The group that calls itself “the leadership of the world socialist movement” has published a hard-hitting editorial on organized labor’s efforts to carve out special exemptions from minimum wage and paid sick leave mandates.

The Fourth International’s (the group founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938) “World Socialist Web Site” said labors’ push for a higher minimum wage and paid sick leave in many cities, followed by a move to allow employers to hire unionized workers without paying the higher wage or providing the paid leave benefit, is “damning exposure” that “far from speaking for the ‘employees,’ the unions bargain to protect the business interests of the executives who run them—at the direct expense of the workers they falsely claim to represent.” 

The editorial calls the union-sponsored campaigns to mandate a $15 minimum wage and paid sick leave “Trojan Horses for unions to gain a foothold among employers.”  A report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year explored the proliferation of such “union escape clauses," concluding they are “designed to encourage unionization by making a labor union the potential ‘low-cost’ alternative to new wage mandates, and it raises serious questions about whom these minimum wage laws are actually intended to benefit.”

The World Socialist editorial goes on to decry the “trade union bureaucrats…who see the possibility of an influx of tens of thousands of new dues-paying members.  The benefits of being a ‘union member,’ however, will be to earn less than the minimum wage!”  The editorial then takes aim at socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant for her support of union exemptions during the minimum wage debate in that city and in neighboring SeaTac, noting with cynicism that the union behind the wage hikes and proposed exemptions in both cities, SEIU, has supported Sawant.

After decades of betrayals, the unions are incapable of boosting membership through appeal to workers. Instead, with the backing of a host of pseudo-left supporters, the minimum wage ploy is being used to entice employers to install unions in their workplaces and funnel money from workers’ already meager paychecks into the bank accounts of the union executives.”

While I would hardly dismiss socialist Sawant as being "psuedo-left," the world's socialist leadership hit the nail on the head with that conclusion.