Skip to main content

We demand this fraud be stopped!

By


Michigan has become the latest state to adopt a Right-to-work law, in what appears to be a rather blatant effort to further bust unions.  Similar efforts are also being made in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  On the surface, the Right-to-work law sounds reasonable.  Why should workers be required to be part of unions in order to retain their jobs in closed shops?   I suppose this is why so many Americans support these measures.  But, when you look at the forces at work, notably the Koch Bros, this is nothing more than an attempt to further undermine unions in America, which have suffered greatly ever since the Taft-Hartley Act was passed over Truman's veto in 1947.  Today, 24 states have right-to-work laws, and of couse if Republicans had their way there would be a national right-to-work law undermining those states which still respect unions.  Republican presidents have invoked the Taft-Hartley Act to break strikes, most recently Bush in 2002 to end a longshoremen's strike on the West Coast, which shut down virtually all the ports.  Just shows that the struggle never ends.

Comments

  1. avrdsDecember 13, 2012 at 4:20 PM

    I find it very upsetting. I've been watching Ed Schultz on this, since he's really good on labor issues (otherwise his "style" is a little hard to take). He showed a chart with the income and union affiliation and as union membership has declined, so have wages. Americans are shooting themselves in the foot on this one.

    But the main issue is political. If you bleed the unions of dues and members, they don't have the resources to fight back. He showed a great clip of Karl Rove saying exactly that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonDecember 13, 2012 at 5:37 PM

    What gets me is how these Republicans are supposed to be all for state rights, yet they are mounting costly national campaigns to get union states to adopt these right-to-work laws, having overturned legislates in these states in recent years. It really makes you wonder why states like Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New Jersey would vote for Republicans to begin with. I don't think these states will stay Republican very long.

    ReplyDelete
  3. avrdsDecember 13, 2012 at 5:39 PM

    ALEC.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rick DiguetteDecember 13, 2012 at 5:58 PM

    Republicans are all for letting states decide things for themselves except when they're not. The hypocrisy . . . oh, never mind.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more