( – promoted by lowkell)
A new statement from Bob Goodlatte, published in the Augusta Free Press, elicited this rejoinder from me:
Mr. Goodlatte says that this week’s move by Republicans in Michigan represents “another victory for American workers and freedom in the workplace.”
Don’t believe it for a second. Here are some facts.
** The average wage of workers in so-called “right to work” states is thousands of dollars less per year than in union states.
** The power of unions in America is lower now than it has been in generations.
** The proportion of our GDP that goes to wages is now lower than it has been in generations.
The wages of workers have fallen directly in correlation with the power of unions. Even as American workers productivity has continued to climb, wages have flat-lined and all the benefits of increased productivity have gone into corporate profits.
These are the facts.
But along comes Bob Goodlatte to tell us that this latest Republican assault on the power of labor represents a victory for workers. It is the very opposite.
The law past in Michigan represents a victory not for the workers, but for the corporations who will be able to pay them less. It is not about enhancing workers rights, but about undermining workers powers. Divided they fall.
This Michigan law represents another piece of the larger pattern that shows what today’s Republican Party is about. It takes wealth and power from those who have less to give to those who already have the most.
And then, as in this piece of propaganda from Mr. Goodlatte, it lies about what it’s doing.
Andy Schmookler ran this year for Congress in VA-06. He’s an award-winning author, political commentator, talk radio host and teacher. A summa cum laude graduate of Harvard, he earned his Ph. D. from Berkeley writing the first of his books analyzing the forces that operate in civilized systems, The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution.
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