Trumka vows to reverse Trump gains with union members

Washington Times Posted On 6:45 am September 2, 2019

Labor union leaders have launched their biggest mobilization ever for the 2020 campaigns, determined to reassert their political power and beat back the inroads President Trump has made with blue-collar workers.

At the heart of the plan is an overhaul of the way the leadership courts and connects with members, with an emphasis on listening and responding to dues-paying members. They wanted to give the unions more of a grassroots ethos, said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest federation of labor unions.

“We started talking to our members,” he told a group of Washington reporters last week at a roundtable interview hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.

He credited the revved-up outreach with helping Democrats win a House majority and make other gains in elections last year.

The midterm mobilization included 2.3 million door knocks, 5 million flyers, 250,000 text messages, 12 million pieces of mail, a digital ad campaign that had 69 million impressions, and the unions’ largest-ever TV and radio campaign targeting black and Hispanic voters.

“This time we will do even more,” Mr. Trumka said. “We have a plan, a very synchronized, effective plan.............To Read More....

My Take - This isn't about what workers want and jobs. It's about unions and their grip on the dollars they generate through dues from the members and their ability to coerce industry. 

We really do need to get that. 

If he really cared about  what workers want, why doesn't he put his union on the line for a vote to see if the members still want them to continue to represent them?  None of these union workers voted in these unions.  That was done two generations ago by their grandfathers and great grandfathers.  But that's not what's going to happen.  This is all a dog and pony show for the members, but it's not for the benefit of the members.  We need to end the corrupt bargain between unions and the federal government  that's been forced on the nation starting with that piece of New Deal corruption called Wagner Act, forcing industry to recognize unions as representatives of their work force by FDR.