Labor Pains

The Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union are pulling out of the AFL-CIO. They feel that John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, isn't doing enough for the rank and file.

This is a big story, but it's hard to know how it'll play out. Are these hotheads who don't know how to play the game, or revolutionaries showing the way? Regardless, I think the biggest problems of labor in the last 50 years were not due to any particular failure of leadership, but rather, created by historical change in the economy that organized labor could not prevent. (It's not unlike farmers who became a smaller and smaller percentage of all workers--this is the kind of creative destruction which is good overall but can cause tremendous dislocation.)

Will this hurt the Democrats, as some predict? I doubt it. They own labor (and vice versa) and internecine fights won't change that. It's the overall trend that has to be, and in fact, already has, been dealth with, inasumch as Labor is only one part, if a significant one, in the Democrat's coalition.