Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Union-Busting

This is from the wonderful blog "Some Assembly Required," which I check just about every day. I have to confess to a fellow blogger's appreciation of how an ace does it. His name is Charles Michaelson, and if you only have one blog to read, I recommend him before even me. Not that I'm all that scintillating. Charles is better at this than I.

Don't for a second think that what the Republicans are saying about the travesty they just pulled off in Michigan, i.e., passage in less than 48 hours of right-to-work legislation in a lame duck session with no public hearings has anything whatever to do with "freedom," as they claim and proclaim unceasingly. No, brothers and sisters, what we're talking about here is plain old-fashioned union busting. This a continuation of the war against organized labor that's been going on since the 1870s, when workers first began organizing in the face of industrial oppression. The hiatus in war that happened in the 1950s and 1960s was just a respite.
“'Right to work' sounds like a law guaranteeing you a job, or at least protecting your job once you’ve got it. ... In fact, it’s the opposite. The main effect of right-to-work laws is to outlaw regulations of employment and allow your boss to fire you without cause.”

The battle over right-to-work in Michigan isn't over right-to-work laws or even over unions. It is another front in the war of the rich against the rest of us and the rest of us are losing. [Emphasis mine.] Its about the shredding of the American Dream and the dissolution of the idea of equality. It is not the last battle we will lose as we retreat to penury and lifetime indebtedness, just one more in a growing tide of defeats for the middle class. Those of you who thought the struggle between capital and labor was a thing of the past have not been paying attention. (Source)
Organized labor is less than 10 percent of the U.S. workforce, hardly a threat to the hegemony of wealth, but they are hated anyway, as a force that can mount credible opposition to the nefarious plans the fat cats have for the rest of us, and anything the fat cats can devise to cripple them will be done. This stuff in Michigan is just raw-knuckled political warfare. 

Heads up, anybody who really cares about freedom and not the propaganda blatherings of the sworn enemies of regular folk and their welfare.

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