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TUE AUG 02, 2011 AT 09:40 AM PDT

Republicans leaving FAA shut down and thousands out of work through August

 

This whole fight has always been about union rights for air workers. As Sen. Jay Rockefeller wrote in a USA Today op-ed:

 

Unfortunately, the Republican House is holding the FAA hostage and using the EAS program to distract from its acknowledged goal: overturning a workers' rights rule that makes sense and has been upheld in court.

 

This ugly backroom deal is the work of Delta Air Lines' anti-worker allies in the House. They want to overturn a decision of the National Mediation Board that allows airline and railroad workers to organize with their votes counted the regular way—yes and no—rather than by counting people who don't participate at all in the election.

 

Delta lost in court, and so it lobbied the Republican House leadership for help.

 

All of this to prevent workers from having fair elections over whether to join unions and for the benefit of one company in particular.

 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/...-work-through-August

 

The Strike That Busted Unions

By JOSEPH A. McCARTIN

Published: August 2, 2011

 

 THIRTY years ago today, when he threatened to fire nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers unless they called off an illegal strike, Ronald Reagan not only transformed his presidency, but also shaped the world of the modern workplace.

 

More than any other labor dispute of the past three decades, Reagan’s confrontation with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or Patco, undermined the bargaining power of American workers and their labor unions. It also polarized our politics in ways that prevent us from addressing the root of our economic troubles: the continuing stagnation of incomes despite rising corporate profits and worker productivity.

 

Although a conservative, Reagan often argued that private sector workers’ rights to organize were fundamental in a democracy. He not only made this point when supporting Lech Walesa’s anti-Communist Solidarity movement in Poland; he also boasted of being the first president of the Screen Actors Guild to lead that union in a strike. Over time, however, his crushing of the controllers’ walkout — which he believed was justified because federal workers were not allowed under the law to strike — has helped undermine the private-sector rights he once defended.

 

Yet three decades later, with the economy shrinking or stagnant for nearly four years now and Reagan’s party moving even further to the right than where he stood, the long-term costs of his destruction of the union loom ever larger. It is clear now that the fallout from the strike has hurt workers and distorted our politics in ways Reagan himself did not advocate.

 

Workers in the private sector had used the strike as a tool of leverage in labor-management conflicts between World War II and 1981, repeatedly withholding their work to win fairer treatment from recalcitrant employers. But after Patco, that weapon was largely lost. Reagan’s unprecedented dismissal of skilled strikers encouraged private employers to do likewise. Phelps Dodge and International Paper were among the companies that imitated Reagan by replacing strikers rather than negotiating with them. Many other employers followed suit.

 

By 2010, the number of workers participating in walkouts was less than 2 percent of what it had been when Reagan led the actors’ strike in 1952. Lacking the leverage that strikes once provided, unions have been unable to pressure employers to increase wages as productivity rises. Inequality has ballooned to a level not seen since Reagan’s boyhood in the 1920s.

 

But the impact of the Patco strike on Reagan’s fellow Republicans has long since overshadowed his own professed beliefs regarding public sector unions. Over time the rightward-shifting Republican Party has come to view Reagan’s mass firings not as a focused effort to stop one union from breaking the law — as Reagan portrayed it — but rather as a blow against public sector unionism itself.

 

In the spring, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin invoked Reagan’s handling of Patco as he prepared to “change history” by stripping public employees of collective bargaining rights in a party-line vote. “I’m not negotiating,” Mr. Walker said. By then the world had seemingly forgotten that unlike Mr. Walker, Reagan had not challenged public employees’ right to bargain — only their right to strike.

 

With Mr. Walker’s militant anti-union views now ascendant within the party of a onetime union leader, with workers less able to defend their interests in the workplace than at any time since the Depression, the long-term consequences continue to unfold in ways Reagan himself could not have predicted — producing outcomes for which he never advocated.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/opinion/reagan-vs-patco-the-strike-that-busted-unions.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

 

http://thinkprogress.org/econo...nion-middle-incomes/

 

 

Ask yourself one question: Are you better off today than 30 years ago? NO. Our underlying problem is not visible without looking at long historical trends. Since 1980, the top 5% of households are accumulating income at the expense of the lower 95% (See Change in Share of Total Income: 1980 to 2008). When you are bemoaning how tough your children will have it, all you are doing is feeling what these statistics demonstrate. The top 5% have it all!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...d-desp_b_586658.html

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Two different polimics dressed up as one.

 

I'll deal with the FAA only.  What is at stake is commercial air service to airports subsidized by the federal government because they can't survive on their own revenue.  Many to the tune of $1,000 per ticket. And, conveniently near the homes of congressmen and senators. 

 

Enough of treating the public purse as their own. Of fiefdoms, where all conveniences are for them.  Pelosi and her entourage used DoD aircraft and ran up large liquor bills at the public expense. Whereas, the present speaker is using commercial aircraft.  Flag officers on DoD flights are offered the same service Pelosi received.  But, those officers paid their bills, they didn't foist it off on the people. 

Originally Posted by interventor1212:

Two different polimics dressed up as one.

 

I'll deal with the FAA only.  What is at stake is commercial air service to airports subsidized by the federal government because they can't survive on their own revenue.  Many to the tune of $1,000 per ticket. And, conveniently near the homes of congressmen and senators. 

 

Enough of treating the public purse as their own. Of fiefdoms, where all conveniences are for them.  Pelosi and her entourage used DoD aircraft and ran up large liquor bills at the public expense. Whereas, the present speaker is using commercial aircraft.  Flag officers on DoD flights are offered the same service Pelosi received.  But, those officers paid their bills, they didn't foist it off on the people. 

One of those airports is in Ely Nevada. Yes that's right, Harry in your pocket Reid's home state Hmm.

And I was better off 3 years ago than I am today. Let alone 30.

Anyway that's my 3 cents.

Skippy





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