UH OH. Someone tell Walker that Reagan supported unions and collective bargaining.

[PA Democrat]

Reagan was talking about workers in Poland at a Labor Day speech in 1980


"These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland … They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost. They remind us that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction"


Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oITaWo5z1IQ&feature=related

[ananda]

1. While Reagan might have said that about Poland...

... for political reasons, he didn't actually support unions.

He got into politics because he was pissed at SAG (Screen Actors Guild)
and he wanted to break unions. Later he broke the Air Traffic Controllers
union.

[PA Democrat]

2. Yes, Reagan didn't walk the walk,

but it sure sounded pretty in that speech, didn't it?

[eleny]

3. Maybe Walker can explain the nuance

:rofl:

[frazzled]

4. That's why he fired 11,000 striking air traffic controllers

As we move to the issue of workers right’s and labor under Ronald Reagan. Many critics of the former president recall with great anger the policies of Reagonomics. His administration was one of the worst in history for organized labor. And his track record was consistent almost from the beginning of his career in the public eye. In the late 1940’s, as president of the Screen Actors’ Guild union, Ronald Reagan testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee on so-called "subversive activity" in Hollywood, reporting on actors, directors, and screenwriters deemed Communist sympathizers.

And in the 1960’s and 70’s, as Governor of the State of California, Reagan fought the efforts of migrant farm workers to win union contracts, vetoing the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, a bill granting farm workers collective bargaining rights. In one well-publicized episode, then-Governor Reagan appeared on television eating grapes in defiance of a union-sponsored boycott against miserable working conditions in California’s vineyards.

In August of 1981, thirteen thousand members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO, ignored federal laws prohibiting strikes and walked off the job in protest of long shifts and mandatory overtime. PATCO was one of a few unions that backed the newly inaugurated Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, but the union would soon regret its decision to support the President.

http://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/11/reagan_class_and_organized_labor_one

[dkf]

10. How is it possible to veto collective bargaining rights just for migrant farm workers?

That doesn't make sense to me

[rhett o rick]

5. That was before the corporations had their "come to Jesus" meeting with him. He started the massive

assault on unions when he fired the air traffic controllers.

[rDigital]

6. Reagan

Reagan was for private unions. Public employee unions are different beast entirely. They have no competition and become a powerful political machine on the backs of taxpayers.

[brentspeak]

8. Thank you for your comment, Mr. Tea Puppet

Sincerely,

Charles and David Koch

[mac56]

9. Oh really?

The so-called differences between "private" and "public" unions are a crock. Enjoy your stay at DU.

[PA Democrat]

11. As opposed to corporations who control too many of our politicians?

[Myrina]

7. The small print says "Doesn't apply in the American workplace".

Thanks for playing.

[kenny blankenship]

12. Reagan was an ageing Ken Doll with worms in his brain. He just read the words on the cue cards

Asking whether he meant this or that is futile speculation. He hated unions. And he also loved unions. Depending on what the cue card said that day. The people who put words in his mouth were just beginning to attack unions openly when he was President, so they were circumspect in their anti-union messages. In the context of the Cold War and Poland, they wrote of a glowing love for unions, like it was 1955, because they would use anything to undermine the USSR and its client states. Meanwhile, back in the States, they were supporting the liquidation of labor as fast as politically possible. If the same bastards were in the White House today with the same Ken Doll, they would be more overt and forceful in their attack on organized labor. But that wouldn't stop them from contradicting themselves in a different context, if there was organized labor in, say, Iran or North Korea.

[PA Democrat]

13. Which is why it is so maddening to see the deification of St. Ronnie.

He was one huge walking contradiction who said what his puppet masters told him to say and then acted in the opposite manner. Iran-Contra, union-busting, cutting taxes. etc.

Modern Republicans use the same tactics and the public continues to fall for it.