Counterpoint: Republicans won't keep unions down for long

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.eagletribune.com/puopinion/local_story_252133023?keyword=secondarystory

Counterpoint: Republicans won't keep unions down for long
By Victor Kamber
Eagle-Tribune

When Al Gore ran for president against George W. Bush in 2000, Pennsylvania was pivotal. Labor operatives in the Keystone State assured their members: "Al Gore won't take away your guns, but George Bush will take away your unions."

Gore won Pennsylvania, but as we all now know, the Supreme Court gave the election to George Bush, who has done everything in his power to do to working people just what labor in Pennsylvania said he would: Take away their unions.

From the day the Bush Administration took office, government agencies created to help working people have been under attack. It began with the appointment of Elaine Chao as labor secretary, something akin to naming Typhoid Mary to the Board of Health.

A department created "to foster, promote and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States" became a haven for unfair employers. Chao's first move was to deprive six million workers of the right to overtime pay (she even advised employers how to exploit the new rules). Next, her department slashed funds and staff for workplace safety, and repealed regulations to protect workers from repetitive motion injuries.

But it wasn't enough just to keep workers down. Even more important to Bush was the need to stifle union organizing. That was accomplished by Bush appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, who have manipulated the rules so that the NLRB has become a tool to penalize, rather than protect, workers seeking union membership.

When Democrats sponsored legislation to allow workers to skip the NLRB and organize by "card check", who was it in the Senate who stopped it in its tracks? Elaine Chao's husband, GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell.

FULL 2 page story at link.