{"id":6709,"date":"2012-01-10T00:10:59","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T08:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=6709"},"modified":"2012-01-10T00:10:59","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T08:10:59","slug":"are-you-pro-labor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/10\/are-you-pro-labor\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Pro-Labor?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you live in a so-called right-to-work state your wages and benefits are probably less than they would be if you lived in a union state.  That\u2019s because the labor movement benefits all workers, even those who are not covered by unions. The five day work week, vacations, pensions and other benefits, and much more were all introduced to the American workplace through the efforts of Labor.  These are the kind of things that Republicans hate, so Labor is under attack, as this article by John Nichols demonstrates.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"10labor\"When I asked Newt Gingrich<\/a> if he planned to campaign for Scott Walker in the recall election the labor-bashing governor of Wisconsin will almost certainly face, Newt answered, \u201cSure!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cScott Walker\u2019s fight in Wisconsin has made him a national leader on issues [that are] important to Republicans<\/strong>,\u201d said the former Speaker of the House. \u201cOf course I would campaign for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Republicans who would be president disagree on some issues. But they are pretty much united in their affection for the nation\u2019s most embattled governor<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

After Walker attacked public-employee unions last February, Mitt Romney announced that he was donating $5,000 to support the Wisconsinite<\/strong> [Romney delinked]. And Rick Santorum hails Walker\u2019s \u201ctremendous courage<\/strong> [propaganda delinked].\u201d<\/p>\n

What is it about Walker\u2014who is so unpopular that hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites are petitioning for his recall and removal\u2014that makes him so appealing to the leading figures in the national Republican Party?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s simple. Scott Walker is an anti-union zealot.<\/a> And anti-union zealotry has become a core premise of the twenty-first-century Republican Party<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Attacks by Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich on public-employee unions<\/a> may have gotten the most publicity. But other governors, most notably Indiana\u2019s Mitch Daniels, are striving to undermine the collective bargaining rights of private-sector workers.<\/p>\n

But nowhere is the disdain for organized labor more evident than on the Republican presidential campaign trail<\/strong>. Never in the modern history of the Republican Party, which once made a serious effort to compete with Democrats for labor endorsements and the votes of union members, has a field of GOP presidential candidates been so united and so aggressive in opposing collective-bargaining rights for public-sector and private-sector workers. As recently as 2008, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee appeared at the annual convention of the International Association of Machinists and received<\/a> the industrial union\u2019s endorsement in the Republican primaries. Today, just four years later, the Republican contenders are not just refusing union invitations. They are using every opportunity to explain their opposition to labor\u2019s agenda, along with their support for legislative initiatives that are designed to undermine collective-bargaining rights<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <The Nation<\/a>><\/p>\n

Why is this?  Very few union members are millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals.  Those are the only people, such as the ones pictured in the graphic, whose interests Republicans represent.<\/font><\/p>\n

Is labor always right?  Of course not.  Labor supports the Keystone XL Pipeline, increased offshore drilling, and fracking.  That\u2019s because their focus is narrowly fixed on jobs.  However their overall influence on life for American workers has been a well demonstrated plus, and if labor loses their collective bargaining rights, it will pave the way for a national workers\u2019 regression to the nineteenth century.<\/font><\/p>\n

Therefore, it is critically important to keep Republicans out of political office from dog catcher up.  On a federal level, any vote that helps Republicans take power is a vote to kiss workers\u2019 rights and benefits goodbye.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you live in a so-called right-to-work state your wages and benefits are probably less than they would be if you lived in a union state.  That\u2019s because the labor movement benefits all workers, even those who are not covered by unions. The five day work week, vacations, pensions and other benefits, and much more […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}