The Press Oils The Machinery of Class Warfare

[marmar]

from the Working Life blog:



The Press Oils The Machinery of Class Warfare

by Jonathan Tasini
Thursday 01 of September, 2011


I'm going to start by saying something entirely unoriginal: the traditional press has its head up its ass, and is thoroughly incapable of looking at itself and understanding that most transcribers of press releases (formerly known as "journalists") are entirely not qualified to write about the economy or work and, indeed, are oiling the machine of class warfare.

Okay, now that I've gotten the soft criticism out of the way, here is what made me write down the previous observation, one I have held after a long period of watching these clowns. Politico has a story about a Gallup poll about unions:

As unions have come under fire in states across the country, the differences in opinion between how Republicans and Democrats view organized labor has grown to historic margins, a new poll shows.

Republicans and Democrats have diverged dramatically in their views towards unions over the last year. This year’s Gallup poll on labor unions, released Thursday, shows that the gap between Republicans and Democrats on labor union approval is 52 percent, up from 37 percent last year.

Overall, only 26 percent of Republicans approve of unions, compared to 78 percent of Democrats. Last year, 34 percent of Republicans approved of unions, compared to 71 percent of Democrats.

Meanwhile, overall disapproval of labor unions remains near historic highs. A slim majority of Americans - 52 percent - approve of unions, up from a record low of 48 percent in 2009, while 42 percent of Americans disapprove of labor unions, according to Gallup. Historically the difference has been as low as 25 percent.

What are we to make of this data? .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=15281

[leftstreet]

1. Looks like the poll was about public unions

It'd be interesting to know who exactly was polled

[Kat45]

2. I don't know. The article said "labor unions."

I didn't see any specific about 'public.' Of course, these days the only unions people are aware of are public unions. There doesn't seem to be that much unionization in the private sector these days, and most people aren't in a union and probably don't know anyone in a union unless they work for the government.