Recognizing that the problem with our country today is the enormous power wielded by hotel housekeepers and second grade teachers, President Obama has nominated a fierce advocate for billionaires to head Commerce:
Pritzker has an impressive business resume and pedigree alike: she is the CEO of investment firm PSP Capital Partners and Pritzker Realty Group, and is also an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune.
Whether it’s Pritzker’s pioneering role in subprime lending, her Board-member rubber stamp on the war her family’s company is waging on the women who clean their hotels or the hard work and commitment involved in purchasing a school board seat to more efficiently close and then privatize public schools, she’s never been afraid to speak truth to the hotel housekeepers and second grade teachers who are running this country right into the ground.
Violeta Cabuyadao, your days as a political power broker are OVER.
JPL
ugh! It’s a good day to hide under the covers. If you look at the bright side, her nomination might be filibustered.
Kay
@JPL:
It’s a good measure of the nominee.
They’re fighting Richard Cordray like a pack of rabid dogs, which must mean he does his job.
J.
But she’s a woman!
Kay
@J.:
Right. She is. So are housekeepers and (most) public school teachers.
Mr. Longform
It’s about time someone put those housekeepers in their place. I just hate how they have benefited from their tricky financial instruments and no regulations on how they have to do their “jobs” while the hard-working billionaires never get a break and are constantly harassed by the mean old SEC’s overly aggressive prosecutors. Despite this positive move, I am still going ahead with my bake sale in support of banking executives unjustly made fun of by Paul Krugman.
Feudalism Now!
11 dimensional chess? An attempt to destroy America? Boneheaded or craven move seems most likely. Oy, stinker of a pick. What does she know about the economy? How to inherit a fortune? How to use other people’s investment to make herself richer at their expense?
Commerce?
Bring on the puppies and kitties!
Bruce S
Hey – she was Obama’s finance chairman in ’08 campaign and co-chair in ’12. Raised a ton of money for O – especially early on. (My guess is that her investment was in O’s Arne Duncan factor.) This is the way our politics work. Nothing new here. Which, of course, is the problem.
David Koch
@Kay:
kay, you’re not usually this silly.
Pritzker raised 756.000.000. million dollars for obmbber in 2008. She signed on early, while the traditional money centers went to Hillary.
you can’t expect him to kick her to the curb when she believed him and delivered for him when few others did.
David Koch
@Kay:
kay, you’re not usually this silly.
Pritzker raised 756.000.000. million dollars for obmbber in 2008. She signed on early, while the traditional money centers went to Hillary.
you can’t expect him to kick her to the curb when she believed him and delivered for him when few others did
ET
@Bruce S: I think Bruce S and David Koch are right – this is what presidents do – nominate people who helped them get elected.
debbie
On the other hand, Wisconsin shows us how right-to-work has helped job creation:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/scott-walkers-jobs-problem-050213
Ohio Republicans introduced three right-to-work bills earlier this week. Statistics be damned!
Davis X. Machina
It’s Commerce. It’s roughly as important as who gets Labor in a GOP cabinet.
Bruce S
@David Koch:
Since when is it a “kick to the curb” not to get a major cabinet position as a fundraiser? This is not a surprise – but it’s totally fucked up. The woman is fucking horrible. Obama- centric types should take a pause – but won’t.
Jack the Second
There is really only one way this sort of play works for me.
1. Rich asshole gets political appointment for being a rich asshole.
2. Rich asshole uses political appointment for personal gain.
3. Rich asshole brought up on corruption charges under laws which probably don’t exist.
4. Rich asshole spends at least a couple of years in a cushy, white-collar prison.
Unfortunately, this process usually stops at step 2…
Kay
@David Koch:
I didn’t say he has to “kick her to the curb”, and you don’t usually use “under the bus” language.
He isn’t obligated to appoint her to anything. I mean, for goodness sakes! She just finished displacing 30,000 Chicago schoolkids, by closing their neighborhood schools. Surely she deserves a vacation from all this public service.
chopper
@Davis X. Machina:
i will say this is totally true. how many previous commerce secretaries can you name offhand?
Cassidy
The problem is the mixed message it sends.
Betty Cracker
Thank FSM Romney didn’t win — he would have appointed some housekeeper-harassing Marriott to a cabinet position!
David Koch
if it makes you feel better, the wingers hate her because she’s a Jew.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/politics/assets_c/2013/05/pritzkerletterphoto-thumb-512×341-61751.jpg
p.a.
@ET: @Bruce S: I think Bruce S and David Koch are right – this is what presidents do – nominate people who helped them get elected.
Ah, but he won’t be running for office anymore. Maybe he’s thinking of lining up financing his library.
joes527
@David Koch: Absolutely. She deserves this appointment. She paid cash for it. Push comes to shove, she can probably dig up the receipt.
Schlemizel
I’ll bet those damn housekeepers are part of the 47% that never pay any taxes too! Those lucky duckies get AALLLLLL the breaks!
Bruce S
For what it’s worth I’ve given far more money as % of income to Prez than Pritzker has. But with my house underwater and the criminals who tanked the economy still making out like the bandits they are, I’m feeling more than a little kicked to the curb.
David Koch
don’t worry. Im sure Elizbeth Warren and Bernie Sanders will filibuster her nomination — forcing her to withdraw.
aimai
@Bruce S:
The Pritzker’s, for some reason, are quite interested in Nepal and the Nepalis I know who know them really like her. Its just another sign that people can be nice, or horrible, depending on what face they present to the world. Business people and the very wealthy are extremely prone to having two or more faces to show the world. But Obama et al shouldn’t be so gullible as to fall for the side they like and ignore the real imperative behind every great fortune–to keep committing more and more crimes against the workers in order to enable the “good” and charitable face to have money to spend on social goods like “charity” and local arts. These people have no trouble attacking and gutting public education, profiting off it, and then turning around and taking a tax deduction for creating a stand alone charity that “brings the arts to children in schools.”
Schlemizel
@Kay:
Right! I was thinking a nice ambassadorship to some place warm & sunny. Bora-Bora? Tahiti?
rikyrah
she should have been given an Ambassadorship.
Schlemizel
@rikyrah:
JINX!
rikyrah
Kay,
Did you see this?
May 2, 2013 03:30 PM
The Coming Backlash on Education Reform
by Daniel Luzer
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/the_coming_backlash_on_educati.php
Tone In DC
@debbie:
Scott Walker is the gift that keeps on giving. Like a stubborn case of chlamydia.
If he runs for president, Hillacious will eat his sorry ass for breakfast.
Hillary Rettig
what Hyatt did in Boston was despicable. they outright lied to the housekeepers, telling them they needed to train other housekeepers who would be holiday fill-ins. Only they weren’t fill ins; they were low-wage, ununionized contract workers, and as soon as they were trained, Hyatt fired the longtime housekeepers, some of whom had worked there for decades.
I haven’t stayed at a Hyatt since and I urge everyone else to boycott Hyatt and tell others to do the same.
mistermix
Just be glad she didn’t get Labor or HHS.
askew
If Obama was nominating her for Labor secretary or Education secretary, I’d care. She isn’t going to do any harm as Commerce Secretary.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Snicker, snicker.
We’re going to an elaborate wedding in June that involves people all staying at the same hotel and my husband was all ready to send back the RSVP and I had to grab it so I can vet the hotel.
“Give me that. Are you crazy? Jesus, the recklessness” :)
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
Reads like a sop to big donors ahead of the 2014 midterms.
Bruce S
@David Koch:
Big fucking deal
NCSteve
Pfft. I’d much rather see her rewarded for her campaign fund raising by being made Secretary of Commerce than have her be given a truly important and responsible post, like, say, Ambassador to Monaco or Belize.
Yeah, actually serious about that.
GregB
Another day and another apology from NH for the latest verbal diarrhea from one our moron state reps.
Any sentient human without a grapenut for a brain looked at that poor legless dude getting wheeled away from the Boston bombing scene and saw someone on death’s doorstep.
Our rep. saw an actor not doing a very good job.
Congrats NH GOP for winning the shitheel lottery yet again.
Hillary Rettig
On a related note, a horrible story from the NY Times about how the suicide rate among middle-aged people (35 – 64) has skyrocketed in just the past decade, and how that for men in their 50s has risen 50%, and women in their 60s 60%!
the article waffles about the causes in classic journo style, but the commenters are very clear this is due to the economy and poverty, with many having heartbreaking personal stories to tell.
Ben Franklin
http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/commerce-appointment-opens-a-new-white-house-rift
Jarrett tried to stop it, arguing that the pick would provoke a backlash from labor leaders and progressives over Hyatt’s tense relations with the union representing hotel workers.
It’s good to know he has a semblance of appreciation for his support; that is, for anyone not carping from the base. But I’m just grasping at any jello I find.
Tone In DC
@GregB:
Kinda like Flushed Limburger saying Michael J. Fox was faking his Parkinson’s.
David Koch
@joes527: thats exactly how the Messiah, FDR, appointed wall street crook Joe Kennedy to run the SEC.
Kay
@Hillary Rettig:
I kept saying that during the worst of the crisis. The people we saw who were really devastated were people in their 50s. They were telling us they weren’t going to be re-hired, and I think it’s true so I didn’t have a response. They were really terrified.
Just Some Fuckhead
I want to stomp on Violeta Cabuyadao’s smug face.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I did, thanks. That’s part of the reason I hate this. There is a genuine backlash to Duncan’s education policies, IMO.
This is sort of a double “fuck you” to labor and public education people. If nothing else, it’s bad timing. They already have a growing revolt on “school reform”.
David Koch
Meh.
bigger fish to fry.
PPP says Markey has only a single digit lead in Mass.
let the panic begin.
RaflW
@Schlemizel: Nepal, it would seem.
Ben Franklin
@David Koch:
It’s just politics, as usual. No need for panic.
Bruce S
FWIW – Obama wants to turn Commerce into a “Dept of Trade & Exports”
Pritzker will likely do no damage – but given the current union busting it feels very, very creepy. I don’t see that he owed her this – she owes him a more enlightened approach to her bizness affairs given the close association. Folks like Pritzker are the country’s real “entitlement problem.”
mai naem
I’ve been disappointed in Obama’s appointments, more so this time around. I’m not a firebagger by any stretch but, recently, I find myself just not buying Obama’s excuses. I really don’t give a shit about nominations and the Senate filibustering them etc. etc. blah blah blah isn’t that what he’s supposed to fight them on(yeah, I know I sound like Maureen Dowd. They then give in on the airports where he had leverage. Sorry, but I am beginning to believe in Tbogg’s post from a while back that Obama’s a shitty negotiator – it’s either that or he’s tired and just plain doesn’t give a shit anymore. The admin has done very little on judges. The labor nominee is, I guess, a bone to the liberal base.
rikyrah
@mistermix:
that was my thought
El Caganer
@Bruce S: Trade & Exports, eh? Isn’t the government in the middle of some big-time negotiations on a new trade agreement? Sounds to me like a Commerce Sec could actually have a real impact on that; I don’t see why this is being treated as a nothingburger.
gene108
@chopper:
Other than Ron Brown, who
was brutally murdered by the Clintonista death squadsdied in a plane crash, I can’t name one offhand.I think more to the point, the Commerce Department is about drumming up business for American firms/exports. I’m assuming anyone in that role will be pro-business over labor.
I’m no more hopping mad about this than I am about the GE CEO (Imult, sp?) working for Obama, when GE offended folks by managing their tax strategy to pay zero federal income taxes.
The Democratic Party is essentially two distinct groups. One are the DFH’s and the other are pro-business folks, who think womenz should have access to birth-control and abortions. The pro-business folks tend to make up the larger nexus of power, within the Democratic party.
Since money is free speech, I’m not sure it should surprise folks the monied interests get more seats at the table, as they have a larger “free speech zone” or whatever to be heard.
Bruce S
@El Caganer:
Don’t worry – the GOPers won’t let Obama reorganize it because…The Sheriff’s a Ni…Klang!
Cacti
I feel betrayed.
This is even worse than the public option, or Dr0nez, or chained CPI, or Bradley Manning.
John
@NCSteve:
I agree. Being a party ambassador means you get to live somewhere awesome. Being Secretary of Commerce means you have to live in DC.
@El Caganer:
Whatever Obama wants to turn Commerce into, what it is now is a nothingburger – oversight over a variety of basically unrelated government agencies (NOAA, the Census Bureau, the Patent Office, NIST), and has nothing to do with trade negotiations, which are the responsibility of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Over a year ago, Obama proposed the changes to Commerce Bruce S mentioned, and nothing has happened. With this Republican congress, it seems unlikely anything will happen. Even if it does, what Obama is proposing is abolishing commerce and replacing it with a new cabinet department, which Pritzker wouldn’t automatically get.
I can’t say I’m a fan of Pritzker, but ultimately the Department of Commerce is worthless.
Mark S.
@Hillary Rettig: @Kay:
That’s why I’d like to kick guys like Tom Friedman in the balls. Glibly proclaiming “It’s a 401(k) economy!” and “You have to invent your own job!” is so fucking unrealistic it is the 21st century’s equivalent to “Let them eat cake.”
Feudalism Now!
The thing was FDR got movement on reining in the financial sector and the parasitic rich. Obama is not. There is no good to come from this nomination, other than the payback of a fundraiser.
ksmiami
honestly, this appointment could be useful. I for one AM SO SICK of hearing Republicans talk about how great they are at business, how the Democrats are all just poor takers etc. Closer to reality is that we have the educated, the professional and the urban strivers… and a whole lot of wealthy people. The difference though is that most Democrats are fact based and try and see the whole picture warts and all while Republicans believe that America is one dimensional and should stay that way.
Ben Franklin
“President Obama in his second term is clearly liberated enough to give really good jobs to fundraisers,” said A.B. Stoddard, associate editor with The Hill.
http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/02/change-you-can-believe-in-obamas-bundlers-get-plum-posts/
That’s what we thought, too, I mean that he was gonna be ‘liberated’ and all. He has, just not in the way we thought.
Ben Franklin
@Cacti:
No, you don’t.
Omnes Omnibus
I’m with the people who are saying that, if Obama had to reward her, Ambassador to Luxemburg would have been a better choice.
Cacti
@Feudalism Now!:
Saint FDR got a lot of his priorities moved through the legislature by staying on the good side of Dixiecrats and not signing pesky legislation like Anti-lynching laws, or desegregating the military.
Davis X. Machina
@Kay: Run a balance sheet.
You’re traditional middle class, in your 50’s or early 60’s, and you’ve got life insurance, but a shrunken 401(k), or a hole where your defined-benefit pension used to be, before it was raided by vulture capitalists, and you’re upside down on the mortgage, and your kids are armpit-deep in tuition loans, and one major party wants to blow up Social Security.
How can you leave your loved ones best off financially?
Ben Franklin
@Omnes Omnibus:
...as he puts on his belted pants with suspenders for extra safety.
Betty Cracker
@Mark S.: Word!
Kay
@Mark S.:
I think he’s comical. The last column was genuinely funny.
He’s a dope. The idiots could have done much more for their bottom line if they hadn’t scared the shit out of people who were already scared with their ridiculous “sacrifice” campaign.
David Koch
@Feudalism Now!: FDR reined in the financial sector and parasitic rich using the commerce department?
I though the did that using the SEC, not commerce.
Davis X. Machina
@Feudalism Now!:
No evil, either, none that wasn’t there before the appointment, and won’t be there after…
Just Some Fuckhead
You should rewrite the blog post so it’s not so accusatory towards Obama or inherently biased against the rich. Maybe change this:
“President Obama has nominated a fierce advocate for billionaires to head Commerce”
To this:
“One of America’s makers has been nominated to lead the Commerce Department”
Bruce S
@Cacti:
You really aren’t about anything, are you, other than playing Jr. commissar against any critical thought? You’re doing Obama no favors – Justin Beiber “needs” a fan club. The President needs a base that can help lead on issues that matter, not assume he has more power than he does or to rationalize every Oval Office political calculation. Obama’s an adult – his sycophants are an embarrassment.
Cacti
@Bruce S:
Shouldn’t you be helping Darcy Burner gear up for her next failed campaign?
David Koch
@Davis X. Machina: invest on Boston in game 7 tomorrow night
David Koch
@Cacti: go ahead and laugh, but fourth time is the charm.
Bruce S
@Cacti: z
And he also had -as importantly – social movements well to his left raising hell and organizing. A lot of these people were pretty far out there – but they gave Roosevelt political space to push key reforms. Also, just because the Dixiecrats were part of the coalition, people who gave s shit about social reform didn’t merely shrug their shoulders over lynchings.
lojasmo
Isn’t this controversy several years old? I remember some syndarcho type firebaggers screaming about Pritzger on another forum many years ago.
Bad decision, but…Commerce.
Bruce S
@Cacti: @Cacti:
You’re proving my point that you’re an idiot running on empty.
jamick6000
— an idiot
Bruce S
Pritzker really is a non-issue after an entire term of Timmy Geithner fucking up serious shit from a real center of power.
But if you want to get exasperated with my favorite President this morning, I’d say the Plan B appeal takes the cake.
catclub
@Just Some Fuckhead: Forever?
Cacti
@Bruce S:
In 12 years in office, FDR was barely moved an inch to the left on racial issues. Despite being enormously popular nationally, civil rights were not a plank of the Democratic Party platform until 1948…3 years after his death.
His successor, Truman, and Republican Dwight Eisenhower were far more progressive on civil rights than FDR.
Bruce S
@Cacti:
I know FDR sucked on civil rights – although you’re skipping an important victory on defense jobs because A Phillip Randolph confronted FDR and threatened a March on Wasington on the eve of WW II so your history is weak. But what’s your larger point? That the folks organizing where FDR feared to tred were Firebaggers? That social movements are a joke? The same “left” that was in front on civil rights were organizing around labor and unemployment issues that helped move Roosevelt on the issues I presume you actually are aware of.
Ben Franklin
@Cacti:
So, you’re an Eisenhower Democrat?
Cacti
@Bruce S:
You have no point, sparky. You’re just another emo prog git who thinks he’s doing something to move the national discussion to the left by joining the firebagger hallelujah chorus on a minor, democratic-leaning political blog.
You call yourself “the base” but are part of a noisy fringe that couldn’t get a fly elected mayor of a garbage pile. You fap over FDR, glossing over the inconvenient bits of his record, and pretending that a democratic electoral coalition that included 23% of the black vote in 1932 bears even a vague resemblance to the one in 2012.
Your insights are regurgitated crap that can be found on any of the emo pants blogs, that you so desperately wish this one to be. Your contribution to the local and national conversations are as useful as tits on a bo-hog.
Bruce S
@Cacti:
Go fuck yourself – you’re a goddam hysteric with one sour note. You’ve pretty much just wet your pants. You are shadow boxing your straw men- embarrassing if you had an iota of self awareness.
Hill Dweller
@mai naem:
Said Labor nominee can’t even get a vote in committee.
David Koch
@Bruce S:
last year only 14 senators supported the FDA ruling. 86 opposed, including 39 Dems who asked the WHouse to keep it to 17 years cuz they didn’t want to fight a culture war issue in their next reelection. the DSCC felt letting an 11 year old girl buy the morning after pill OTC is ripe for demagoguery in North Carolina, Colorado, et al.
Nina
Commerce is also, oddly enough, in charge of a lot of the government’s scientific research, like NOAA and the National Bureau of Standards.
I haven’t heard whether she’s a climate change denier or not, which seems to be an important question when we’re talking about the person in charge of defending NOAA.
Bruce S
@David Koch:
That I understand as an electoral strategy. But a judge gave them cover on this. It’s terrible policy to fight full access to Plan B. When does doing the right thing take precedence? Not always on everything is as obvious as it is unfortunate, but most women are currently in a situation where abortion is increasingly inaccessible. Obama isn’t running for re-election and congressional Dems can take whatever position they feel they need to or want to. The DSCC aren’t doctors nor are they competent to interpret the Constitution.
Bruce S
@Cacti:
“You fap over FDR, glossing over the inconvenient bits of his record, and pretending that a democratic electoral coalition that included 23% of the black vote in 1932 bears even a vague resemblance to the one in 2012.”
You know – you’d really have to be remarkably stupid or utterly disingenuous to think that’s a coherent response to anything I wrote. There are at least four things in that one sentence that are either totally false or totally irrelevant to what I wrote. That’s almost a skill…
Bruce S
@Ben Franklin:
A large segment of the Democratic Party are “Eisenhower Democrats” in effect. Nothing wrong with that IMHO. My parents were Republicans until Goldwater brought The Crazy. Solid Dems the rest of their lives. But no regrets over voting for Eisenhower.
GxB
@debbie: Exasperated cast looks to camera and character typecast as the most lovable (though a bit nerdy) states “Whelp, that’s our Scottie!”
Que sad trombone and roll credits.
Sadly he has some of the fiercest loyalists I’ve ever witnessed. He’s sticking it to those lazy, pinko, homo, abortionist/Prius driving freaks and it gives them a tingle in the nether regions that easily rivals GWB.
Rex Everything
@Betty Cracker: Whaddaya gonna do? Vote Nader?
(Sorry.)
NCSteve
@Feudalism Now!: FDR had a two thirds majority in the HR, a Democratically controlled Senate that didn’t require sixty votes, and, most important of all, almost four full years of a deep depression that just kept getting worse as Hoover and his pals wrung their hands over the way the patient kept getting worse despite the bleeding and leeches. They were utterly discredited.
The financial sector has been leveled and its political power gutted over the preceding four years. People were, quite literally, starving across the country. Even the wealthiest power brokers had taken massive hits to their wealth and–this is important–were in active fear for their lives, there was actual fear of an actual communist revolution that would put all of them up against the wall. Banks weren’t thriving, they were failing, popping one after another like firecrackers on a string.
FDR didn’t wield unprecedented power because he was better at using the Green Lantern ring. He because wielded unprecedented power because every other power center in the national political and economic landscape had been burned to the fucking ground.
If Bush and Cheney had been managing the economy for four years after the meltdown rather than four months, maybe Obama would have had the same kind of power too. Personally, I’m just as glad we didn’t have to find out.
Mnemosyne
@Bruce S:
I think the point is that FDR made sacrifices on civil rights that would be unacceptable to Democrats today. Would you have been willing to trade DADT repeal for, say, getting cram-down legislation passed?
Not to mention that the right wing of FDR’s day was far more pro-labor than our current right wing. Huey Long was a fascist, not a socialist.
Kent
The most important agency within the Commerce Department BY FAR is NOAA which contains the weather service, fisheries service, national ocean service, and satellite service. NOAA is basically the lead agency on climate change. It would be nice to sometime have an actual scientist running things instead of another business crony.
D.H.
@Bruce S:
Doing nothing (or even the wrong thing) usually pays better and keeps you in a job that pays in money instead of college credit/psychic wage/kudos. Trying to do the right thing at a job that discourages that kind of behavior results in a shunning at best, and prison or even death at worst.
Sorry, I’m having a very pessimistic day.
Anya
I won’t lie, this nomination is more dissapointing than Jedd Gregg’s nomination. What the fuck! This woman had no redeamimg quality.
Bruce S
@Mnemosyne:
My only point is that Presidents rarely lead – I have absolutely no illusions about the guy who let his wife make symbolic gestures to black folks while he instituted social support programs that largely excluded them, interned US citizens for their ethnicity and ran twice on cutting deficit spending – yet was our greatest President in the 20th century. But the example of A Phillip Randolph demonstrates – almost literally – hoe you get decent men in the Oval Office to deliver beyond pure expediency. Unlike some of these Obama-centric types, I can actually manage two conflicting ideas in my head at the same time.
Loviatar, Firebagger
.
.
Most successful Republican president since Ronald Reagan.
Obama: I’m More Moderate Republican Than Socialist”
liberal
@El Caganer:
That’s what I’m thinking.
One thing I’m really disheartened about is this “Trans Pacific Partnership.” Maybe the people who bash it on the Intertubes are all nuts, but it really sounds like a horrific shit show.
Now, of course, perhaps Sec Commerce doesn’t have anything to do with it, though at first blush I don’t see why that would be true.
…OK, John @56 claims it’s not really Commerce.
liberal
@Mnemosyne:
Huh? Perhaps there were people on the right who could be deemed as not-so-anti-labor.
But the idea that there was no component of the right in FDR’s day that wasn’t viciously anti-labor is hard to believe.
nastybrutishntall
@Loviatar, Firebagger: I guess that’s why George Bush’s America elected him. We were ready for Black Clinton, not Black Jimmy Carter.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
There were components of it, but the two warring ideologies were communism and fascism, both of which were, if not pro-labor (fascists tended to be anti-union), at least pro-worker. Both movements paid a lot of lip service to making sure workers were treated well and got what they were due.
Obviously, there were more than two political movements at the time and not everyone on the right or the left could be fitted neatly into those boxes, but those were the ones dominating the domestic and international stages.