Sunday, February 16, 2014

"Big Government" Republicans And Union Busting

Consider the following:

Auto workers participate in an election to decide whether or not they want their interests represented before management by a union.  The employer not only raises no objection to the election, but indicates that it would be supportive of the outcome if the workers voted in favor of joining the union.

So what could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, if the workers and employer are in Tennessee, which now appears to be the home of "big government" Republicans.  Where a governor, a U.S. senator and other GOP state officials successfully intimated workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee to vote against their personal economic interests, and reject membership in the United Auto Workers.

Much of the media discussion of this story revolves around the fact that the plant is located in the South, which has a strong historical resistance to union organizing (much what you would expect from the folks that gave us slavery).  But no one (up until now) has looked at it from the prism of what masquerades as the Republican philosophy of government.

That philosophy, among other things, supposedly stands for the freedom of private parties to make contracts between themselves subject to whatever terms they agree to--without interference from government.  This is supposedly the basis for every conservative objection to every law or rule enacted in support of the rights of workers--that such laws and rules allegedly infringe on that limitation.  In fact, it is those rules that guarantee anything even close to a level playing field for employers and employees to contract with one another.  And the right to collectively bargain for working conditions is one of the most important rights of all.  In an age when employers are corporations and not individuals, unions give employees the collective strength they need to protect their rights.

But, when big-government Republicans talk about more freedom and less government, they are not talking about more freedom and less government for working men and women.  They are talking about the shiny new tax breaks and deregulation they want to give to their corporate masters, and only their corporate masters.  For the rest of us, it's the right to slavery, masquerading as the "right to work."  Because that's what their corporate masters want, too.  Along with a set of election rules that allow unlimited contributions from their corporate masters to them, while restricting the rights of unions to use their funds for campaign contributions to their supporters.  Just consider the GOP double standard on corporate spending, and you'll soon realize that their "small government" rhetoric is just cover for the greed of their corporate masters.

And make no mistake.  No number of union election outcomes like the one in Chattanooga are going to appease that greed.  Those outcomes will not make employers want to do more for workers.  They will not keep jobs in this country.  They will not build a better future for your children, or their children.  It will just push this nation of free people further and further toward becoming a nation of slaves.

Unless you do something about it.  Organize, contribute, and vote in November.  Before Chattanooga becomes a symbol for the surrender of the American worker.

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