A paradigm-shift just happened in one of the States that led the nation in workers' rights.
The corporations and moneyed interests running the show, with the support of their Republican lap dogs, have effectively busted organized labor in the state of Michigan.
With Republicans in control of the legislature and the governor committed to sign the laws, Michigan could become the 24th right-to-work state by the middle of the week, dealing a stunning blow to the power of organized labor in the United States.
So, a few years into the future when you're bitching about how your lives have been marginalized by the people that you foolishly thought were on your side, make sure that you don't forget that it was "YOU" who voted the Republicans into office, and that it was "YOU" who unleashed the devil.
Excerpted from source article interview -
ReplyDeleteBP: And it doesn’t look like very many national Democrats are willing to fight hard for unions anymore.
NL: No, and here I’d add a criticism of Obama. The Obama campaign made a strategic decision that it wanted to win in non-union North Carolina, in non-union Virginia. So Obama didn’t fly into Madison, Wisconsin during the recall of [Gov. Scott] Walker. Obama’s campaign was not a referendum of unionism.
And I’d add a larger meta-historical point. This is the experiment America’s now having. Obama has just won re-election. A liberal president is popular. But juxtapose that with what just happened in Michigan. So the question is, can you have a liberal, progressive America without unions? History says no. For 200 years the existence of the union movement has been wedded to the rise of democracy, to the rise of liberalism. We saw this here, in South Korea, in Spain, in Africa. But now America is moving toward an experiment with whether it can have liberalism without unions. I think the answer is no. But we’ll see.
Source: Can we have a liberal America without unions? History says no.