Where should labor land on Bernie Sanders’s run for the Democratic nomination for President? Over at Jacobin, Steve Early, former long-time organizer with the Communications Workers of America and current member of the New Labor Forum Board, argues that Sanders’s long record of support for labor struggles and issues should earn him the support of labor. In Labor For Bernie, Early writes:
It’s an axiom of labor solidarity that help received, in a period of need, will be reciprocated down the road. Vermont union members learned long ago that the mutual benefit derived from their work with and for Sanders goes far beyond the results of labor’s usual (and sometimes tawdry) transactional relationships with public officeholders.
That’s why trade unionists in Vermont have turned out for Sanders as much as he’s aided them over the years. Let’s hope that their union brothers and sisters in other Democratic primary states will figure out which side they should be on, without the benefit of such long personal association.
It’s promising that many rank-and-file activists have already signed up to join the “Labor Campaign for Bernie.” Last week, the Vermont State Labor Council urged the national AFL-CIO to support Sanders, calling him “the strongest candidate articulating our issues.”
But if the rest of organized labor plays it cautious and safe, jumping on the Clinton bandwagon instead of rallying around Sanders, it will be just one more sign of diminished union capacity for mounting any kind of worker self-defense, on the job or in politics.
For the full article, visit JacobinMag.com.
