Flashback:Ronald Reagan Called Union Membership An ‘Elemental Human Right’

[cal04]

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/25/flashback-reagan-union-right/

As the Main Street Movement of students, workers, and other middle class Americans erupts across America, many conservatives have invoked the legacy of former president Ronald Reagan to demand that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) not back down from his push to end collective bargaining for his state’s public employees. In a prank call with the Buffalo Beast’s Ian Murphy, where Murphy pretended to be right-wing billionare David Koch, Walker himself even fantasized about being just like Reagan.

Yet conservatives may be shocked to learn that their idol Reagan was once a union boss himself. Reagan was the only president in American history to have belonged to a union, the AFL-CIO affiliated Screen Actors Guild. And he even served six terms as president of the organized labor. Additionally, Reagan was a staunch advocate for the collective bargaining rights of one of the world’s most famous and most influential trade unions, Poland’s Solidarity movement.

(snip)
REAGAN: The Polish government has trampled underfoot to the UN Charter and Helsinki accords. It has even broken the Gdańsk Agreement of 1980 by which the Polish government recognized the basic right of free trade unions and to strike.

Watch it: http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/25/flashback-reagan-union-right/

(snip)
As right wingers, including Walker himself, continue to fashion themselves as clones of Ronald Reagan as they face off with a new progressive populist movement across the country, Americans should know that the former President’s views and actions may not have always perfectly aligned with those on the far right.

[steve2470]

1. k&r nt

[El Supremo]

2. He was president of the Screen Actor's Guild.

A fact that many Repubs lament.

[SlimJimmy]

3. Absolutely correct, but like FDR before him, he was not in favor of

public sector employees being able to strike. If we are going to quote, let's quote with accuracy and then the opposition will have nothing they can say about it.

[eissa]

4. His firing of striking airline workers

and the general union-busting policies of his administration override whatever lip service the idiot paid to labor. He's the one who first put the unions on the rope and we have been struggling ever since the 80s to regain our numbers. One can only hope that the tactics used by the WI teabaggers will have major blowback.

[_ed_]

5. Conservatives have no idea who Reagan

really was or what he actually did in office. It's an amazing case of revisionist history...but most of us lived through it. Perplexing.

[alp227]

6. Steve Largent, fmr (R) Congressman from OK, crossed union lines as a football player

during the 1987 NFL strike, so he at least has more ground in his anti-union stances if he had any (I don't know much about this but he's a Republican so yeah)

I learned about this think progress article from drudge.com (not Matt's site).

And wow Reagan was really concerned about the Polish workers? Not the Americans? And has the gall to consider himself patriotic? :wow: