Worker Rights

Scott Walker’s War On Labor: Returning To The 1920s And Gilded Age!

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Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, for now the leader in some polls for the Republican Presidential nomination, has declared war on labor unions and worker rights in Wisconsin, ramming legislation through the Wisconsin legislature, allowing employers to refuse to deal with labor unions representing private workers, just as he did the same earlier with public employee labor unions.

By warring against labor unions and labor rights, Walker is denying the many benefits that unions brought to Americans workers, beginning in the era of the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is precisely the cause of the rise of the middle class over the next fifty years, followed by a rapid decline in labor union strength beginning with the administration of Ronald Reagan, and his war on the air traffic controllers, which endangered public safety along with encouraging more so called “right to work” laws that undermine worker rights, benefits, and working conditions.

Walker is promoting the idea that we should return to the 1920s and the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when workers had no rights, and unions were met with National Guard intervention and strike breakers and high levels of violence and bloodshed!

Walker is showing us what a bully he is, and how dangerous his candidacy really is, and he must be bitterly opposed by all who care about the future of working people in this nation!

Reverting nearly a century and more back in time is NOT an option in the 21st century!

Do Not Believe Polls Which Predict GOP Senate Majority!

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So many polls are now predicting that the Republican Party will win control of the US Senate. But polls have been proved wrong before, and the Democrats should not run scared, just run aggressively against the Do Nothing Republicans, similar to what Harry Truman did in 1948!

The Republican Party is wrong on immigration reform; is wrong on the right of workers; is wrong on the treatment of women at work and in their private lives; is wrong on the environment and climate change; is wrong on the need for gun regulation; is wrong on the use of the race card; is wrong on its refusal to promote infrastructure spending; is wrong on its decision to oppose more expenditures on veterans; is wrong in its opposition to ObamaCare; is wrong in its attacks on Social Security and Medicare; is wrong in its efforts to deny voting rights; is wrong in its advocacy of wars everywhere, rather than pursuing diplomacy and peace; is wrong in their anti intellectual, anti science agenda; is wrong in its promotion of theocracy, rather than separation of church and state; and is wrong in its planned strategy to obstruct all judicial and executive nominations and therefore to cripple operation of the courts and government agencies.

The Democrats are likely to keep the following Senators–Mark Pryor of Arkansas; Mary Landrieu of Louisiana; Kay Hagan of North Carolina; Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire; Mark Warner of Virginia; and Mark Begich of Alaska.

They have a good chance of defeating Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, with their nominee Alison Lundergan Grimes; win the open Senate seat in Georgia with Michelle Nunn; win the open Senate seat in Iowa with Bruce Braley; win the open Senate seat in Michigan with Gary Peters; and an even chance to win the open West Virginia seat with Natalie Tennant over Republican Shelley Moore Capito.

The only seats seen likely to switch from D to R are: South Dakota and Montana; while the Democrats have a good shot at winning Kentucky and Georgia. With West Virginia possibly going Republican with Capito, and Maine having a chance that Republican Susan Collins loses to Democrat Shanna Bellows, if such happens, it is no gain by the Republicans.

The best prediction is that the Republicans MIGHT gain two seats, falling four states short of the six needed to make Mitch McConnell Majority Leader, with him likely to lose to Grimes in Kentucky, in any case.

The worst case scenario for the Democrats is the loss of South Dakota and Montana; and the loss of West Virginia, therefore meaning a Republican gain of three seats!

And in 2016, with two thirds of the seats being Republicans, the Democrats are sure, in an election where their Democratic Presidential nominee will be heavily favored, to win a large number of additional seats, nearing up to 60 from a possible low of 52 in 2014!

Michigan Republicans Declare War On Organized Labor In State Where Labor Unions Became Nationally Significant In 1930s

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The state of Michigan was the location of the great auto strikes during the Great Depression years of the 1930s, and their success led to the rise of labor unions as major factors in American society and politics for the next fifty years.

But the Republican Party continued to be anti labor over those decades, and Ronald Reagan coming to the Presidency thirty years ago, ironically a labor leader himself with the Screen Actors Guild, became the beginning of a concerted attack on labor,which has continued in the states with the “Bully” Republican Governors elected in 2010.

And now, Michigan Republicans have declared war on collective bargaining, and have rammed through the legislature a “right to work” bill, which will be signed by Governor Rick Snyder, despite massive protests at the state capital in East Lansing.

Those who believe in collective bargaining and the right of labor to organize must organize and fight over the next two years, not only in Michigan, but in many other Republican states, to defeat the Governors and the reactionary members of the legislatures, in order to regain their basic human rights to decent conditions of work!