The Symbolic Decline Of Labor: Thirty Years Ago Today, Ronald Reagan Fired The Air Traffic Controllers For Going On Strike

On this day in 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers for going on strike, and this marked the symbolic decline of labor unions in America ever since, with Republican governors now having declared war on public workers in labor unions in 2011!

Ironic that a former labor leader as head of the Screen Actors Guild became the image of an anti labor President, and even more ironic that tens of thousands of workers working for the Federal Aviation Administration are now out of work over a funding dispute between the Republicans in the House and the Democrats in the Senate. There is absolutely no concern by the Republicans over workers not getting paid, losing their homes, and disrupting the economy, as long as they win the point that only big business matters, as under Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s.

The coming to power of Calvin Coolidge to the Presidency on this day, a leader who thought big business corporations were not “special interests”, but that labor and farmer and small business were such, and did not deserve any government favoritism, demonstrates that the Republican Party has not changed its image despite it being nearly a century later!

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