system of voting for a workplace union.

I was an organizer for our to-be union and first getting show of interest cards signed; then having a vote, and then having the above appealed by management was time wasting[a help to management]; expensive[a help to management]; and allowed monied influence into the appeal process.
The system of labor organizing and negotiating a contract must be streamlined and a level field established. The situation as it now stands puts working people in a near impossible situation.

Strong unions in Japan and Germany worked. Now they have a strong middle class. At the same time we were pushing strong unions on the losers in WWII, we were passing Taft-Hartley and weakening our own.

The middle class in the countries that lost WWII ended up winning while that of the winning country ended up losing. We preached (and forced) the right thing on Japan and Germany but we have not practiced what we preached.

We Americans (hopefully) all embrace the Bill of Rights as a codification of fundamental, inalienable, and self-evident freedoms. Throughout American history, more and more of those freedoms have been 'incorporated' into state law via Supreme Court decisions. This process of honoring the Fourteenth Amendment via incorporation has allowed for much of the progress we Democrats cherish, as certain states had otherwise resisted rights being extended to certain races, to women, and (still) to people on the basis of their sexuality, for example.

States are what charter corporations and issue licenses (dba's etc.) to private businesses. Yet for some strange reason many Americans, including too many here at DU, find it perfectly acceptable that one's right to free speech, one's freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and nearly every other civil right and liberty enshrined in our Constitution end at the workplace door. This is a ludicrous and pernicious notion. Why should a state be able to create a private entity via a corporate charter which then can violate rights that the state otherwise must protect?

We ought to always emphasize that our Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms can and should be exercised at the times and places where we spend the majority of our waking hours: the workplace. A corporation gaining a charter from the state should only be possible with if said corporation agrees to respect the fundamental freedoms of its employees. Indeed, how can a state give a corporation a power which the state itself does not have? If a state must respect the First Amendment, etc., then so must the corporations it charters.

K&R

-app