Organized Labor--the political opponent Karl Rove feared most
Pennsylvania is a blue state that divisive GOP campaigns of God, guns and gays occasionally turn red. When Al Gore ran for President against George W. Bush in 2000, Pennsylvania was pivotal. Labor operatives in the Keystone State assured their members: “Al Gore won’t take away your guns, but George Bush will take away your unions.”
Gore won Pennsylvania but as we all now know, the Supreme Court gave the election to George Bush who has done everything in his power to do to working people just what Labor in Pennsylvania said he would: take away their unions.
In recent weeks, national attention has been focused on the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys who weren’t “Bushie” enough. But long before the politicizing of the Justice Department, White House political strategist Karl Rove set his sights on the real threat to a GOP “permanent majority”-- organized labor.
From the day the Bush Administration took office, government agencies created to help working people have been under attack. It began with the appointment of Elaine Chao as Labor Secretary, something akin to naming Typhoid Mary to the Board of Health. A department created “to foster, promote and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States” became a haven for unfair employers. Chao’s first move was to deprive six million workers of the right to overtime pay (she even advised employers how to exploit the new rules). Next, her department slashed funds and staff for workplace safety and repealed regulations to protect workers from repetitive motion injuries. The department continues to strongly oppose any increase in the minimum wage.
But it wasn’t enough just to keep workers down. Even more important to Bush and Rove was the need to stifle union organizing. That was accomplished by Bush appointees to the National Labor Relations Board who have manipulated the rules so that the NLRB has become a tool to penalize rather than protect workers seeking union membership. When Democrats sponsored legislation to allow workers to skip the NLRB and organize by “card check”, who was it in the Senate who stopped it in its tracks? Elaine Chao’s husband, GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell.
Why are Bush, Rove and the GOP Congress so willing to pull out all stops to deny unions the right to organize? Because unions have what the GOP can’t buy: committed grassroots political activists who leaflet, phone bank, and educate their members better than any other organization in America. It helps explain why union households vote in record numbers.
It had to send a shiver through Republican ranks when AFL-CIO President John Sweeney promised Democratic Presidential candidates at a recent debate last month that 2008 “will be our biggest election effort ever.” (Just a week later, Rove announced he was retiring.)
Fox News and other right-wing political pundits try to have it both ways: they belittle organized labor as weak and passé, and then they rail against the threat of “Big Labor”. What “threat” does Labor pose? What they ask of candidates they endorse is that they fight for universal health care, affordable housing, safer workplaces, lower college tuitions and other issues that ordinary people care about. By contrast, GOP candidates have some heavy-lifting to do on the campaign trail, justifying to voters the priorities of their corporate backers.
The grassroots election fervor created by organized labor--all those enthusiastic, placard-waving union members, a sea of brightly colored T-shirts—drives Rove crazy. Somehow he never can muster shouting hordes of manufacturers or Jaycees at his rallies where attendance is pre-screened. Bankers and realtors and corporate executives aren’t much for leafleting or phone banking either, and you can’t expect those Jags and stretch limos to car pool voters to the polls on election day.
After nearly seven years of taking the best shots the Bush administration can give them, resilient and resourceful unions and their members are upbeat and optimistic. Rove is packing up and leaving town, but workers have their rally caps on and can hardly wait for 2008.
Gore won Pennsylvania but as we all now know, the Supreme Court gave the election to George Bush who has done everything in his power to do to working people just what Labor in Pennsylvania said he would: take away their unions.
In recent weeks, national attention has been focused on the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys who weren’t “Bushie” enough. But long before the politicizing of the Justice Department, White House political strategist Karl Rove set his sights on the real threat to a GOP “permanent majority”-- organized labor.
From the day the Bush Administration took office, government agencies created to help working people have been under attack. It began with the appointment of Elaine Chao as Labor Secretary, something akin to naming Typhoid Mary to the Board of Health. A department created “to foster, promote and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States” became a haven for unfair employers. Chao’s first move was to deprive six million workers of the right to overtime pay (she even advised employers how to exploit the new rules). Next, her department slashed funds and staff for workplace safety and repealed regulations to protect workers from repetitive motion injuries. The department continues to strongly oppose any increase in the minimum wage.
But it wasn’t enough just to keep workers down. Even more important to Bush and Rove was the need to stifle union organizing. That was accomplished by Bush appointees to the National Labor Relations Board who have manipulated the rules so that the NLRB has become a tool to penalize rather than protect workers seeking union membership. When Democrats sponsored legislation to allow workers to skip the NLRB and organize by “card check”, who was it in the Senate who stopped it in its tracks? Elaine Chao’s husband, GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell.
Why are Bush, Rove and the GOP Congress so willing to pull out all stops to deny unions the right to organize? Because unions have what the GOP can’t buy: committed grassroots political activists who leaflet, phone bank, and educate their members better than any other organization in America. It helps explain why union households vote in record numbers.
It had to send a shiver through Republican ranks when AFL-CIO President John Sweeney promised Democratic Presidential candidates at a recent debate last month that 2008 “will be our biggest election effort ever.” (Just a week later, Rove announced he was retiring.)
Fox News and other right-wing political pundits try to have it both ways: they belittle organized labor as weak and passé, and then they rail against the threat of “Big Labor”. What “threat” does Labor pose? What they ask of candidates they endorse is that they fight for universal health care, affordable housing, safer workplaces, lower college tuitions and other issues that ordinary people care about. By contrast, GOP candidates have some heavy-lifting to do on the campaign trail, justifying to voters the priorities of their corporate backers.
The grassroots election fervor created by organized labor--all those enthusiastic, placard-waving union members, a sea of brightly colored T-shirts—drives Rove crazy. Somehow he never can muster shouting hordes of manufacturers or Jaycees at his rallies where attendance is pre-screened. Bankers and realtors and corporate executives aren’t much for leafleting or phone banking either, and you can’t expect those Jags and stretch limos to car pool voters to the polls on election day.
After nearly seven years of taking the best shots the Bush administration can give them, resilient and resourceful unions and their members are upbeat and optimistic. Rove is packing up and leaving town, but workers have their rally caps on and can hardly wait for 2008.
posted by Victor Kamber | 1:40 PM
1 Comments:
I saw this excellent article in my local newspaper. You are correct. The power of the people with Jaguars, etc., would be lessened if we as a nation were to adopt Franklin Roosevelt's 1944 cocnept of a "maximum wage." Back then, the pay disparity rich:poor was 12:1. Now it can be 1000:1. FDR apparently thought 12:1 was too much disparity. The idea was to ban such a disproportion. We desperately need to do that. The concept is called a "maximum wage."
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