The livelihoods of America’s working men and women have been under assault for a long time—measured in decades, not just years—and the unions which have represented those workers have been fighting a rear guard action to salvage something of a decent life.

As a bit of a retrospective of 2010 and a prognostication of what is to come in the lives of working folks next year and beyond, we can start with a few things that have become very familiar to anyone who watches even television news or reads a mainstream newspaper:  the disparity in wealth between the top 1-2 percent of Americans and the rest of us is the greatest since the Robber Barons of a hundred years ago; millions have been removed from their homes through foreclosure or short sale because they can’t make the monthly payment; there are five applicants for every available job in the country; although education is touted as a way out of misery, tuition and other costs of even public universities are more and more out of reach for the children of workers; Republicans and their ilk were willing to extend unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed millions only if the Democrats were willing to extract hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars to provide further tax cuts for the rich.

For now, we’ll leave out the precarious condition of our environment—air and water, the soil, and the oceans, themselves—and just consider the conditions wage workers and their families deal with everyday.  And, we’ll leave out the truly dangerous condition of America’s food system, which is controlled, literally, by faceless corporate bureaucrats and their minions in government.  It’s a system that is doing great harm and, often, killing us.

In recent years, up to and including this waning year, the union movement has struggled valiantly to protect workers—members and non-members alike—from the worst behaviors of corporations across the country.  They have had to do this in the face of a propaganda war that has even low wage workers speaking out against unions, even though common sense tells them that their employers have their own organizations, formed to benefit a corporate agenda, while they have no protection against arbitrary and capricious actions by their bosses.

As the strength of the union movement has diminished, the economic well being of working people, in general, has gone downhill and the country’s economic malaise has become a feature of daily life.  If the people are not doing well, the nation will not do well, no matter how much money the rich and powerful gather to themselves.

One bright spot in the declining condition of the American worker and unions has been in public employment.  The unions that flourished in government service in the short time that those workers have been allowed to organize has been a piece of good news for everyone in the union movement.  Providing public services is one of the few areas that generally cannot be farmed out to low wage countries.

The once derided public worker—with her low wages and paltry benefits—now has become in the eyes of the country’s right wing the “elite” worker, that is, one who has decent pay and benefits and a good pension.  Therefore, according to the Republicans and their right wing, such largesse must be stamped out, even as they show themselves willing to do just about anything to get more tax cuts for the rich and to protect the power and wealth of Corporate America.

Workers are in for an even rougher ride in the next year, or two, if what the outgoing governor of Minnesota says about public workers takes an even greater hold among the nation’s political right wing.  Let us be clear about this:  over the past several decades, while the Republicans and their managers in Corporate America were doing their best to harm working people, Democrats were missing in action on countless issues vital to workers and the conditions of their lives.

Tim Pawlenty, the Republican governor of Minnesota who many believe is the great hope for the GOP presidential nomination for 2012, wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 13, in which he repeated what has become a groundless mantra of those who pray (along with paying their professional union-busters) for the demise of the union movement:  Unions once had their place, but no more.  In his op-ed, Pawlenty claims to have been a union member in his younger years (presumably, when he was smarter).  But, he also wrote, “The moral case for unions—protecting working families from exploitation—does not apply to public employment.”

Now, declared Pawlenty, “working families” need to be protected from public sector workers and their unions.  He added, “First, we need to bring public employee compensation back in line with the private sector and reduce the overall size of the federal civilian work force.”

For about 40 years, the real wages of American workers has been declining and millions are earning about half of what they made in industry and manufacturing in their new jobs in the American “service economy.”  And, those are the levels to which Pawlenty wants to see public workers’ wages and benefits fall.  Remember, this is the guy who would be president and he is one of those Republicans who is not a member of the “know-nothing” wing of the party, although he often talks like one.  His talking points are straight out of the policies of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the National Association of Manufacturers, among others.

The state of working America is not healthy.  And, with Pawlenty and others, competing to drive workers to historic new lows in living standards, unless they wake up and make their demands known, there will be more of the same treatment for the foreseeable future.  Workers who are concerned about the lives their children will live need to begin to speak up, now.

One can just about taste the irony:  The environment is intentionally being collapsed and we have a crisis of the collapsing health of Americans.  These twin collapses are occurring because the Republicans and others have said that they will do nothing to harm the ability of Corporate America to make their profits.  Therefore, there will be no, or few, regulations about the poisoning of the planet, the demise of our fisheries, the waste of our topsoil (the thin layer of earth on which our future existence depends).  And, little will be done to mitigate the power of the handful of corporations, which control our entire food system (with the exception of a very small percentage of small, often organic, farms).

In many cases, the only solution is well-ordered government regulation, and the only ones to do that work are…surprise!…government workers.  So, Pawlenty and others are saying that we should get rid of them and drop their pay and benefits to those of your average retail store worker in your nearby mall.  Pawlenty and others like him, using Chamber of Commerce figures, have said that government workers average $123,049 a year, or about twice the amount that the average private sector worker earns.  What mall worker, restaurant worker, nursing home worker, or other service worker would not celebrate the earning of $62,000 per year?

They don’t earn anywhere near that much, so he is wrong on the average pay and he is wrong on the ability of government to provide vital services without them.  Pawlenty is misleading the people on basic issues.  He never will say that the rich and corporations are paid too much, even though some CEOs are paid in a few hours what a worker earns in an entire year.  And, the governor never will demand that the rich and corporations should pay their fair share of taxes.  That would be un-American!

Workers all across the country, no matter what their jobs, will face more difficulties in trying to keep their families fed, sheltered, and healthy in the coming years.  A positive sign has come from polls that show the people know unions are beneficial to them and 60 percent of them would join unions if the labor laws were enforced and employers were not able to fire them—without any real penalty—for organizing and joining a union.

Politicians, especially those like Pawlenty, are not going to help workers and their families.  They will do just the opposite.  The help will only come from unity and solidarity—workers helping each other, organizing and joining unions.  If this is done, there may be some hope for a resurgence of the working class and the middle class.  Without this, there will be no recovery, economic or otherwise.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.