Unions as partners with management? Not!

Pie-in-the-sky from OpinionJournal.com, writing about the schism in the AFL-CIO:

What the labor movement really needs is a new generation of leaders who understand the emerging competition to U.S. workers from the likes of India and China. Rather than oppose imports to protect textile jobs that can't be saved, such leaders would work to reform education so future Americans can compete in the knowledge industries that will grow the fastest. They'd also work to make pensions and health insurance transportable from company to company, so a worker wouldn't be trapped by benefits in a job or industry he didn't like. They'd be partners with management, not antagonists.

That sounds great, but I can't believe it will happen in my lifetime. Labor unions are so entrenched in left-leaning politics — they are a "wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party," the editorial astutely pointed out — that they are unable to recognize the reluctance of their own members to continue pursuing those policies. They are so out of touch with reality that they continue to scream for compensation that non-union Americans — some 92 percent of the private workforce — recognize is unfundable and unreasonable.

Antagonism is in their souls, and they can't separate the soul from the body without death. It may take the death of a union before they willingly endure the exorcism of that antagonism.