Where is the repeal of Taft-Hartley? Where is the President who's willing to spend some political capital on any of the pathetic scraps Nate mentions, to say nothing of bigger, better, and more obvious changes? Where is the party that once talked of the Four Freedoms?
That's right: Nowhere. Or rather, deep, deep, deep down in the back pocket of the corporate elite...
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 9:10 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] An Anti-Labor Day
Nathan Newman wrote:
>Fine, so when are they going to vote for some *pro*labor legislation?
>
>2002 Supported Homeland Security law with union protection of government
>workers. Bill filibustered by GOP.
>
>2001 Dems overwhelmingly voted to sustain Clinton's ergonomics standards,
>but lost to vote by GOP. See http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll033.xml
>
>1994 Cesar Chavez Act to ban replacement workers. Filibustered by GOP.
>
>1978 Omnibus labor law reform bill overwhelmingly supported by Dems;
>filibustered by GOP.
>
>1974 Expanded NLRA to cover health care workers, largely because wildcat
>strikes were spreading at exempt hospitals, so even the GOP supported
>reform to include the workers in the NLRA.
>
>1965-66 Vote on major labor law reform, including repeal of "right to work
>legislation. Filibustered by GOP. [Interesting story on that vote was that
>minority leader Dirksen offered to drop the filibuster if labor agreed not
>to oppose a constitutional amendment overturning the "one person, one vote"
>decisions for state legislatures. Labor leaders refused the deal; George
>Meany to his credit said, "As badly as I want 14(b) repealed, I do not want
>it that badly. And the Senate Minority Leader and all his anti-labor
>stooges can filibuster until hell freezes over before I will agree to sell
>the people short for that kind of a deal."]
That's 6 examples over 37 years, with gaps of 8, 4, 16, and 7 years!!!! They controlled both houses of Congress for a good bit of that period. Surely you and they can do better than that.
Doug ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk