The year 2011 is seeing a frontal assault on the hard earned rights of organized labor and the working class, gained over the past century with the aid of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, George H W Bush, and Bill Clinton.
Collective bargaining is about to disappear in many states controlled by Republican Governors, and the Supreme Court has been actively restricting labor rights and promoting the rights and privileges of corporations.
We are rapidly descending back into the Gilded Age and 1920s mentality, including the possibility of National Guard actions against workers in Wisconsin, and who know where else eventually! 🙁
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate threatens to create a permanent underclass, and employers are making things only worse.
The white population has an unemployment rate of about 8 percent; the African American population rate is 16 percent; the Hispanic rate is 12 percent; and the Asian American rate is about 7 percent. Add to this the growing number of disabled and handicapped workers as well, and then add to the mix the news that employers more than ever are refusing to consider anyone for employment who is at this point without a job.
If this strategy continues, which would seem to be against the civil rights laws on race, ethnicity and the disabled and handicapped, then we are on the way to a permanent underclass of people who will be unable to find work, and will be denied or thrown off unemployment compensation (which is only temporary in any case)!
This sets up a situation of social dynamite, which could lead to bloodshed and violence, including use of the National Guard against the American population, by bully governors who decide to use force against people marching and demonstrating and demanding a change in attitude and policy to give this underclass hope and confidence that there is a future for them.
This whole evolving situation is extremely scary and troubling! 🙁
These bully governors and their corporate overlords need to remember that the working class outpopulates them and if further pushing continues they only assist in pushing this country toward what happened in Russia in 1917. The correction of these wrongs needs to have stronger support from President Obama.