WNYLaborToday.com Editor’s Note: Under the theme Reconnecting The Movement, Western New York AFL-CIO Area Labor Federation (WNYALF) President Peter DeJesus, Jr. made a conscious effort to diversify those who addressed the more than 100 Central Labor Council Presidents, Union Leaders and Representatives, and Friends of Labor in attendance at the recently-held Annual WNYALF Meeting.  “These are the ‘fresh faces’ of the Labor Movement,” DeJesus said before introducing each who spoke, including SMART (International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation) Local 71 Organizer Andre Mayes (Pictured Above/WNYLaborToday.com Photos), who told WNYLaborToday.com: “I would like it to be clear that the opinions and comments I made in (my) speech are my own and not those of my Union.  My perspective as an officer here does inform them, but so does my everyday life as a Father, Worker and child of a single Mother in a poverty-stricken family who grew up as a member of the first generation in American History projected to have worse life outcomes than their predecessors.”  His address to the WNYALF Attendees was entitled: Labor’s Responsibility In U.S. Politics.

In 1992, American Political Scientist Francis Fukuyama authored The End of History and the Last Man.

The basic premise of this book is that with the fall of the Soviet Union, humanity had reached the endpoint of a long evolutionary period for how to govern itself.

Liberal Democracy was triumphant.

Every Nation in the world would eventually welcome it as the only logical way to run a society.

Neo-Liberal economic principals had unleashed a flood of cash through deregulation of once public spaces and the financialization of the economy.

Products were becoming cheaper, the Internet was taking its first steps and Democratic President Bill Clinton triumphantly declared that the era of Big Government was over.

The United States and her allies were riding a wave of triumphalism unparalleled anywhere in recorded history.

The sun never set on the British Empire, but a shining city on a hill is plenty bright enough to spread its rays in perpetuity.

Despite all of this, all was not well in America.

This Nation that pulled together to help defeat the authoritarian regimes of Fascism and Communism was developing some very problematic political philosophies of its own.

A belief that corporations were the only groups capable of making decisions in economies of scale began to undermine the very process that allowed this Nation to rise to such heights.

Unions were on the decline as individualism had smashed the corrupt Communist ideal of collective action.

Do not get me wrong, the Soviet Union was never the Workers’ paradise it claimed to be, but their rhetoric created a perfect juxtaposition to the American Dream of making it on your own.

Decades of attacks from the Right had finally broken the bulwark that Labor Organizations provided for America’s Working Class.

It is, however, important to note that no movement falls apart completely due to outside influence.

The national Democratic Party, and in the 1920s the Republicans, did not push Organized Labor away in a vacuum.

The public did not go from being over 30% Unionized in the post-war years to having the lowest rate of Unionization in the developed world because they’d grown tired of fair pay and benefits.

Arguments to send jobs overseas where pay was lower and Unions didn’t exist in any meaningful way did not ascend because they were objective in their analysis.

These things all happened, in part, because the Labor Movement was unprepared for a political onslaught from the ownership class that we should’ve seen coming.

Like the Nation as a whole after the Cold War, Labor had become content with what it had accomplished.

And as human beings, who wouldn’t be?

At the time of the PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) Strike, the prevailing philosophy was still that of the New Deal in both parties.

But how did the New Deal come to pass?

And how did it all go so horribly wrong when a sitting President broke a Public Union Strike Line?

The answer is political in nature.

Politics set the stage for how we interact as a society and money is the language through which those interactions are communicated.

If you doubt this, look at Citizens United, where money was declared free speech.

This means if you’re rich, you now have more free speech than someone who is poor.

What could be more un-American than this bastardization of the First Amendment to the Constitution?

And in the order of Neo-Liberal Democracy, money is power.

It is money and its movement that dictate political power and the shrinking of Unions means the extraction of that power from the Working Class.

The ownership class understands this - indeed, it’s how they became the ownership class in the first place.

If you have influence over the political process, you have influence over how money is distributed in society, and as a result, you have power.

Individualism teaches that great men alone can shape society and naturally it follows that we should give them whatever they need to guide us to prosperity.

But we in the Labor Movement know this to be a fantasy.

It is only collective action that can take disparate experiences and weave them into a uniquely American tapestry.

Collective action is what passed the New Deal and NLRA (National Labor Relations Act).

A collective approach lead by Organized Labor pushed the Democratic Party into the arms of the Working Class.

They saw the collective mass of angry voters with militant Unions and gave them the relief they were demanding.

The result?

Nearly sixty years of legislative control with only minor interruptions and transformative presidencies that delivered for Working Families.

As we grew complacent in our gains, ownership mounted a counter-offensive that culminated in the PATCO Strike breaking and the end of history narrative.

What that has delivered is not a global Democratic utopia, but stagnant wages, compounding recessions and stratospheric wealth inequality.

Here we now find the ownership class complacent, leading to a once in a generation opportunity to hold power accountable.

The time has come to once again unite and demand that politicians deliver some of the power in our society back to the collective mass of angry voters.

Republicans now speak in the language of economic populism.

Democrats have proposed the PRO (Protecting the Right to Organize) Act, but this is only rhetoric until we force action.

Real wage gains, dignity in retirement, full access to health care and education, these are the least of what is owed to us by those we’ve empowered with our vote and made wealthy with our labor.

Our Members are thirsty for a movement that gets beyond distracting culture war fights and instead demands politicians answer the phone after the first Tuesday in November.

If they don’t, they will face the threat of unemployment that has become so common to anyone who speaks up alone.

The most important lesson I’ve learned since joining the Labor Movement is that united we bargain and divided we beg.

I know we all believe in this and love our Unions.

If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.

I call on all to join me in expanding our collective vision beyond individual Unions - and to take up the cause of Labor as a whole, to hold government accountable for defending our right to stand on even footing with business and capital.

Through this version of unity, we will move beyond the realm of bargaining for what we need, and into that of demanding.