Pushing the US political narrative more rightwards and ever increasingly anti-worker.

Very good piece in Slate by Jamelle Bouie who notes that presidential candidate Scott Walker is really upping the ante in his campaign on restricting union membership and activities. And in a way it is merely an extreme version – or a more extreme version, than that we see in the UK. As Bouie notes even though union membership in the US is about 11% of all workers, and at historically low figures…

For Scott Walker, that’s not weak enough.

Walker’s plan?

…a national version of the strategy he used to break unions in Wisconsin, although it’s far more forthright than the supposedly reluctant steps he took at the beginning of this year. He would end collective bargaining for federal employees, as per his move in 2011; he would require complete disclosure for union expenditures and total compensation of union officers; he would sign a national “right to work law” that blocks unions from making contracts that require all workers to pay dues to the union for negotating with management, whether they belong to the union or not; he would repeal wage controls for federal infrastructure projects; and he would eliminate the National Labor Relations Board, which conducts elections for labor union representation and investigates unfair labor practices.

And all of this due to an economically illiterate approach whereby unions are to blame for all ills and removing them will somehow let freedom reign.

Walker’s underlying idea—that unions are deleterious to American well-being—is unfounded. Yes, there are union abuses and union corruption. On the whole, however, the opposite is true: Unions have been an important ally for middle-class workers, and the fall of labor has widened the gap between productivity and pay, and increased income inequality. According to a 2011 study published in the American Sociological Review, titled “Unions, Norms, and the Rise in U.S. Wage Inequality,” sociologists Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld found that the decline in union power and density since the 1970s explained a third of the increase in wage inequality among men. And a study from the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute finds that wage stagnation has been worst among groups that were unionized in previous decades but have seen the greatest decline in union membership: men and non-college-educated workers. If the past is any indication, Walker’s plan would accelerate the trend.

BTW, kudos to Walker for his Orwellian use of language…

Perhaps aware of his anti-labor reputation, Walker’s plan is filled with pro-worker rhetoric. Unions are “union bosses” or “big-government union bosses” while anti-union regulations are called “pro-freedom” and pro-“employee’s rights.”

But as Bouie notes Walker – whether he loathes unions or not, and I think he does, oh yes – is doing this for a political purpose, in order to carve out some space alongside the dominance of Trump.

You know, I’ve been reading a lot about Nixon in recent years, and one doesn’t have to don rose-tinted glasses to see in him a very different sort of US conservatism. Whereas most of the current crop? What has happened? What has happened?