David Sirota: Reminder: Worker Rights Under Assault Here At Home

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from OurFuture.org:



Reminder: Worker Rights Under Assault Here At Home
Submitted by David Sirota on December 1, 2007 - 2:02pm.


As my writing here for the Campaign for America's Future focuses on the fight for workers' rights all over the globe, I wanted to take a moment to point out that the most basic worker rights are still very much under assault right here at home.

If ever there was a single newspaper story that showed just how much today's Republican Party hates working people, this Rocky Mountain News story is it. The headline reads "Right to Strike in Colorado Paid With Blood," and documents how after National Guardsmen mowed down striking mine workers in the early 20th century's Ludlow Massacre, the Colorado state legislature solidified workers' right to strike - that is, workers' right to withhold their labor as a way to protest the way they are treated. It was the least the legislature could do following one of the ugliest displays of worker oppression in American history.

This would seem like a basic right in an industrialized countries because, really, what's the opposite? Right - forcing workers to work, whether they like it or not. However, as this article shows, even with the right to strike in Colorado delivered "paid with blood," the Colorado Republican Party is gearing up to eliminate that right for workers.

The article includes the above picture of troops heading toward the Ludlow workers to execute them back in 1914 - and in the paper, the picture is, rather appropriately, juxtaposed next to the legislature's Republican leaders who are leading today's assault on workers.

I'm not sure what else I can add other than to note how telling it is that the Republican Party - supposedly the party of "freedom" - is now going on record saying workers shouldn't be free to protest through not working. The GOP is, in short, the party of forced labor. They are taking quite a stand with the great autocrats of history and the major third-world countries where such dictatorial policy is an everyday fact of life. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/reminder_worker_rights_under_assault_here_home?tx=3