A return to sanity?
MANIFESTO
Steve Benen points out this morning thatA new Gallup Poll finds just over half of Americans, 53%, favoring a new law that would make it easier for labor unions to organize workers; 39% oppose it. This is a key issue at stake with the Employee Free Choice Act now being considered in Congress.Coincidentally, I'm in the midst of reading Thomas Geoghegan's incisive article in the current Harper's (available only with subscription) wherein he opines that three factors put the US into its current financial mess.
The poll reveals sharply differing reactions to the issue within the general public according to political orientation. Most Democrats (70%) say they would favor a law that facilitates union organizing, while a majority of Republicans (60%) say they would oppose it. Independents lean in favor of such a law, 52% vs. 41%.
First, union busting became pretty much SOP as, second, corporations were allowed to "cancel existing contracts virtually at will." Finally, "we dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury." (Thank you, Ronald Reagan.)
With these factors in place,
the financial sector bloats up ... When banks get 25 to 30 percent on credit cards ... capital flees from honest pursuits, like auto manufacturing.I have to admit that I'm a little distrustful of Congress's attempt to revive unions, believing as I do that our legislative oligarchs—Republican or Democrat—really don't want to strengthen the middle class.
Be that as it may, it's possible that EFCA may address at least one of the concerns that Geoghegan raises.
posted by monocle at 3/17/2009 09:26:00 AM
1 Comments:
Whatever one thinks of unions in general, no honest, in-context discussion of EFCA can be undertaken without a realization that it is, at its core, a natural response to the present state of labor-management relations. It is not some out-of-the-blue construct of self-interested unions, as the forces of Big Business would have us believe. The hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth presently going on among those on the right conveniently ignores the deterioration of standards of living, as outlined in this post by Monocle/Geoghegan, that spawned EFCA.
I am endlessly amazed by those who reflexively, relentlessly genuflect at the altar of free markets while also bashing unions. The labor movement is as organic to free-market capitalism as notions of supply and demand are. In the absence of overreaching and exploitative management, there is no interest in collective labor action. More simply put, happy, respectfully treated and fairly compensated workers have no need for unions.
So it is with EFCA. Does it go too far? Maybe. But make no mistake – it goes in a direction that free-market forces have driven it over decades of incremental abuses of labor. And I, for one, say “amen.”
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