Dem Vice Chair Delgado-Polanco is a poor excuse for a labor leader

You have to wonder how some people become labor union leaders.  Most still work their way up through the ranks.  They serve as apprentices, learn their trade, spend years in the trenches, before their fellow brothers and sisters elevate them into leadership. 

But then there's this political appointee fast track.  The military has something like it too.  If you have a qualification they need, you spend two weeks learning how to salute, and then get a bar pinned on you.  No trenches required.  Labor unions have this too.  Just ask Troy Singleton.  He went from Joe Robert's bagman to a union rep in one easy fix... but can he swing a hammer?

We don't know how Democrat Vice Chair Lizette Delgado-Polanco achieved her position in the hollowed Carpenters & Joiners Union.  We note that she was promoted up through the political side, where it is more important to recite the tired old lines of identity politics, than it is knowing a screw from a nail. 

Delgado-Polanco worked for Charles Kushner (Jared's dad, Ivanka's father-in-law) on Jim McGreevey's 2001 gubernatorial campaign.  She was rewarded for her efforts and given a job in management -- on the wrong side of the negotiating table -- in 2002. 

So how working class is she... really?

What people like Delgado-Polanco forget is that identity politics is bullshit and what really determines your place in the world is economic class.  Rich one-percenters -- whether they be black, white, or galvanized -- they will have their asses fanned in all the world's garden spots.  And management -- no matter its color or gender or identity -- will always serve the corporation to squeeze the most out of its workers for the least.  Solidarity based on identity is a farce. 

On Tuesday, Delgado-Polanco put out a statement on behalf of the Democrat Party that is plainly out of step with the interests of the blue-collar workers who make up her union.  She put the crony capitalist policies of the Democrat Party of Governor Goldman-Sachs II ahead of the interests of her union brothers and sisters.

The Sanctuary movement doesn't help anybody except the crony capitalist establishment who want a steady stream of unorganized labor at near-slave wages.  It consigns those good people who come here to near-slave status and entraps them in whatever conditions the crony capitalist chooses to keep them in.

The creation of a permanent gray economy undermines any advances made by increasing the minimum wage or mandating benefits, because there will always be the lucrative alternative of going gray.  And the more this "gray" work force is supported by government programs -- the more jobs it will be able to perform at less cost to the crony capitalists who write these "sanctuary" laws (or pay lobbyists to do so).

How does creating a government-supported workforce to drive down wages and drive up competition for jobs benefit the brothers and sisters who make up trade unions like the Carpenters & Joiners Union?

America's immigration laws are a mess for a reason.  They are purposefully designed to make it very difficult to get into the country and stay legally and very easy to stay illegally.  The system is purposefully designed to create a large pool of near-slave labor.

Why grow that pool?  Why add to the gray economy of people being used to drive down labor costs?  It is unfair to the immigrant here illegally and most unfair to the skilled worker who must compete with low wage-earners or go without.  It is unfair to the consumers and taxpayers who are paying a high price for the product of unskilled workers.  It only benefits the crony capitalist in bed with the politician.  One gets more money, the other more votes (and some dough for the campaign, no doubt).

The way forward is to create a legal immigration process that takes into account the existing labor pool to protect their jobs and wages.  The great labor union movement once served to raise the working class up from poverty.  Don't allow a few misguided "leaders" to conspire with the political class and their crony capitalist paymasters to drive down wages and destroy the hopes and dreams of working people.

Lizette Delgado-Polanco... meditate on this...