The Teamsters, SEIU, UFCW and UNITE HERE are dropping out of the AFL-CIO. Some are panicking, and some are rejoicing, but if they thought about it, each might be doing the opposite.
Fox News spun it, in their typical class-war fashion, as "The End of Organized Labor?", but I think it's more like "Labor Movement Shows Signs of Life".
The AFL-CIO became immensely powerful by assembling most of the nation's labor unions into a single organization, coming closer than most people ever thought possible to the Wobblies' "One Big Union". Unfortunately, One Big Union wound up as bureaucratic and ineffectual as One Big Phone Company or One Big Anything Else. Big surprise.
Now, though, the split in Big Labor allows for the possibility of an actual Labor Movement, as opposed to a Labor Institution. In other words, a chance for us folks who for the last thirty years have been on the losing side of the class war to start fighting back.
We may hope, anyway.
//The Magic 8-Ball says, "Go away, I have the day off."\\
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