AFL-CIO Now blog wrote:
Special Delivery
From: AFL-CIO Now blog [aflcioblognews@aflcio.org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 8:53 AM
To: Tom Chambless
Subject: Special DeliveryIn the past year, 1.5 million union members joined the union movement’s Million-Member Mobilization and signed cards and petitions demanding that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Today, thousands of union members are delivering those petitions to Capitol Hill.
I am a former member of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Local Branch 130. I was active in my union being elected to serve as a delegate to the Pierce County Central Labor Council and I also served as a shop steward.
Solidarity equals power.
To me, nothing is more important than the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. A long time ago, workers in America had the right to declare union representation by a signature majority, but that right was taken away by the power of the corporations. Today, those same corporations and others are scared to death by this legislation because they know what it all means. They know what is riding on this.
This is where the battle line is drawn. A generation ago this nation which was influenced by the right, the corporations, and under the foul leadership of Ronald Reagan began a journey down the road to destroy the middle class. Reagan set out to provide his corporate buddies with the least educated and cheapest labor force possible. This culminated under the Bush administration – mission accomplished. They knew that in order to guarantee corporate dominance under a free market economy they must beat back a rising middle class who demand government oversight and protections. They must defeat unionization.
A free market economy doesn’t work well with a strong Democracy. Look what happened with the South American country Chile under the dictator Pinochet. The country became a police state in order to enforce free-market ideology. Many labor leaders were murdered. The same happened in other South American countries and is happening in Columbia today. A free-market economy cannot exist inside a strong Democracy because a thriving middle class will demand that the government provide oversight on the greedy and unscrupulous corporations. We are learning that free-market theories and practices that have been creeping into our economy have failed. The reason they have failed is that our right-wing government left them to over watch themselves.
When things start going bad for business, labor costs become low hanging fruit. Labor is the first to take the blow. The truth to most job losses in the U.S. today is the simple fact that business can’t sell their goods due to market and other conditions (China won’t buy them) so the first thing they do is lay off workers to save costs, thereby accelerating the downward spiral. Lay-offs reduce the sales even further which leads to more job loss.
The Employee Free Choice Act will help our nation turn around. It will streamline the unionization process giving America’s middle class a stronger footing through collective bargaining power, thereby helping Democracy grow stronger. We can begin to turn back the tide of corporate dominance by passing this legislation.
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