The GOP’s war against unions is a war against America’s middle class

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

It was recently reported that an anti-union business group has been formed to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act, which would permit the "card check" option of union organizing in addition to the current secret ballot election. Secret ballot initiative backed by business group The group called "Save Our Secret Ballot" is a misnomer designed purposefully to mislead people into believing that the Employee Free Choice Act would do away with the current law providing for a secret ballot election. This is patently false. Even more disingenuous is the real reason why this group is opposed to the legislation, which is not revealed by the reporter: the act would increase penalties and sanctions against employers who engage in intimidation and harassment of workers and union organizers, finally putting some teeth back into enforcement provisions.

These good 'ol boys just want themselves some good 'ol fashion union busting fun without the risk of being held accountable in a court of law for their unlawful activities. The group is proposing a constitutional amendment in five states including Arizona, which reads in part, "the right of individuals to vote by secret ballot shall be guaranteed." This measure is actually intended to prohibit the card check option.

A word to Congress: insert a federal preemption clause in the Employee Free Choice Act modeled after the federal preemption clause in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) which the federal courts have uniformly held preempts any state regulation. That should put an end to this nonsense.

Tim Mooney, a Scottsdale-based political consultant is one of the directors of Save Our Secret Ballot. Mooney would not disclose who the groups financial contributors are (of course). But its advisory board includes the usual suspects of bad government conservative think tanks, the Heritage Foundation, Goldwater Institute and Americans for Tax Reform.

The U.S. economy is crashing down around us based upon the economic policies advanced by these conservative think tanks over the past 40 years. Haven't these destructive assholes caused enough damage to this country already? Their failed economic policies have been entirely discredited and lie in ruins. They should be mocked and ridiculed and laughed out of existence. They should not be taken seriously by serious people.

But these conservative think tanks are only symptomatic of the larger disease that is the Republican Party.

The Republican Party since the rise of corporations in the mid-1800's has been the party of big business, the so-called "captains of industry" (aka "Robber Barons", or as Teddy Roosevelt called them, the "malefactors of great wealth") and their Wall Street bankers and financiers. This is the party's core constituency, and Republicans make no apologies for representing the interests of the wealthy elite.

In doing their bidding, the Republican Party has always been "the party of cheap labor." Except for a very short period of time when they were briefly afflicted with a social conscience during the Progressive Era under President Theodore Roosevelt, Republicans have opposed almost every piece of legislation to improve the working conditions and economic well-being of average working Americans over many, many decades. Republicans have been particularly virulent in their opposition to any rights of organized labor. Their objective has always been to maintain a pool of cheap labor to be exploited (this includes many of the proposals for a "guest worker" program under the guise of "immigration reform.") America's industrial revolution was built upon the exploitation of slave and indentured labor followed by decades of cheap foreign immigrant labor. When these workers brought with them their "foreign" ideas about organized labor to America, they were demonized by conservative Republicans as anti-American subversives and were beaten, killed, or deported.

It was President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal that gave American workers their first real taste of freedom and legal protections to organize and to collectively bargain for their working conditions and pay as an equal partner at the table with their employers. Conservative Republicans have demonized Franklin Roosevelt and labor unions ever since, defaming them as "marxists," "communists," and "socialists." (Ironic now that George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has presided over the largest nationalization of American businesses since the country converted to a war footing in December 1941. It is Bush Republicans who are the socialists.)

It was during the organized labor heydays of the 1940s through the early 1970s in which American workers built the largest middle class in American history, and the country enjoyed its greatest period of economic prosperity. Non-union labor also indirectly benefitted from the improved working conditions, pay and benefits attained by union labor (something most Americans today simply take for granted). This blue-collar middle class lifted the economic boat of all Americans. During this period, most business and labor interests (in union friendly states) came to a truce and negotiated a mutually beneficial agreement to work together for their common interests. (In the auto industry, this was known as the "Treaty of Detroit.")

During the same period of time, however, movement conservatism was developing as an antithesis to New Deal liberalism on the political right. These conservatives were the holdover true believers in the laissez-faire free market principles of Herbert Hoover. According to them, Hoover was simply misunderstood and a victim of circumstances beyond his control. His free market principles would have worked if only they had been given more time. (This misguided belief is still echoed even today by conservative pundits from George Will to the chattering chimps at Fox News who cite now discredited research by conservative authors to falsely assert that FDR's New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by federal government intervention. For a thorough debunking of this revisionist nonsense, see David Sirota FDR Prolonged the Depression? Really?, The Forgotten Math: Pre-WWII New Deal Saw Biggest Drop In Unemployment Rate in American History). For these conservatives Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of self-interest in a free market is always right. This is an article of practically religious faith for them (demonstrable facts to the contrary are blasphemy). These conservative Republicans demonized FDR during his presidency and plotted to repeal the New Deal and erase it from memory.

Their first early successes were a wave of so-called "right to work" laws (prohibiting union-member only employment) passed in states not friendly to organized labor during the 1960s and 1970s (including Arizona). By the time Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he used the power of his presidency to decertify the PATCO air traffic controlers union and thus began the GOP's unrelenting war against organized labor and the blue-collar middle class, which the unions have been losing ever since.

The conservatives' embrace of "corporate globalism" and "free trade" agreements since the 1980s further exascerbated the decline of union labor and the blue-collar middle class as good paying American manufacturing jobs were "outsourced" to third world countries in search of cheap labor to be exploited. During this period of time, membership in labor unions declined from a peak of more than one quarter of the work force to a little more than ten percent today. At the same time, much of America's industrial capacity has been laid waste to and no longer exists.

Since 1973, real wages for the average American worker has either declined or remained stagnant (but for a brief period during Bill Clinton's second term). Under George W. Bush, real wages have steadily declined since 2003. (To view downloadable tables and figures from the Economic Policy Insitute's forthcoming "The State of Working America" (2008/2009) see Download tables and figures | The State of Working America).

While American workers are among the most productive in the world, the profits realized from their labor have gone largely to corporate profits and to the so-called "investor class" in the top percentiles of income earners. The laissez-faire/free market/trickle-down tax cuts for the wealthy/deregulation of business policies of Reaganomics, and yes, Rubinomics under Bill Clinton, have resulted in a massive redistribution of wealth upwards to the wealthiest Americans and has created the greatest level of economic disparity in this country since 1928. Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows

In short, movement conservatism nearly succeeded in realizing its dream of erasing FDR's New Deal over the past 28 years. At the same time, they have nearly succeeded in destroying America's middle class.

This is a fascinating chart from United for a Fair Economy which demonstrates this historical shift:

As you can see from these charts, the economic prosperity that was shared by all income groups as a result of New Deal policies in post-war America has largely been reversed during the movement conservatism era with income now concentrated among the top percentiles of wealthy Americans. This trend dramatically increased during the presidency of George W. Bush.

Americans now stand staring into the abyss of what may become the next Great Depression. It is the now discredited and failed conservative economic policies of movement conservatism RIP Chicago School of Economics: 1976-2008 that have brought us to this defining moment in history. But conservative Republicans continue to cling to their discredited and failed economic policies and insist that we must stay the course, it will work if only we give it more time. The laissez-faire/free market/trickle-down tax cuts for the wealthy/deregulation of business policies of conservative Republicans have laid waste to America twice in the past century. Two strikes and you are out, you do not get another chance to govern.

Republicans should have to recite Pogo's lament every day in penance: "we have met the enemy and he is us."