There are two people who should be concerned now that Newt Gingrich has announced that he is running for the Republican nomination for president of the United States: the American Worker and The Pope.

Newt does get around. He will give an opinion on virtually any subject imaginable, whether you ask him or not. As often as not, he’s wrong, but that has never stopped the flow of words from this Georgia peach.

His opinion of unions is almost orthodox, for a Republican with national aspirations. Thus, American workers would be further moved toward the bottom of the economic ladder if he were to win the GOP nomination and actually win the presidency. In that regard, he is pretty much like the rest of the Republican field in not being able to bash heartily enough the only refuge of workers, their unions.

In a visit to New Hampshire a few months ago, Gingrich reportedly said that he is in support of aid for the disabled, but that union workers need to engage in belt-tightening, just as taxpayers and small businesses do. In that, Gingrich continues not only to separate workers from their unions, but also to separate workers from the rest of the American people. It’s a subtle and, at the same time, not-so-subtle semantic trick to separate groups of Americans from one another.

Apparently, Gingrich hasn’t noticed that most Americans are workers. He also does not seem to know that unionized workers have given concessions all over the country and have made their share of concessions. It would be interesting to know how many wage workers he counts as friends. One would guess, not many, since he doesn’t seem to know much about them. Since his work is as an “intellectual,” he probably hasn’t lifted a shovel or a tray of dishes or anything else in quite a few years. But he was considered the brains of the “Republican Revolution” in the House of Representatives in the mid-1990s.

That “revolution” was a precursor to what workers and taxpayers have been seeing on the national scene in the past few years, culminating in the opening and biggest battle of capital versus labor in Wisconsin, where GOP Governor Scott Walker has tried to cut the heart out of public workers’ rights by eliminating collective bargaining and unilaterally removing other rights. Other GOP governors and politicians have followed suit and are attempting to do the same thing to workers in their respective states. That battle continues unabated, including the recall elections of Republican legislators in Wisconsin.

It was obvious to many at the time of Gingrich’s march to the job of speaker of the house that he was carrying out a decades-old plan of the monumental business interests of the country: weaken the workers’ unions, rid the country of social programs (they’d only help workers when they were out of work or became impoverished), and promote “free trade,” which will enhance profits for the corporations and the wealthy.

This did a couple of things at the same time, although it is hard to know if Gingrich was astute enough to know that this would happen in real time. His plan, “The Contract With America,” which to many was “The Contract On America,” set the stage for a reduction of social programs, for reduction of taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and for further consolidation of power among a small elite. Enough citizens saw through the plan and Gingrich to make his reign as speaker short-lived. They transferred him out of the House and put him back on the speaking circuit and his work as an expert on government and politics in such places as cable news shows and right wing political action conferences.

With the current wave of Republican animosity against workers and their unions, Americans have begun to see more clearly the long-term agenda of Corporate America to weaken, if not kill, the union movement. If they succeed at that, the profits will flow at an increased rate into the coffers of the rich and the corporations. Citizens are beginning to see that the yawing economic chasm between the elite 1 percent and the rest of us is what has caused the U.S. to approach collapse. That, along with wars that are without end, which could bankrupt the country, as well as the transfer of our manufacturing and industrial base to low-wage countries, and the complete failure of national and local leaders to address the real impending tragedy of environmental collapse.

It is tax cuts and subsidies for the rich, not social programs that have brought the country to near economic collapse. That realization among the people is not happening fast enough, however, and it may already be too late to mitigate the worst effects of our reckless treatment of the planet and its people. There needs to be much more done and it needs to be done much faster. Don’t look to Gingrich to take on any of those problems. He has been on the wrong side on those issues and he is likely to stay on the wrong side.

It doesn’t take Gingrich long to form an opinion on a subject. A recent convert to Roman Catholicism, in 2009, he took on the Pope and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, when they expressed support for the formation of unions as a way of protecting the rights of workers and their families and communities. While Pope Benedict XVI did not endorse the Employees Free Choice Act at that time (it would have allowed formation of unions by the signing of union cards by a majority of those in the workplace), he came close, noting that the balance of power is more even when the workers form unions to negotiate for them.

Gingrich believes that continuing the rights of workers will mean the demise of his American way of life. He believes in the illusion of the free economy and probably believes as well that George Bush and Dick Cheney did not invade Iraq in 2003, starting a war that continues without apparent end.

Another area in which Gingrich disagrees with Pope Benedict is the environment. For example, he would abolish the Environmental Protection Agency on his way to destroying the bureaucracy of “big government.” He, like his compatriots on the right, are for “small government,” or, more to the point, a withered government that will have no strength to rein in the power of the gigantic transnational polluters. This is their Holy Grail: elimination of any restraint on the corporations to do their business.

For someone who has expressed admiration for Benedict (but only at times for the American bishops) and his newfound faith, Gingrich is a firm and devout believer in Corporate America and the miracles it has brought to the citizens in its realm.

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.