The 'suits' and their fight for workers

If laws were made by working men and women who punch time clocks, Right to Work would be a sick joke and unions would prosper. Unions give workers rights on the job, guaranteed in writing. Workers know that without a contract every aspect of their employment can be changed, at any time for any reason, by the boss.

But laws are made by guys in three-piece suits who have no idea what it’s like to work for a living.

Big business is spending millions to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would make it easier for workers to join unions. Tom Donahue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, calls the card-check bill “payback” that unions expect in return for supporting Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Obama sees strong unions not as payback but an essential part of his effort to rebuild the middle class, the chief bulwark of a strong American economy.

Opponents wrap themselves in the flag, shocked, shocked, that card-check would deprive workers of secret ballot elections. Which sounds reasonable except for the fact employers openly violate federal law governing election campaigning.

This is what employers don’t want to give up during the interval before the “secret ballot” elections: The opportunity to intimidate or even fire union supporters and ban organizers from entering the premises or even posting union materials while requiring workers to attend meetings where only the company’s side is presented. The election is held on the employer’s property with workers escorted to the polls by management supervisors.

Obama put it best during the presidential campaign: “If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union. It’s that simple. That’s why I’ve been fighting for it in the Senate and that’s why I’ll make it the law of the land when I’m president of the United States.”

It is uncertain how soon he will push for passage of the bill, knowing the havoc it will wreak with business support of his other legislative goals. But appointing California Rep. Hilda Solis as his Labor Secretary is a good sign. “Unions are vital to the health and strength of our communities, and our workers are the bedrock of our economy,” said Solis, who co-sponsored the card-check bill in the House.

Solis believes in the “American Dream” because she lived it. She is the daughter of immigrants who were blue-collar union workers. She credits unions with securing the wages and benefits that allowed her parents to move their family into the middle class, send their children to college and raise a daughter who was elected to Congress.

As Labor Secretary, she inherits a department that for eight years abandoned its mission to protect workers. A good example is OSHA, where the Bush administration director said “employers, not workers”, were the agency’s real customers.

One thing is clear: our nation will never climb out of the abyss of economic meltdown by pushing harder on its citizens for cheaper wages. Rebuilding our infrastructure begins with rebuilding our middle class. Beating up on auto workers in bailout hearings and demanding they take less pay if their corporations are to survive is a defeatist message.

Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act will revitalize and invigorate not only organized labor but the American economy.

Listening to Rush and the Taliban

Republicans in Congress keep their ears tuned to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show for marching orders. President Barack Obama may have won an election and world admiration, but to Rush he is “Osama Obama”, a liar, a man with a “perverted mind” who wants to destroy America.

Following Rush’s advice on how to make Obama’s presidency fail, many GOPers are positively giddy with excitement.

“We are far ahead of where we thought we’d be at this time,” said Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, one of the party’s young stars. Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas doesn’t give Rush all the credit—he says the party is learning from the disruptive tactics of the Taliban.

After eight years of creating the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Republicans increasingly feel-- with Rush’s help-- they can block Democrats from solving it.

Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, warned that if a large stimulus plan were not enacted, it would have a “catastrophic” impact on the economy. “It’s in our hands—if we can get this package through, we can turn it around and be back on the road to growth.”

Sen. John McCain told Face the Nation that “I know we’re in trouble. I know America needs a stimulus. But this is not it.” What we need, said McCain, “is tax cuts.”

“Just say no” to big spending after running up record deficits when they were in charge worries some Republicans.

“I’m always concerned when the party takes a negative position on something that should be moving forward,” said Rep. Mike Castle, Republican of Delaware. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania concedes the stimulus bill would save or create 4 million jobs, a welcome message to those 600,000 who lost jobs just last month.

When the RNC met in Washington recently to select a new chair, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky warned they were in danger of becoming “a regional party”. The top Republican in Congress said “every House member from New England is a Democrat.You can walk from Canada to Mexico and from Maine to Arizona without ever leaving a state with a Democratic governor. Not a single Republican senator represents the tens of millions of Americans on the West Coast. And on the East Coast, you can drive from North Carolina to New Hampshire without touching a state in between that has a Republican in the U.S. Senate.”

Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele got off to an embarrassing start as RNC chair when he claimed that “in the history of mankind, government has never created one job.”

Maybe not one job, but how about millions? Since this debate goes back to the Great Depression, there have been lots of reminders of how within the first two months of his presidency FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps created 250,000 jobs and by 1934 other new agencies hired millions more, reducing unemployment from 25% to slightly over 10%.

But Republicans aren’t listening to Steel anyway. Just Rush and the Taliban.

Bipartisan blah

Give the Republicans credit: they can take any good idea and trash it.

Such as “bipartisanship”.

I liked it election night in his Lincoln Park speech to a wildly cheering crowd that Barack Obama also had comforting words for devastated McCain supporters, telling them that “while I didn’t get your vote, I heard your voices and I’ll be your president too.” I think all America liked that.

In the short time he has been President, Obama has gone the extra miles to encourage bipartisan support for his stimulus package. He has spent more hours with GOP leaders, hearing them out, than W did with Democrats in eight years. I think America liked that too.

So what has it gotten him or his program to revive the economy? Zip.

For Republicans in Congress, there is only one solution to economic recovery, or anything else: tax cuts.

The Bush tax cuts for the very rich is how we got into this mess. Some Republicans never forgave John McCain for voting against the $1.3 trillion measure when it was first introduced. He said it “unduly benefited the wealthy” and was “inappropriate when fighting a war”. He sure had that right (even though as Presidential-candidate McCain he fell in line and vowed to make the cuts permanent).

You probably recall the barrage of op-eds and blogs attacking the President for bucking history in a most un-American way—cutting taxes while waging war.

Ron Brownstein wrote in the Los Angeles Times that “we have always accepted heavier burdens as the price those at home pay to support those under fire at the front.” Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times “our government has asked no sacrifice of civilians other than longer waits at airport security. We’ve even been rewarded with a prize that past generations would have found as jaw-dropping as space travel: a wartime dividend in the form of tax cuts.”

I’ve never understood why the deeper in debt our country gets the more Republicans want to cut taxes. They continue to claim that tax cuts pay for themselves, when every valid study proves they don’t. Both the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s and the Bush tax cuts led to bigger budget deficits.

The Bush legacy is a $10 trillion deficit, but admittedly, rich Americans did very well. According to the IRS, incomes of the top 400 elite doubled to an average of $263 million each annually during the first six years of the Bush term. And gigantic White House tax giveaways allowed these privileged families to pay only 17% tax, down from 23% under Clinton.

How much longer should we expect Obama to wave the olive branch of bipartisanship? His economic remedy creates millions of new jobs and offers middle class tax relief , while Republicans in Congress remain stuck on more tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy who fund their campaigns.

Seems to be that was what the election was all about last November. How did that turn out?