“The conservative idea of ‘freedom’
would stand us naked and trembling before our almighty employer as a sinner in
the hands of an angry god”
From “The
Quotations of Chairman Joe”
Calling it a ‘Right-to-Work Day,’ Tom
McCabe, CEO of Washington State’s Freedom Foundation, announced the event on
the organization’s website saying “At the freedom Foundation, we celebrate
freedom of choice and transparency—ideals the labor movement has vowed to
oppose. Consequently we’ve chosen to
spend our holiday honoring the right-to-work movement instead”. McCabe then went on to argue “that all
problems in society can ‘be traced in some way back to the abuses of organized
labor.”’. (1)
McCabe is a complete idiot. Nothing in the statement stand up to the harsh
scrutiny of broad daylight. The labor
movement has nowhere opposed freedom of choice and transparency. , Unions are products of elections! , wherein a majority of those at the
workplace elect to join a union. Among the many things McCabe and his minions
oppose is the concept of the Closed Shop,
in which once a union is formed all employees are required to be
members. This, according the wrong-wing troglodytes,
is a violation of a worker’s freedom.
Baloney, it is simple submitting to the results of the popular
vote. You see the capitalist pig hates
the democratic process, especially on the shop floor. Moreover Unions are far more transparent
than corporations. While there have been
abuses, the record of organized labor is still a stellar one compared to the
record of Corporate America.
“All problems in society can be traced
in some way back to the abuses of organized labor’? Are you kidding me? It wasn’t organized labor that fought minimum
wage, environmental protection, ending child labor, resisted the 40 hour work
week and health care benefits. It wasn’t
organized labor that fought and is still fighting Social Security and
Medicare. And let’s not mention Civil
Rights shall we? It was Walter Reuther
and the United Auto Workers that led the march on Washington and forced the
passage of the voting rights act. The
examples are simply too many to mention and the record of organized labor is
all too apparent to take this bit of bombast seriously. The problem is the conservative echo-chamber
actually swallows this tripe.
Current labor and income statistics, as
well as the historical record, bear this out.
Volsky had this to say about the of effect so-called “right to work”
laws
“But according
to research from the Economic Policy Institute, right-to-work laws — which have
the impact of weakening unions and lowering union membership — have almost no
impact on job growth and actually reduce wages for union and non-union workers
by up to $1,500 a year. Workers are also less likely to receive “healthcare or
pensions through their jobs” and are hurt on the job with greater frequency.
“For instance, the occupational-fatality rate in the construction industry—one
of the most hazardous in terms of workplace deaths—is 34 percent higher in
right-to-work states than in states without such laws,” David Madland, Director
of the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund,
notes.
Labor Day
became a national holiday in 1894, after U.S. marshals killed two men in the
ill-fated Pullman Strike, a railroad workers’ boycott against high rent and low
pay. Government violence against the labor movement became a major political
issue and “in the immediate wake of the strike, legislation was rushed
unanimously through both houses of Congress, and the bill arrived on President
[Grover] Cleveland’s desk just six days after his troops had broken the Pullman
strike.” In the succeeding years, labor unions built political momentum to pass
the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped create a federal framework for a
shorter workweek, helped end child labor, and worked to negotiate for health
coverage plans from employers.
Though
unionization rates have been in decline for years, a recent analysis of Census
data by the Center for American Progress, found that middle class Americans
bring home a larger share of aggregate earnings in states that have high rates
of union membership than in those where fewer workers are organized.” (2)
In the name of ‘freedom’ McCabe and his
ilk would have us stand naked and alone before your capitalist paymaster,
bargaining as ‘equals’. We are not
equals any more than Warren Buffett’s secretary has the same economic and
social standing as her employer. It is
an illusion and a carefully crafted one at that, an ideological fiction serving
only the interests of the already empowered.
In
the name of ‘freedom’ McCabe and his ilk are making a mockery of the struggles
of working men and women all over this country. ‘Right-to-Work’ is “Right-To-Starve”
and represents nothing other than a full throated assault on the rights and
power of every working man and woman to have any voice at all over the
conditions and terms of employment. It
is “Freedom” in the most Orwellian sense; a hollow mockery of the very
concept. Freedom as chains. Freedom to fleece and be fleeced. Freedom as
powerlessness. Freedom to starve.
________1. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/09/01/3477750/conservatives-protest-labor-day-by-staging-a-work-in/
2. Ibid.
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