(Bumped -- kos)

The UAW has struck General Motors, and as you read this, pickets are going up through Michigan and across the country. It's a strike that -- as the UAW explains -- is primarily about health care. As you know if you've been following the story, the big questions are 1) whether the UAW will accept the risk of health care liability by bringing its GM members out of the employer-sponsored plan and into a union-controlled health trust called a VEBA, and 2) how much GM is willing to put into the VEBA to get it started. The lack of national health care is at the core of American automakers' difficulties -- it's the reason why Canadian plants are more profitable than American plants, despite the fact that Canadian auto workers make as much (if not more) than their American bretheren. Hell, it's a big part of the reason that the Canadian Auto Workers union split off from the UAW in the ealy '80s, when the Canadian locals were offered a better deal than the Americans. It's just cheaper for manufacturers to build in Canada, because all employers (even Wal-Mart!) are on a level playing field when it comes to health costs.

But as critical of an issue as health insurance is, this strike is about something even bigger. It's about whether we're going to have a middle class in this country. The UAW was at the heart of the creation of what we know as the American middle class -- more than any other force in society, it institutionalized the idea that workers should be entitled to health care, vacation, and a secure and comfortable retirement. Before the rise of the UAW, blue-collar workers had no hope of securing their family and their future, and lived in constant fear of injury or layoff, with no prospect of anything resebling "retirement." The UAW changed that. The UAW made sure that the workers at the base of the postwar boom got their share. The UAW made it possible for a man like my grandfather, a brilliant guy from the Irish ghetto in Buffalo who never had the opportunity to study past high school, to send every single one of his kids to college. And the victories won by the UAW bore fruit well beyond the homes of their members -- because of the size and importance of the union, every UAW contract had a massive ripple effect. Employers in other industries -- even non-union employers -- had to raise their standards to attract employees. In short, the UAW allowed workers to get a taste of a life where leisure was possible, where relaxation and economic security were something that could be earned with hard work, and where their labor was treated with honor and dignity.

All of that has been under assault for the past 25 years. The prevailing political forces have been pushing to dismantle the network of fairness and justice on the job woven by the UAW and its visionary leader, Walter Reuther. And it's no secret that the union has lost influence in direct relation to the decline of American manufacturing. But as the UAW stands out on strike to win a fair settlement that protects their heath care, and the health care that every American deserves as a matter of right, they're standing for all of us once more. Don't for a second let the media try and convince you that this is an isolated fight, the dying throes of a union in decline. This is a fight for the fundamental idea that if you work hard, and play by the rules, you should be able to sleep contented at night knowing that you and your family have got health insurance and a fair pension. And if that's not a fight that every American should support as much as they can, then there really is no such thing as society.