What Have Unions Done for You Lately?

Over at TPMCafe, Nathan Newman’s post on unions and liberal support of them is causing a ruckus. A rather weird one at that.

One of the threads of discontent is that knowledge based workers don’t get anything out of that—Bullshit. Look down to SEIU’s efforts to organize home child care workers and notice that such people take care of children, and probably the children of people who work in such businesses in the lessor paying jobs. If it wasn’t for SEIU’s work, the home child care worker would be less well paid and those at the lower end of the wage scale would either not have child care available or it would be worse quality. The state on it’s own has little reason to increase the rate, but SEIU has provided a benefit for all of us by improving pay for the home child care workers and in turn, quality will improve over time with other initiatives. Early childhood education efforts are critical to childhood development and carries one of the larger economic returns of any public investment.

Of course, often knowledge workers find many benefits from union representation.

Beyond, that there is some whining about how unions can’t help improve skills for laborers, which is one of the most ignorant statements ever uttered for those familiar with labor unions and how the apprentice systems they utilize as well as work SEIU has done to improve the quality of child care workers. Much of the skilled labor in this country is taught through union efforts including trade schools and the apprentice system.

There are many criticisms to make of unions, but for Democrats to think they are useless strikes me as an amazing ignorance of what unions do for individual workers as well as their efforts to push for better working conditions. As screwed up as OSHA is, it’s a hell of a lot better than relying on individual companies for worker safety. Unions are the ones that got it put in place.

Digby points out the importance of public employee unions:

These are middle class American workers who have not, contrary to Republican lies, become lazy, fat and opportunistic with their huge salaries that pay oh, 50k a year. These are cops, firemen, nurses and teachers who are trying to work in increasingly difficult circumstances without any hope of ever getting rich. Indeed, many of these people chose their jobs because they actually give a damn. And they tend to support Democrats for a reason — because Democrats support them. You don’t have to have a Phd from MIT to understand how this thing works.

Atrios chimes in with a very practical point:

The current model of politics is unlikely to be overturned anytime soon. The netroots may complement it and may supplement it, but they’re unlikely to replace it. Unions can do what is necessary – put bodies in position at key moments. When a candidate is running for local or statewide office, it’s absolutely vital to get bodies at events. Bodies equal audiences, audiences equal press coverage.

That certainly isn’t the only role unions play, but it’s one which is hard to duplicate.