Union Haul

Just a couple of weeks earlier at General Motors' Fairfax plant, workers celebrated their 10 millionth car, a black 2006 Chevrolet Malibu Maxx. They cranked out Malibus all summer, even as they waited for their union reps to decide whether to renegotiate their health insurance. The contract wasn't set to expire for a couple more years, but a few months ago, near bankruptcy, GM claimed that paying for its workers' health insurance and pensions was killing the company, adding $1,525 to every sticker in its U.S. lots.

But c'mon. It's a lot easier for GM execs to blame the company's woes on its workers instead of, say, themselves.

"Right now, health care is the issue, because the company, in the form of its CEO, Rick Wagoner, made a big spectacle at the shareholders' meeting last month," Dave Peterson, president of UAW Local 31, told me back in June. "They're saying we're in this big crisis. My question, and most of the [union] leadership's question, is, show us the crisis. Where have you been spending the money?"

Well, for one thing, the company has been furiously writing checks to China. But what's good for General Motors is good for America, and cutting health insurance is in vogue right now.

"It's a huge race to the bottom in terms of what companies are doing to their workers," Peterson told me. "Communities in this country are losing good-paying manufacturing jobs. And there's more of a loss of white-collar jobs — in engineering, information technology, call centers, help desks. Nothing's insulated or protected from this fast-paced movement of capital out of the high-wage, industrialized countries of the world."

That's what made me feel for the union guys in their American-made cars. Because it's all true. A few days after the parade, the Census Bureau put out new numbers showing that the country's poverty rate has risen again for the fourth year in a row — it's now at 12.7 percent — even as the economy supposedly recovered. Huh? The economy's better, but more people live in poverty? Someone's getting rich, but it ain't the working people.

That sounds like a job for the unions!

If they can figure out how to do it.

In Berkley Park, a few hundred people stuck around to eat hot dogs, talk politics and listen to speeches under a relentless sun. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver gave a rousing sermon, climaxing with a scream: "You built this nation! This nation is yours!"

Bridgette Williams, president of the local AFL-CIO, gave a nod to the minority workers who'd been protesting the rally. "They're not against us, and we're not against them," she said. "Think of them as new members who deserve the opportunity to have a good union job!"

Obviously, however, all was not well. Master of ceremonies Garry Kemp, head of the Greater Kansas City Building and Construction Trades Council, told the crowd, "We're just now starting to come out of the depression from last November." If that's the case, these folks are way, way, way late in filling their Wellbutrin prescriptions — so late, in fact, that they'll probably need a double dose next November, when Claire McCaskill loses her senate race to Jim Talent because nobody on the left has figured out what to do about abortion.

Herb Johnson of the Missouri AFL-CIO acknowledged the trouble ahead. "Some say we aren't in condition to fight, but the misery index is rising, and they're playing right into our hands!" he yelled. "Solidarity will rise again!" The rhetoric rivaled Cleaver's, but you can't just rely on people's misery.

You have to give them hope, too.

And listening to the politicians, it was obvious that none of them really knew what to do. Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, clearly campaigning as the Democratic challenger to Gov. Matt Blunt in 2008, offered a generic "I look forward to working with each and every one of you to make sure that we can make changes happen!"

Fat chance. The obvious lesson from last November is that working people can't put all of their hope in politicians. None of us can expect our sold-out government to do the right thing anymore. Desperate times call for desperate measures — maybe a little good old-fashioned head-bustin', anyone? After all, the thing that made unions strong in the first place was that they weren't afraid to throw around their muscle.

But as a little folk ensemble took the microphone for a closing version of "Solidarity Forever," there wasn't much solidarity anymore. Only 30 or so people remained to sing along, scattered out in the sun and under Berkley Park's spindly trees.

The rest had drifted away, hot and tired after the effort of showing themselves, at least, that the workers of Kansas City could unite for a day. After this summer, that, in and of itself, was worth celebrating.