Strib, carrying an AP feed, this link.
WASHINGTON - About a dozen trade unions plan to sit out the 2012 Democratic convention because they're angry that it's being held in a right-to-work state and frustrated that Democrats haven't done enough to create jobs.
The move could pose a larger problem for President Barack Obama next year if an increasingly dispirited base of labor activists becomes so discouraged that it doesn't get the rank-and-file to the polls in the usual strong numbers.
The unions — all part of the AFL-CIO's building and construction trades unit — told party officials this week they are gravely disappointed that labor was not consulted before Democrats settled on Charlotte, N.C., where there are no unionized hotels.
"We find it troubling that the party so closely associated with basic human rights would choose a state with the lowest unionization rate in the country due to regressive policies aimed at diluting the power of workers," Mark Ayers, president of the building trades unit, wrote in a letter to Democratic Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The decision by the building trades came after a vote by leaders of the unit's 13 affiliate unions, including the Laborers, Painters and Electrical Workers unions. Overall, they represent about 2.5 million members.
"There is broad frustration with the party and all elected officials, broad frustration with the lack of a union agenda," said Michael Monroe, chief of staff of the building trades division. "People are looking for outlets to express that frustration."
That sort of thing would not happen if Dennis Kucinich or Bernie Sanders were president. Bet on that as a sure thing. See: Upper sidebar item.
_____________UPDATE______________
A comment that did not survive moderation was about wanting to fornicate with the unions, something along those lines, and mentioning "madison" and not Madison. Hard to type correctly I suppose when your knuckles are all stiff and scarred from dragging them.
My political beef with the unions, they pick weak candidates sometimes, and weigh in early in DFL matters. That was seen with the Tinklenberg situation.
On a far higher level, long-term, they lack perspective about foreign workers. Last election cycle anyone caucusing DFL could offer platform proposals. I did that suggesting the law should be toughened greatly on employers who hire undocumented workers, or who nod and wink at false papers. No jobs, then the problem lessens. But with that I distinguished a different breed of foreign worker. At the top end of research and development the nation needs the best and brightest the world can offer, to stay atop the innovation game - which is what creates high paying high value jobs. We eduacate in our university graduate programs some of these people, some study in Europe, and some Asian top scholars stay and study in Asia. After the USSR breakup and the 1998 Russian debt default, and between, some of the top Russian and former Soviet scientists and engineers emigrated - those with necessary language skills to remain productive in a new nation using a different language.
The upshot, at the top talent end, the unique talent end - as with athletic talent that percolates as so special that it makes it in professional sports above the journeyman level; intellectually, we need the best.
Strib reports today about science test scores in Minnesota, here.
Several years ago, an international test showed the state's students fared well in relation to those in other nations.
"Only five countries outperformed us, and they're all Asian countries," Lindstrom said. "But while we're gaining on them, they're a ways ahead of us. ... If we can't meet the challenge, then we can't compete with these Asian countries, and right now that's where our competition lies."
Now Minnesota scores have dropped somewhere at the middle of the bell curve. Strib says so.
That is a so-what thing. It would be only from within the top 10% of those in K-12 that the top post graduate scientists and engineers will come from. That's reality. Ditto for physicians. The reasonable skill set for sales and management people, in science and math, are less important than people skills and common sense to avoid bad decisions or thinking in a rut or being an asshole-boss.
Back to my DFL policy plank experience.
I wrote a short proposal about stomping hard on the miscreant employers, they are the problem with hiring cheap illegal labor instead of less-cheap citizens or documented foreigners - BUT - to at the same time support and encourage temporary and permanent recruitment and retention of the top skilled technologists.
By the time the platform proposals came to the caucus floor, the insiders had totally horsed up the second part. The unions must distinguish. There is a place for organized effort, where workers are more fungible, and there is a place where talent, and talent alone, should rule.
They horsed up the part of the proposed platform plank aimed at assuring an innovative future by emphasizing the need for the best and brightest the world offers within younger generations.
That was dishearening. It was the unions being totally counter-productive to their own long term best interests. Innovation provides growth - start-ups mature, and hiring growth follows.
The wealthy are not the job creators, as Republican propaganda repeatedly bleats.
The innovators are the job creators. Those are who we need, and who we need to help along as much as feasible. It is pure and simple meritocracy, like it or love it, as much so as who plays second base for the Twins vs. ends a career after a short stint in the minor leagues.
We need major league talent, and if it means hiring Asian and European and Latin American talent, if found and willing, then brain-drain full bore. Globalization can do its leveling and its discourgement of war as a political policy - lessons from the two massive European wars of the Twentieth Century. But if the US does not actively brain-drain, especially the people who come here and fill our graduate education program and hence show English proficiency early on, then the US will continue its direction toward economic second rate status, with the accompanying disparity of income distribution that traditionally has been a third-world pattern.
The unions need to wise up. The Republicans need to wise up. Greedy management of banks and other firms, the Wall Street and Main Street vaiants, have to be curbed. Those answers are clear. But the special interests need to be less bloodthirsty in their "turf" considerations. In labor. In management. In management one Helmsley rapaciously taking obscene amounts of money away from healthcare is one too many.