> What does 'pulling the plug on unions' even mean?
It is a figure of speech. Union membership is steadily declining relative to employment http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm and currently it is 12.5% of wage and salary workers - down from 20.1% in 1983. That rate for private sector is 7.8% in 2005, down by 0.1% from 2004. If the trend continues, the unions will all but disappear from the private sector in 10 or so years.
> Union dues are one of the few organized pots of money that is
> not rich people's money funnelled through corporate and
> family foundations, corporations, etc. Union pension funds
> are another source of political power.
Read Fitch's book. He argues that it is the main source of mob money laundering and bribes err. Political contributions to the Democratic party.
If you want to
> instead fight for universal health care, living wage laws or
> labor law enforcement, how are you going to fund that?
> Cookie sales?
Again read Fitch's book. He argues that union bosses actually oppose
universal health plan and living wage laws because their own power depends
on the ability to dispense these benefits to the members. Universal
availability of these benfits would undermine the personal power of union
bosses.
And since our wages will go down upon the
> demise of our unions, we won't have a lot left over to give
> you, even if we could be organized to do so (which also takes money.)
Fitch argues that in many industries the so-called union wages are actually lower than the non-union wages and sometimes even lower than the federal minumum. It is, Fitch argues, because union bosses sell the non-enforcement of contract wages to they employers in eaxchange for kickbacks.
If you look at the BLS data referenced earlier (Table 4) you will find union membership benefit in terms of higher wages is confined largely to low wage industries, whereas in high wage industry (like professional services, management services or financial services) union members earn less. Union membership does not pay off for federal employees (which I believe is probably an effect of concentration of union membership in lower GS levels), albeit it does for state and local government workers.
So from that point of view, unions are not necessarily beneficial to the working class as a whole, even though they may benefit small pockets of workers. Therefore, it is a bone fide question, whether a person who call himself a progressive should support unions or other types of progressive organizations that may offer more universal benefit. In my view, if one decides to support unions, it should be a reasoned decision that can be rationally defended, rather than a knee-jerk following the party line.
Wojtek