Why would they repeal Taft-Hartley?

--imm

Deuteronomy 24 15


"You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets, for he is poor and sets his heart on it; so that he will not cry against you to the LORD and it become sin in you.

Jeremiah 22 13

And the LORD says, "What sorrow awaits Jehoiakim, who builds his palace with forced labor. He builds injustice into its walls, for he makes his neighbors work for nothing. He does not pay them for their labor.

I'm not Christian, but I like James.

"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.[a] 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you."


The great thing is you can find these quotes in every religious text, but my favorite has to be from the Pali Cannon of Buddhism where Buddha tells employers to pay a living wage. That's actually the translation that is used too.

I'm iffy on that. Way too much potential for abuse

We could retain the prohibitions on the closed shop (employer may not hire nonmembers of the union) and on the union shop (employer may hire nonmembers but they must join the union within a certain period of time). Before the Taft-Hartley Act, both of these restrictions on hiring could be included in a collective bargaining agreement between the union and the employer.

Section 14(b) is the provision that goes even further and authorizes state governments to prohibit the agency shop. In an agency shop, again established by bargaining between the union and the employer, all employees must be union members, become union members, or make a payment to the union in lieu of dues, to bear their share of the union's expenses incurred in representing them and in winning better wages and working conditions for them. If a state government chooses to exercise this power, the resulting statute is called a "right-to-work law" -- a misleading term, because the law doesn't give anyone a right to work. It merely gives a right to freeload.

I don't know what's in recent Democratic Party platforms about section 14(b). I remember that repealing it was a goal of the party and was being actively pushed in the 1960s, though without success. These days, the labor movement puts a higher priority on card check, which facilitates the initial step of certifying a union that can negotiate a collective bargaining agreement in the first place.

Taft-Hartley has been in the news lately.

Some young activists were frustrated with the limited range of action that unions can do. It's still pretty amazing that it hasn't been on the progressive list of things to do until recently.

Last edited Fri Jan 25, 2013, 01:49 PM - Edit history (1)

Why is it that the country that defined democracy for the modern world does not have laws that represent the workers in our country when we are by far the majority? Employers can make you work ridiculous amounts of overtime even when you don't want to; they can split your days off so you only have one day off at a time; and, they can pay you low wages and give you terrible benefits (if any at all), so that you need to use food stamps and other government help, which costs all of us money. There are two major reasons for the aforementioned travesty: First, the global economy was never meant to help "we the people" but to enslave us by tying our wages and benefits to underdeveloped nations, which have greatly increased the profits of corporations. Second, the concerted effort by businesses and the conservatives that represent them to destroy unions by creating a jealous, under-paid work force has been successful. This divide and conquer strategy worked because companies could now say they couldn't pay union wages while competing with competition from overseas -- competition they created.

Now, non-union workers blame the unions for the loss of jobs in our country and feel union workers are over paid and lazy. In reality, by voting to end collective bargaining in states, workers are putting the nails in their own coffins because now they and their children will have even less chance of getting decent jobs. Unions are the only voice the common person has against the power of businesses, which through their enormous profits now control our government, while getting people to believe our government is too big. The people don't realize that government (us) is the only way to balance the power of big money if we take part in that government as a people. The perfect example of people being turned against our own interests is health care. Corporations have the people trusting them for providing health care rather than their own government. While people can vote people in or out of office, how much say do we have on a corporate board of a health insurance company whose prime motive for existence is to make as much money as possible for their share holders?

It's all about greed of the already wealthy. When unions first got started and made significant gains for workers to balance the wealth even a little bit, what did businesses do? They raised prices, causing a steady increase in the cost of living, so their collective wealth would not decrease even a little bit. Until the people stop trying to bring down workers who have more than they do and turn their anger toward the powers that run all our lives, the proper legislation will never be passed.

Welcome to DU!

While capital can move freely over national borders while labor cannot, that is obviously divide and conquer force of the race to the bottom.

But the divide and conquer goes much deeper, as also people dislocated and robbed and turned into working sub-class wear the chains of dividing and conquering the whole of nature into consumer-subjects and nature objectified as consumable resources.

So as long as working sub-class stays chained into dividing and conquering whole of nature similarly to their capitalist masters, they are easy to divide and conquer as sub-class of consumer subjects.

I agree, unfortunately few people ever think about the earth's ever declining natural resources. A capitalist economy based on ever increasing-profits, which is partly based on an ever-increasing population, is both impossible and self destructive. We are all living on an economy of borrowed time, whether budgets are balanced or not.

was a big move.