Teamsters Teaming With Lefty Bloggers?
Posted on October 22, 2007 at 5:55 am by WTH
In another sure sign that unions are desperately “looking for any allies it can get” (in the words of Bret Jacobson of the Center for Union Facts), the Teamsters are trying to enlist the aid of leftist bloggers to help them get the union word out.
As laborpains.org has it:
There was much ado, for a moment, when news broke that far-lefty bloggers were talking with Teamsters officials about getting out the union bosses’ propaganda. Campaigns and Elections has the story, and we were happy to help out with some thoughts:
“This is just the latest sign that the labor movement is feeling weak and looking for any allies it can get,” said Bret Jacobson, a senior research analyst at the Center for Union Facts, a conservative antiunion group. “The real underlying reason for this is that union officials are having a tough time creating alliances with moderates, so they have to join forces with radicals like those in the blogging community.”
One stumbling block to this burgeoning political alliance could be their discord on issues like oil drilling in the Arctic. While both groups say they agree more often than not, it is far from a match made in heaven.
“Just announcing a grand alliance,” Jacobson said, “doesn’t make it workable.”
Why do I say its a “sure sign” that the unions are desperate? Why else would they allow their message to end up in the hands of people they don’t fully control? These leftist bloggers ostensibly may be on the side of the unions, but the unions cannot be 100% sure that they can control what these bloggers say. And it has been seen that lefty bloggers love to eat their own when these DailyKoz types have the slightest hint that things aren’t going satisfactorily.
This lefty blogger thing could easily blow up in the union’s face, but here they are doing it anyway. It just shows that they are desperate enough to relinquish some amount of control of their message.
This could be an interesting mistake on behalf of the union.
