Sitting here from labor union land, where I sat through an all-day conference yesterday of the AFL lawyers network ticking off the ways Bush's NLRB is gutting labor rights protections in just amazing ways--- the most hilarious example citing the SOPRANOS in litigation as to why construction unions use of an inflatable rat should be barred as "threatening" to anyone who sees it.
But a lot of less funny examples, such as a change in case law where nurses whoi went on strike a few hours after the time they cited in their 10-day notice, were fired en masse and the NLRB upheld it, reversing previous rules that allowed a few hours give and take on exact notice of the beginning of a health care strike. Real people are losing their livelihoods every day due decisions of the NLRB-- and the two Democrats on the 5-member Board are invariably in dissent where they'd be in the majority with the extra vote they'd have with the Presidency.
And look at how Gephardt, Dean, Edwards, Kerry and on are talking about massive labor law reform. They are making really specific promises for real reform-- they'll have no chance of passing it as legislation given GOP control of Congress, but a few bits may make it through piecemeal and some can be pushed at the executive level, just as Bush is attacking labor rights in every way possible through executive orders.
Anyone who has to protect folks on the picket line and in workplaces from employer retaliation will pretty much unanimously say, of couse winning the election matters. Things will still suck, because the law sucks, but there is a difference between winning some strikes versus losing others, grad students and temp workers having the right to unionize versus not, and federal workers having the right to organize versus John Ashcroft stripping them of those rights in the name of "national security."
-- Nathan Newman