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Jobs, Jobs, JobsPennsylvania Pipeline Puts Members to Work 
Union Wave in PA Schooling Congress Sisters Unite North of 49° Au nord du 49° parallèle
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The next two national elections could decide the future of organized labor in America. Months after the 2020 election, the results of the national census will be released and across the country electoral maps will be redrawn: after the voters pick their representatives, the representatives will pick their voters. Eight years ago, the last time districts were set, President Barack Obama was at the peak of his unpopularity. Much of the country was still locked in a deep recession, the bank bailout fresh in voters' minds. Republicans rode a wave of Tea Party anger to victory at a nearly unprecedented level. Democrats lost about a thousand state legislative seats in red and blue states. In 21 states, Republicans won trifectas — control of both houses of the state Legislature and the Governor's mansion — more than twice what they had before the election. Democrats lost similar advantages in five states, dropping them from 16 to 11. The timing for Democrats could not have been worse. In 2011, the census results were released, and those new Republican majorities took those lopsided results and redrew the maps to make them nearly permanent — a process called gerrymandering. Republicans cracked Democratic strongholds into tiny slivers and spread them across multiple Republican districts. In other parts of their states, they packed Democratic voters as tight as a New York subway car. "The implications of what happened were enormous," said Mark Gersh, former president of the National Committee for an Effective Congress and a redistricting expert who has been drawing maps for Democrats for more than three decades. "The gerrymandering is so intense, so outrageous, that even when Democrats win the majority of votes — as we did in 2016 — we don't come close to winning a majority in the House or the Senate and we are completely shut out of power in more than half the states." Democrats did the same thing in the few states where they remained completely in charge, including, notoriously, Maryland, where Democrats left a sole Republican congressional seat and tiled the state with tortured and twisting districts. The parties took aim at one another, but it was working families who were caught in the crossfire, particularly union members. |
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Dennis M. Johanyak 
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