Collective Progress

 Labor Day Recalls Collective Progress

 

This Labor Day weekend brings a time to reflect on how modern America was built by a thriving middle class, many of whom belonged to and benefited from union membership. 

            

My grandfather was part of the early labor union movement in the 1920s and 1930s and advocated for a movement not only concerned with wages and safe working conditions, but also education, healthcare, civil rights and political involvement for working people. He founded a college for labor union organizers and later a private high school the children of union workers that was in the forefront of progressive education.

 

I worked my way through the end of my undergraduate college education and all of my years in law school as a proud member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), Local 251, AFL-CIO in Madison in the early 1970s. The work was hard, with long late-night hours, and paid very well for the times. The union negotiated the pay scales and ensured the work was safely performed. I was trained my more experienced brothers and sisters.  My work putting on traveling shows for rock stars, ice shows, auto shows, ice hockey games, and Broadway musicals helped keep my family fed. I still have my union card.

 

As a lawyer, I am a member of the State Bar of Wisconsin. Not usually thought of as a labor union, the State Bar does look out for its members, lobbies for and against legislation affecting the profession and judicial system, provides ethics advice and financial benefits like insurance and discounts on purchases. I was Chair of the Bar’s Criminal Law Section in the early 2000s and helped lead the effort to defeat legislation that would have reinstituted the death penalty in Wisconsin. 

 

The common thread throughout is the notion that collectively working people in all of our society’s economic classes can bring about change for the collective good that individuals could not achieve on their own. 

 

In the current political climate, we seem to have forgotten the need for collective responses to broad collective threats. Nowhere is this more evident than in our lack of collective response to the Corona virus pandemic. The recognition of the need for a universal, collective response has been subverted by outmoded beliefs in individual freedom and autonomy.

 

I was born at the end of World War II. As a child, I can remember my parents talking about the sacrifices they had to make in order to focus on winning the war against fascism. Food was rationed, gasoline was rationed, certain building materials were rationed or not available at all, whole industries were converted from peace-time to war-time production, some individual freedoms were curtailed. Those of us who lived on the coasts had blackouts at night so enemy submarines and aircraft could not see the lights. The sacrifices were universal, went on for years and impacted every aspect of society in pursuit of a single goal, to win the war. 

 

Fortunately, we as a nation have not had to face anything near these lengthy and universal sacrifices since the end of World War II. There have been smaller, shorter lived sacrifices, like those we experienced after 9/11, but they only impacted proportionally few of us.  Individual freedoms have increased as a result and have taken over the body politic. We have descended into more tribal political stances and the correspondingly smaller collective actions pursue single issue agendas. We have forgotten the collective good as a core value.

 

Our upcoming presidential and congressional elections will pit two, very different, ideologies and the outcome will define our collective future for decades. 

 

Donald Trump’s view is that we are all in this struggle for what is best for individuals as they determine for themselves. His is a view of rugged individualism and individual success. “Let me get whatever I can for myself without regard for anyone else.” He advocates the use of government to support individual aggrandizement. He wants to end government interference with business and personal freedoms so that each of us can do as we please. 

 

Joe Biden’s world view is much more collectively oriented. He supports organized labor, environmental regulation to combat climate change, more universal access to healthcare and a host of other goals that would make America better for all of us, not just those who share a privileged status. His is not a Bernie Sanders’ democratic socialist agenda, but a more moderate, yet still inclusive, agenda where each of can work to succeed while looking out for and after the less fortunate and less abled. 

 

Should Trump secure re-election, we will ultimately be forced to require a period of lengthy universal sacrifice in order to undo the damage he will have caused to the republic and the democratic principles upon which it was founded. I hope it does not come to that.