Unemployment is steadily rising and wages are steadily declining.

Republicans are pushing an anti-worker anti-union agenda faster and further than ever before. and Obama is right behind them. Last year Obama demanded that Congress continue tax cuts for the rich. This year he's going to impose more draconian cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in response to a faked 'crisis' based entirely on lies by people like the Koch Brothers. 

All this is unfolding as the economic crisis deepens. Every indicator, from the impending collapse of the European Central Bank, realistic fears of a collapse of the Chinese economy and obstinate, massive long term unemployment in the US and the EU says it'll get worse in 2012 and again in 2013. We'll know more later but it looks like it'll get much worse.

Democrats and Republicans have no alternatives but kowtowing to the anti-worker blitzkrieg of the banksters and looters and the result, a major radicalization of unions, who are launching organizing drives and getting much, much more militant. Madison was the tip of the iceberg. Unions are undergoing massive changes and the current AFL-CIO leadership is not moving fast enough to keep up. Across the US trade union leaders, and far more importantly, radicalized activists who'll replace the current leadership as they continue to fail are absorbed by two questions.

The first is how to break from the Democrat Party. The second question radicalizing trade unionists want answered is how to prepare for the escalation of labor mass action, the general strike. We almost had one in Wisconsin but Trumka and the Democrats forbade it. That won't happen next time around because of the work and the discussions going on now.

When will general strikes begin? When will the AFL-CIO unleash the Labor Party to destroy the Democrats (and Republicans)? When will the AFL-CIO cut the Democrats off at the knees, withdrawing funds and support.

Stay tuned. Check out http://labornotes.org/ and http://www.kclabor.org/ both representative of a huge sea change going on in the ranks of labor.

U6 rate of unemployment, US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics