today Mondale's chief rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Gary Hart, is raking him over the coals for his position on Central America. Hart correctly nails Mondale for his support of imperialist intervention. Hart, for a brief period, demagogically called for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the region. Hart shows that he accurately reads the mass sentiment in opposition to U.S. intervention in that part of the world.

Meanwhile, Mondale derides Hart's withdrawal position as "pulling the plug on Central America." But Hart's clear withdrawal position didn't last long. The April 1 edition of the New York Times reported that Hart and Mondale now claim that "the other has come around to his rival's position. Both would remove the several hundred troops sent to Honduras for military exercises. Both would leave in place approximately 200 American military advisers who were training Honduran military units... " (our emphasis).

The verbal sparring between Mondale and Hart reveals their mutual hypocrisy in attempting to adapt themselves to the mass sentiment against imperialist military intervention in Central America and Lebanon. Both candidates, along with Jesse Jackson, fully support the stupendous military budget-each proposing a somewhat lesser amount than Reagan's program.

Whoever finally gets the nod from the Democratic Party convention will do working people no good. And those in the labor movement who endorse the Democratic Party presidential ticket to "stop Reagan at all costs" will further discredit both themselves and the millions of working people they claim to represent.