Labor Unions -- The Folks Who Brought You the Weekend

Thanks to Quaker Dave (on hiatus,) who passed this on to me:

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a bill that would have allowed labor organizations to unionize workplaces without secret ballot elections. Democrats were unable to get the 60 votes needed to force consideration of the Employee Free Choice Act, ending labor's chance to win its top legislative priority from Congress. (read more)

This bill would have amended the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes. The Employee Free Choice Act would

require employers to recognize unions after being presented union cards signed by a majority of eligible workers on their payrolls. Under current labor law, a company can demand a secret ballot election supervised by the federal government after being presented the union cards.

The vote broke down along predictable Dimocrat/Rethuglican party lines, with independents Bernie Sanders and (surprise) Joe Liebermann siding with the Dims.

Unionized labor has been under direct attack in this country for the past 25 years, since the air traffic controllers' strike was broken by the Insane Anglo War Lord (that's an anagram for Ronald Wilson Reagan -- neat, huh?) One of my favorite musicians, Steve Earle (whose dad was one of those fired air traffic controllers,) likes to point out that strong labor unions are an essential part of a strong democracy. Without the one, we will not have the other.

Legislation such as this is one part of the solution, and I hope it will continue to come up again and again, as the Dimocrats promise it will. The other pieces of this puzzle involve campaign finance reform, so that legislators cannot be so easily bought by anti-labor corporate lobbyists and, perhaps more importantly, education in labor history for the younger members of the work force who seem to lack an understanding of what unions have done/can do for them.

Oh yes, and jobs.

I also want to point out, that this is one more key piece of the Democrats' agenda which would have been vetoed by the branch of government formally known as "the Executive Branch," had it reached the required 60 votes. This is why I find it specious when the Dims say that "Impeachment is off the table" because they want to "focus on furthering their agenda." Until they get more of a majority, their agenda is going nowhere. Really fast.