Blue-Collar Republicans

[babsbunny]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080915/hayes

By Christopher Hayes

September 2, 2008


Blue-Collar Republicans

Labor Organizing & Activism

Christopher Hayes: The Republican Party has set itself firmly against the agenda of the labor movement. So to observe Labor Day in St. Paul was a strange experience indeed.


Just as I was chalking up my friend's views to the propaganda of right-wing talk radio, he told me about his eight years as a meatpacker in the union. "I like unions. I was a union steward. That's one thing I don't agree with the Republicans about. Unions have done a lot for the middle class in this country. You know, I was a meatpacker for eight years and do you know the history of meatpacking?" I said I did. "Well, before there was a union those jobs were dangerous jobs, still are, but they paid minimum wage! When I was a meatpacker I made twenty bucks an hour. If you don't have a union then you got no way to fight for yourself."

I asked him why, given what he'd just said, he was still a Republican. He told me it was "all the other issues."

It was like Thomas Frank had conjured a real life voter to drive me to the airport.

[rurallib]

1. Walked a picket line yesterday to support a union

I am not union. As I left one woman told me she would vote for my candidate and 'split her ticket for the first time in her life.' I was left open mouthed. So I asked her if she was a republican and she said she was. I was near to speechless. I said "Republican and your in a union?" And she said "What is wrong with that?"
I muttered something about the history of unions. She said that didn't matter. I was blown away.

[dflprincess]

2. Traitors to their class

as the elite used to say about FDR.