NYT OP-ED: Republicans Sure Love to Hate Unions

[Omaha Steve]

X post in Labor and GD

Http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/opinion/republicans-sure-love-to-hate-unions.html?_r=0

Thomas B. Edsall NOV. 18, 2014

A paradox of American politics is that Republicans take organized labor more seriously than Democrats do.

The right sees unions as a mainstay of the left, a crucial source of cash, campaign manpower and votes.

“Unions are the largest player in American politics and they will be for some time,” Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, declared in March at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “Fourteen million Americans have to pay union dues. If they average $500, and that is a low estimate, that’s a $7 billion slush fund for the left.”

Democrats are happy to get labor’s votes and money, but they have done little to revitalize the besieged movement.

FULL story at link.

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Wow!!! Never knew a Rethug who

had anything positive about any Union. Only Rethug who did was Nixon and that was to extract a bribe from the Teamsters to keep someone out of Prison.

[yallerdawg]

2. Republicans are opposed to fair pay and safe work conditions.

If they eliminate unionism and collective bargaining, and we work under 'at will' status with employers and job creators determining pay, hours, work conditions, and job safety as solely a function of profit, we will be back to a feudal system of peasants and lords. They will eliminate the 'slush fund for the left,' increase the wealth of the lords and end the support of another constituency of voters for the Democratic Party.

Grover Norquist has never underestimated the stupidity of the American people.