Last Chance To Avoid Corporate "Ownership" Of Workers

Write or Telegraph Your Senators Today

Demand They Vote for the Employees

Free Choice Act on June 30^th

 

On June 3oth the Senate will hold a historic vote on passage of the Employees Free Choice Act. This law will allow workers to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation and establishing harsher penalties for  employers who  violate employees’ rights when they try to unionize. This new law will outlaw employer intimidation of workers who seek to have a union and streamline the process of getting union representation in place. This is the first of a two part series explaining the workers’ plight and the need for passage of the new law.

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 Corporations have never been friends of their workers. Before unions took root, every attempt by workers to earn a fair wage, to have a work day that didn’t keep them away from their families12 or more hours six days a week, to get some form of health care benefits was staunchly rejected by management. Right from the start, when workers sought to unionize to build their bargaining strength, the companies’ “union busters” took the fight to the streets where blood flowed over the principle of fair play and pay in the factories.

     In the early years big business fought furiously to keep employees under its thumb with the threat of firing that would lead to abject poverty. A mere rumor of talk about unionizing was enough to get bread and butter whisked off a family’s table.

      It took the country’s urgent military needs of World War II to give labor a footing from which they could make progress. From the war’s end and until the mid-1950’s, labor and management struggled until reaching a point of counterbalance. It was then that the middle class grew as the nation prospered through the manufacturing of consumer goods, automobiles, affordable housing and the marketing of various household appliances and conveniences.

     The average middle class family reached unprecedented well-being from the 1950’s and into the late 60’s. But by that time corrupt union leaders and the muscle labor felt in its ranks led to one unreasonable demand after another until rank and file members sensed that calls for ever higher wages and more benefits were becoming overreaching goals. Americans working in other sections of the economy agreed the unions were getting out of hand. It was evident that putting a strangle hold on large corporate employers would eventually lead to a public backlash and loss of jobs.

     From the late 1960’s into the early 1970’s labor unions lost membership and public empathy. And as unions fell out of favor, corporate employers recaptured control of workers. In some instances union leaders and corporate ones seemed to have struck a bargain where the voice of labor would be toned down while their leaders and corporate management shared the wealth.

       Labor's departure from unions led to the atrophy of labor leaders' ability to bargain effectively. Their power to negotiate from strength dried up. They were finished.

     Ever in the role of the wolf, corporate power brokers waited out the decline and fall of the unions. Even before the last of the union dinosaurs keeled over in the industrial landscape, the gains workers made during the post World War II era were undercut by the failure of wage increases to keep pace with the economy, by cutbacks in health insurance and other  benefits, the loss of jobs with the advent of automation and relocation of manufacturing plants to other states and overseas.

       Right now big business is making a hard run at finally and forever capturing America’s labor force by stamping out the remnants of the ability to unionize thereby forcing working class people to submit its will.  Victory hinges on Republican Senators getting  enough right-leaning Democrats and Independents to come over to their side.