On Thu, 7 Jun 2001, Nathan Newman wrote:
> For those who say the Supreme Court makes little difference or the Clinton
> labor board made little difference, the fact remains that the Clinton
board
> consistently expanded the scope of which workers had protection under
labor
> law, from graduate students to temp workers to registered nurses.
-Grad students organized *themselves*. Many of the relevant laws are on the -state level, where local activism made a big difference, but our national -labor laws continue to be terrible, a crime against humanity. But the -Dumbocratic branch of our one-party-with-half-a-brain state is paid -hundreds of millions of dollars every year to make sure Wall Street -flourishes while everyone else gets screwed, and they've done an excellent -job of that.
Those consumed by pure ideology will deny any evidence presented, but while workers ALWAYS organize themselves, bosses have greater ability to prevent that organization based on the law.
And the reason all grad organizing has been at state schools up until recently was because the NLRB was preceived to be hostile to such organizing; since the NLRB decision in favor of TAs at NYU, you have seen an upsurge of grad unions seeking recognition at Brown and Temple most recently.
Folks blather on about the universal anti-worker nature of Democrats- and Clinton no question had those elements - but the argument fails to explain the elements that are pro-worker, such as the many pro-union rulings of Clinton's NLRB.
And this Supreme Court decision shows exactly why Michael Moore and others were so wrong about dismissing the importance of the Supreme Court.
-- Nathan Newman