Colorad Labor Blog

Mike Rosen, radio station KOA’s talk show blabbermouth, is at it again, characterizing union members as “thugs” in a recent column on the ongoing health care debate.

In his Denver Post column, Rosen attempted to compare various elements of the left to the rightwing nuts, many of whom have been photographed carrying guns while demonstrating at locations where President Obama has been speaking.

Rosen said the liberals protest too much.  He noted that when George Bush was president he was challenged by “hysterical cranks like Cindy Sheehan, ill-mannered MoveOn.org protestors, leftist college students, shouting down conservative guest speakers ACORN rabble-rousers, labor union thugs and militant Latinos opposing our immigration laws.”

Speaking only for labor unions, (although I would guess Cindy Sheehan, Move On, leftist college students, ACORN rabble-rousers and Latinos could more than hold their own defending themselves against Rosen’s rants) I must point out that there is at least one difference in the liberals’ protests of Bush policies and those of the rightwingers opposing President Obama’s health care plan:

The liberals, including any union members who might have appeared at public protest over Bush’s policies, never carried guns.  If they had, they probably would have been arrested and dispatched in a millisecond to Abu Ghraib—or, at the least, Gitmo–where they might have been held for years before adjudication of their cases

Strictly from a union standpoint, the crooks, or “thugs,” the lawless ones, as Rosen’s always characterizes union leaders–aren’t in the labor movement, as he suggested.  Nowadays, they are corporate thugs and their front is Wall Street.

Rosen and his anti-union pals often imply that union leaders are corrupt “bosses,” who direct gangs of “thugs.” That characterization simply doesn’t fit. Many more bosses and thugs have been discovered in the past 20 years in corporate boardrooms than in union halls.

Today there are far more corporate executives in prison than union leaders, probably more by a margin of 10 to 1 at least.

In fact, union leaders are choirboys/girls compared to the business community, which has given us the likes of Edward Keating, John Rigas, Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Bernard Ebbers, Dennis Kozlowski, and Bernie Madoff–whose prison term should warm the cockles of Rosen’s heart.

These corporate crooks–so-called business leaders–used companies such as Enron, World Com, Global Crossing, Tyco, Arthur Anderson and Adelphia as vehicles to cheat stockholders out of billions of dollars.  In the past two decades, corporate thugs have stolen more money from stockholders and taxpayers than any other criminal element.  In fact, that pattern may been formed more than 2000 years ago, but statistics weren’t available from those days.

Imagine the torrent of pious indignation that would spew forth from the mouths of Rosen and other conservative radio talkers if union leaders cheated their members out of a tiny fraction of the amounts corporate thieves have stolen from the public.

We’d have to turn off the radio.

Perhaps we should anyway.

The media and corporate America appear to be in lockstep nowadays in their opposition to any initiative that might be good for working men and women.

On both the national and state levels, labor unions have been pounded by various business groups and the print and television media.

Here in Colorado, veteran labor observers can’t remember when the Denver Post ever supported a worker’s issue, either national or in the state.

In recent months the Post has joined most of the nation’s press in opposing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which may soon be voted on in Congress.  The Post has attacked EFCA, not only in its editorials, but also in the misinformation put out by the newspaper’s cadre of anti-worker columnists.

In addition to the media, most of the nation’s business organizations have joined in this fight to deny a basic workplace right to thousands—perhaps millions–of American workers who want to become union members.  Indeed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is spending millions of dollars on national advertising in its campaign against EFCA.

While it is true that EFCA would make it easier for unions to organize workers, it is patently untrue that it would prohibit secret ballot elections for union representation.

You wouldn’t know that from the news coverage and deceptive television advertising, both of which claim that EFCA would deny workers a secret ballot election

Under EFCA, employees may choose either a secret ballot election or a majority sign-up process (card-check), which has been a part of federal labor law since 1935. Currently workers may use card-check only if their employers agree, which they rarely do.  EFCA simply takes the decision away from employers and gives it to the employees, where it rightfully belongs.

If workers choose the majority sign-up, the union would be required to obtain a majority of cards signed in favor of union representation before it can become the workers’ bargaining representative.

True to form, the Post recently published another editorial praising Gov. Bill Ritter for vetoing a bill that would have given Firefighters the right to collectively bargain with local governments.  The veto was a blatant double cross to the Firefighters who had been assured by the governor that he supported the bill.  The Post also editorialized against the bill when it was passed by the legislature.

A Post editorial published in March provides another example of the newspaper’s bias against workers.  The editorial attacked legislation that would have allowed workers to receive unemployment benefits if they were locked out by their employer through no fault of their own during a labor dispute.

The legislature passed the bill and then it was vetoed by Ritter.

Last year, in an unprecedented front page editorial, the Post blasted Ritter for issuing an executive order creating a relatively benign “partnership agreement” with state employee unions.  Basically, the agreement allows the unions to meet with their bureaucratic managers to talk over issues and try to resolve differences.

Hysterically, the Post said the agreement constituted “collective bargaining for tens of thousands of state employees,” which is hogwash.  There are no provisions in the agreement for bona fide collective bargaining, in which management and unions negotiate for wages, hours, benefits and working conditions.

The governor’s executive order can be repudiated by any succeeding administration, and undoubtedly will be if a Republican is elected governor

Most economists agree that consumer spending will play a huge part in righting the U.S. economy, because Corporate America desperately needs consumers to put money into play by purchasing goods and services.

Experts also say one of the main reasons the current recession endures is that workers do not have the purchasing power they need to drive our economy.

And yet the business community and its allies in the media—including the Denver Post–remain fully committed to the race to the bottom by trying to keep wages down and limiting benefits.

Hard to figure how that’s going to work for the Denver Post.

A likely scenario is that  Post readership among working men and women–who probably still rely on newspapers more than the internet for news–will continue to shrink as long as the newspaper keeps churning out anti-worker propaganda in its editorials and opinion columns.