Colorad Labor Blog

To be perfectly honest, I am getting a bit fed up with the media’s infatuation with gay marriage and guns. To me, television 2013 is threatening to get even more boring than television 2012 when we endured about a year of inane political campaign commercials. After a tiny respite, I am once again ready to start tossing shoes at the television and tearing to shreds the daily blah the Denver Post has become.

It’s not that I have anything against gays, or heterosexuals for that matter, I believe they ought to be able to get married. If most of their marriages last longer than all of Rush Limbaugh’s put together, they’ll be considered successful.

I don’t have anything against gun owners either, or non gun owners for that matter. I just think the “conceal carry” stuff is BS. I think the law should require them to carry their guns in plain sight, such as cowboys did in the olden days. Even their AK 47s, 49s, 50s, or whatever, Then we’d at least know who to take out with our first burst–the guy, or gal, with the biggest gun, right?

If I am angry at anybody, it is the media that gets giddy over social issues.

My nightly dose of MSNBC has disappeared; I am now reduced to watching reruns of Law and Order, Special Victims Unit. Enough is enough!

Meanwhile, the real world continues to turn, it seems, toward darkness. We are trying to cope with a lunatic punk in North Korea who is threatening to blow up his neighbor to the south where all those Hyudais and Kias—driven in this country by so-called American patriots–are made. Iran is trying its damndest to build a nuke.

There is also an island nation in the Mediterranean, Cypress–where I made a short visit during my Navy days a millennium or so ago–that might undermine the world’s economy.

And, our president is making noises like he wants to cut my Social Security benefits, while the Republicans are hoping they can make the rich richer, which certainly leaves me out of the equation. We still have high unemployment, stagnant wages and astronomical health care costs. And, last time I checked, the immigration problem was still with us.

Who cares? We get to watch Wayne LaPierre and Rachel Maddow duke it out.

Hold on. Let me get this other shoe untied.

There are only three free collective bargaining states from Kansas City to the West Coast—Colorado, Montana and New Mexico. The remainder of the mountain west states—Arizona, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming—are so-called “right-to-work” states.

Because unions set wage and benefit standards for all American workers, these three lesser-populated free bargaining states are very important to the American labor movement.

Their importance is both real and symbolic. They help to maintain the living standards of all American workers. If they lose their struggle against the ongoing War on Workers, the entire mountain west from Canada to Arizona will be a right-to-work (for less) wasteland. Nonunion workers will especially be hurt in those states. They will earn less money, have fewer benefits, often work under substandard conditions and have no job security.

Union workers in Colorado, Montana and New Mexico should be proud of themselves. In the 2010 and 2012 elections they fought off the union busting right- to-work gang at the polls, a feat that bigger states with far greater union density in the workplace have not been able to accomplish.

Today the living standards of workers in many states—including some of the strongest labor states in the nation—are being seriously threatened.

States with proud labor legacies, such as Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, are fighting for survival against Tea Party-dominated state legislators with anti-worker agendas.

Those rightwing lawmakers have already stripped public sector unions of collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin. And Michigan, which had for years been a leader in the noble struggle for workers’ rights and dignity, is now a right-to-work (for less) state.

A law passed in Ohio that curtailed collective bargaining was repealed but it required a special election to do it. And now, right-to-work legislation has been introduced in Pennsylvania, another state with a great labor tradition.

These are all “blue” states; they usually elect more Democrats than Republicans. But in 2010, voters in those states turned in massive numbers to the Republicans, mostly Tea Party Republicans who simply want to annihilate not only the labor movement but the U.S. government.

They flipped control of 20 state legislatures in 2010, which gave Republicans control of more legislatures than they have had at any time since 1928. Unfortunately, the blatant gerrymandering schemes Republicans passed in many of these states in 2011 could keep the Tea Party in control until the next census is conducted in 2020.

Fortunately, many Republicans are starting to recognize the Tea Party faithful for what it is—a collection of zealots who seek to destroy any semblance of government. We sincerely hope their evolving awareness will affect changes in the party.

In Colorado, Montana and New Mexico, organized labor pretty much retained the status quo in the elections of 2010 and 2012. All three states managed to hold off the Tea Party’s electoral tidal wave in 2010, and they continued to neutralize the extreme rightwing of the GOP in 2012.

While Colorado Democrats lost control of the State House of Representatives by one vote in 2010, they retained control of the State Senate.

They also elected a governor. In 2012 they regained control of the House.

In Montana, Republicans retained control of both the House and Senate in 2010, but a progressive governor was in office. Then in 2012, Steve Bullock, who was strongly endorsed by labor, and who vowed to veto any right-to-work bill, was elected the new governor.

New Mexico Democrats retained control of both houses of the legislature in 2010 and 2012.

So voters in Colorado, Montana and New Mexico have guaranteed that for now the union busters will have a very difficult time enacting right-to-work (for less) or any other major anti-worker legislation for at least the next two years.

The election results in the west are a huge factor in labor’s survival to fight another day.

It could have been a real disaster if the Tea Party zealots had assumed political control of the only free bargaining states between Kansas City and the West Coast.

Thanks for your help, brothers and sisters.

We needed it.

All of those nonunion workers who constantly rant against organized labor should instead thank their lucky stars for their union counterparts.

If it weren’t for the union workers, nonunion working men and women would be making considerably less wages.

It is a fact that in states where unions are strong, wages of all workers—union and nonunion—are higher. For example, in free bargaining states workers earn about $5,538 more annually ($44,707 compared to $39,169) than those in so-called right-to-work states, where union organizing is limited by law.

Fortunately, though, in right-to-work nonunion workers also benefit from unions because wage standards in all states are set by prevailing union wages.

To compete with unionized companies in securing proficient workers, most employers of nonunion labor in all states try to keep wages competitive with the wages paid by unionized companies

Even so, wages of all workers have diminished for many years. Employers know the reason why. They laugh all the way to the bank. Workers, though, mostly look at their pay checks and shake their heads.

The reason is that unions are weaker now than they have been since World War ll. Organized labor now represents less than 12 percent of the nation’s workers, split about 50-50 between the public and private sectors. In the 1950s, 35 percent of all U.S. workers were represented by unions.

The downward wage spiral began in 1980 after Ronald Reagan was elected president. He and his economic advisors determined that money accumulated at the top should only “trickle down” to those on the middle and lower rungs of the economic ladder.

This economic plan has allowed those at the top to hoard money for years. They
claim to be “job creators,” but that is pure, unadulterated BS.

If they were creating jobs, our unemployment rate would not be at about eight percent. And they wouldn’t be exporting manufacturing jobs overseas, screwing thousands of American workers out of good paying jobs, while pocketing record profits.

Even people with pea brains should understand what that has done to the middle class. When workers earn less, they buy less. When they buy less, employers seek to cut labor costs to maintain profits. Catch 22.

If wages continue to diminish, corporations will eventually find it difficult to sell their products. Nobody will have the money to buy them. That is now beginning to happen. It will eventually eliminate the middle class if something isn’t done about it.

There is a proposal in the marketplace of ideas that would provide a lot of medicine for the ailing U.S. economy.

It is enactment of the Employees’ Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Making it easier for working men and women to unionize would quickly result in higher workers’ wages, thus injecting more money for goods and services in the economy. The increasing demand for thee commodities would, in turn, create new jobs.

But it won’t happen in my lifetime, unless:

• All workers—union and nonunion—finally decide they will work in their own best interest.
• Republicans begin to act as serious legislators rather than circus clowns.
• Democrats grow a pair and take a real stand for workers, such a federal labor law reform.
• The public begins to consider serious problems with more profundity than talking points provided by special interests.

Fat chance, I’d say.

I am what I am.

I am a liberal and I don’t want to be called a “progressive.” The liberal political viewpoint has been an honorable component in political discourse for many years. I refuse to bow to the pressure of right-wing radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh who have made liberal a pejorative term by laying the blame for all of the country’s problems on liberals.

That’s a lot of baloney, pure and simple. Get a life, Rush, or a few new advertisers anyway.

Since the turn of the century, liberals have been responsible for more good in this country than have conservatives. If it weren’t for liberals, the social legislation that has helped people in need throughout those years would have never been enacted.

Indeed, liberal politicians in this country have a more illustrious history than do conservatives.

A liberal president—Franklin Roosevelt—led the country out of the Depression and was in office during most of America’s victories in World War II.

His successor, Harry Truman, was a staunch trade union movement supporter. He vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act, a punitive anti-labor law that was enacted after Congress, with the help of many Democrats, overrode his veto.

In Truman’s 1948 campaign, Democrats bolted the party and ran as Dixiecrats because of the Democratic Party’s position on civil rights. Truman won anyway.

Truman was responsible for one of the most courageous acts of the war with Japan—the dropping of atomic bombs that ended the war and save untold thousands of American lives.

Democrat John F. Kennedy, like his Republican contemporary, U.S. Senator Robert Dole, was a war hero. As president, though, he established the Peace Corps and signed the first nuclear test ban treaty with the former the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). In 1962, after it was discovered that Soviet offensive missiles were being installed in Cuba, Kennedy quarantined the island until the Soviets withdrew their missiles.

Under his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, the Civil Rights Act was passed and the War on Poverty was enacted.

Johnson also appointed the first African American—Thurgood Marshall—to the Supreme Count.

Like conservatives, liberals come in different shades and hues. Some don’t believe in abortion; others believe women should have the right to choose. Some favor gun control; other see it as an infringement on their rights.

Many are veterans who served their time in the military—as did many of their conservative counterparts; others avoided the draft, as did all four of the candidates who ran this year in the Republican presidential primary.

Some are businessmen and entrepreneurs seeking profits; others are workers who believe they should get a fair share of the profits they help to produce.

What liberals generally have in common, though, is that they believe government ought to help those who can’t help themselves. Liberals don’t have to apologize for anything. They should forget that “progressive” label and be proud they are liberals.

I know I am.

Michigan wasn’t always like it is today. You could trust Michigan politicians 40 years ago — even the Republicans.

The governor then was William Milliken, a moderate Republican who served for 12 years, and was always endorsed by Michigan Teamsters and many of the unions of the AFL-CIO. Before he became governor, Milliken served as lieutenant governor under Governor George Romney, Mitt’s father. The late Robert Waldron was a highly-regarded speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives in 1967-1968. He was also a Republican. He was once asked why the Republicans never introduced a so-called “right-to-work” bill in the legislature.

“That would be out of the question,” he replied. “We don’t always agree with the unions, but we have never tried to destroy them. We have a high regard for the workers in this state.”

That was then; this is now.

Today lying, cheating and many other forms of corruption are commonplace in politics, and Michigan is no exception.

And the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, is the biggest liar of them all.

Since Snyder became governor in January 2011, he has maintained that right-to-work legislation is divisive and wasn’t on his agenda. He even testified to that fact in February before the U.S. Congress.

But he signed the legislation into law on Dec. 11.

He did it because the Koch brothers told him to. So did Richard DeVos, rightwing zealot who founded Amway, which is based in Grand Rapids, MI., and several other corporate nabobs.

Snyder and the rightwing Republicans in the Michigan legislature have been beneficiaries of thousands, if not millions, of political dollars spent by the Brothers Koch, their rightwing advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, and other zany billionaires, including DeVos. Their message to Snyder was sign it, or else.

While they have tons of money, they represent only a small slice of voters.

Knowledgeable observers believe this Republican overreach will create a huge voter backlash in two years when Snyder and many of his tea party allies in the legislature face reelection.

But two years from now may be too late. Wages, benefits and working conditions diminished almost immediately in every state that has passed right-to-work (for less). This downward pressure on union wages simultaneously reduces nonunion wages because union wage scales set standards for all U.S. workers.
The results of the election in 2014 could depend on whether or not a certain segment of union voters get the message. Those 30 or so percent of union voters registered as Republicans throughout the United States had better wise up and start voting in their own interests.

In recent years, it has been predictable. When union voters cast ballots for Republicans, they get screwed. It happened in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and now Michigan.

Working men and women who aid and abet the Koch brothers and their ilk should wake up and recognize what is happening to their future.

They should ask themselves why these guys poured millions of out-of-state dollars into the Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin election campaigns this year.

The answer is they want to advance causes that will lower workers’ wages, eliminate benefits and diminish working conditions. They know the record profits they are reaping today will grow if our national workforce becomes a Third World workforce.

They are playing a small but relevant segment of our country’s working men and women for the fool.
The fraud perpetrated by Governor Snyder on Michigan workers is a defining moment for the American labor movement. The unions must now stand up and fight like hell for the future of the nation’s workforce.

Voter suppression is not a new phenomenon. Attempts to prevent citizens from voting have been made for decades, mostly by Republicans since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.

Before that, most efforts to discourage voters from voting occurred in the South where Democrats, often called “Dixiecrats,” because they differed on racial issues with members of their party living in states outside the South. Southern states, controlled by the so-called Dixiecrats, enacted Jim Crow laws, which, among other restrictions, required payment of poll taxes before one could vote.

Here in Colorado, early in the 1960s, voter suppression efforts were only slightly more sophisticated. The Republicans would send two or three, almost always white, party regulars, dressed in suits and ties, to polling places usually located in Hispanic or African-American neighborhoods.

They would ask people waiting in line to cast ballots if they could prove they were really registered to vote. They asked the questions loudly, so they could be heard by other people who were waiting to vote. The unsophisticated voters were sometimes reluctant to provide information to some guys who looked as if they might have ulterior motives, so they would leave before voting.

During the 1960, ‘62 and ’64 elections, before the Voting Rights Act was passed, Denver unions effectively dealt with Republican voter suppression voter efforts by sending a union organizer or business agent, along with a couple of rather large rank-and-file members, to precincts in mostly minority districts to “advise” the GOP “suits” not to bother the voters.

The unions usually determined in advance the areas of the city they would cover. The Teamsters always watched precincts in the Baker district, including Baker Junior High School and Denver West High School. Many Teamsters in those days were World War II veterans and didn’t have much tolerance for people who wanted to deny their minority brothers and sisters the right to vote. They had, after all, fought a war to maintain that right for all Americans.

I fondly remember Dave Sweeney, the Teamsters’ political guru in Colorado at the time exhorting our union organizers—Fred Jones, John Teel, Ed Toliver and Ernie Jones to “go get ‘em guys. Don’t let ‘em steal a single vote.”

It always worked — so well, in fact, that Republicans today would probably call it “voter suppression oppression,” and do something really gritty, like introduce a bill, or call a cop.

Ah, the good old days.

If capitalism ever dies in the United States — as many believe it will — it won’t be caused by labor unions, liberals, environmentalists, civil rights activists or just plain do-gooders.

Rather, the death of capitalism will be the fault of the corporations themselves — especially the multinationals –which are reaping record profits, while paying their workers less every year. They get away with this because unions — which set wage standards for all workers, union and nonunion — are being slowly hammered into submission by the constant, aggressive attack from right-wing zealots seeking annihilation of the labor movement.

Unions now represent less than 12 percent of the nation’s workers, split about 50-50 between the public and private sectors. In the 1950s, 35 percent of all U.S. workers were represented by unions. In those days, wages were increasing and the union haters whined about the so-called “wage-price spiral.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has made it legal for any outside group to contribute money to support cadidates through a Super Pac–which must disclose the identify of its donors–and/or so-called “social welfare groups” whose donors can remain anonymous.

This has unleashed a tidal wave of corporate and private dollars that are now flooding the electoral system. Republicans, because they are mostly supported by corporations and wealthy individuals, probably get more than 95 percent of that money.

That’s a problem for workers, because that money can also be used to corrupt Democrats, most of whom have in the past relied largely on union financial support to run their campaigns.

Unions and their members simply can’t match the huge amounts of money now accessible from giant multinational corporations and rich people — such as the Koch brothers, who are hell bent on destroying the middle class.

Before Citizens United, the business community outspent unions by 12 to 1 in state and federal elections. The gap is expected to increase by 25 to 1 in 2012, and will eventually grow exponentially, possibly to 100 to 1.

What happens to Democratic candidates who are being outspent by that magnitude?

They lose.

Or they go to the other side and become Republicrats, which some of them — the so-called bluedogs — are already.

While Democrats, for the most part, have been passively supportive of labor’s issues, they have refused over the years to provide enough votes to pass legislation that would have been the most meaningful to working families.

Even when they controlled both houses of Congress, or the White House and both houses of Congress, they were unable to achieve passage of any major labor law revisions, which are necessary just to maintain current living standards of both union and nonunion workers The congressional defeats have always come when key Democrats voted against the best interests of working families.

In 1965, Democrats provided the decisive votes in the congressional defeat of Section 14B of the Taft-Hartley Law that allows states to pass anti-worker “right-to-work” laws. In 1976, Democrats helped defeat a situs picketing bill, which would have lowered barriers to union organizing.

During the Clinton administration, Senate Democrats were instrumental in defeating a bill that would have prohibited employers from employing strikebreakers. And in 2009, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have helped all workers, died in the Senate when key Democrats voted against the bill.

Labor never gets subsidies, tax loopholes, breaks and credits or earmarks, which Republicans, often aided and abetted by some Democrats, take for granted.

How attentive will Democrats be to the issues of working men and women if they are forced to accept more and more campaign funds from corporations just to stay even?

Supporters of Citizens United will then have achieved their goal. They will have co-opted and corrupted the Democratic Party and destroyed the middle class in the process.

It’s hard to imagine the capitalistic system surviving without a middle class—those millions of people buying goods and service on earnings of $35,000 to $75,000 a year.

I have an office in a building near I-70 and Harlan Street in northwest Denver, close to where a new family will soon be moving.

The new family’s building is under construction just southwest of my office. I don’t intend to rush over to welcome them to the neighborhood when they move in.

The Walmart family will be moving into the massive new big box building. I don’t like them, never have and never will. I’ve never set foot in a Walmart. They could sell television sets for a dollar, and I wouldn’t cross the street to buy one.

My new neighbor makes me wish there were such things as gated industrial areas. When it comes to Walmart, I am a NIMBY (Not in my Back Yard).

Walmart pays substandard wages. Average wage for so-called “associates” is $8.81 an hour, or about $15,500 a year for 34 hours of work each week, which is below the federal poverty line.

Moreover, the company doesn’t offer any substantial benefits, so employees rely on the federal and state governments for Medicaid, food stamps and cash assistance. Such assistance to Walmart workers is simply a government subsidy to a company that shortchanges its employees at the expense of the taxpayers.

Walmart employees are the most reliant of all private sector workers on welfare, according to studies done in California, Georgia and Massachusetts. And a recent Ohio survey indicates that public assistance to Walmart workers costs each taxpayer in that state an average of $943 a year.

It has been estimated that welfare to Walmart workers costs U.S. taxpayers more than $1 billion a year.

Between July 2005 and June 2011, Walmart settled an estimated 70 state and federal class action wage and hour lawsuits and lost one jury trial of a wage and hour case, involving more than a million current and former employees and costing the company over $1 billion. The lawsuits covered wage and hour violations that occurred between the late 1990s and 2010, including unpaid wages and lack of legally required breaks.

The company also has a long history of denying employees the right to organize and to engage in collective bargaining. The company is a master union buster, which uses numerous anti-union tactics, including requiring workers to attend anti-union meetings and specially training supervisors in union avoidance.

About five years ago I was riding my Harley-Davidson home to Denver from the famous annual ”Nut Run,” in Severance, Colorado, where bulls’ testicles are the menu of the day.

I was within four or five miles of an empty gasoline tank out on a country road in the boondocks. I told Chuck Connors, an old union pal who was riding alongside of me, to forge ahead to see if he could find any place to get gasoline. He was soon back and said there were gas pumps about two miles ahead.

They were at a big box Walmart.

No way, I told Chuck. I’ll walk the bike back to Denver.

I was lucky. A couple of miles past Walmart I cruised on fumes into a station and filled up.

That’s what I think of Walmart.

Geez, I hope I don’t see any of my friends or acquaintances walking into my new neighbor’s store.

They brought their dog and pony show to the Colorado Capitol in February but it wasn’t much of a hit at the box office.

Members of the right to work gang came to the statehouse with briefcases filled with the same kind of misinformation they have presented to legislators almost every year since 1988. They had expected their suited presence to draw a sharp contrast with the appearance of the union “thugs” who would be opposing Senate Bill 100, AKA right to work (for less).

No such luck.

This time, the gang’s opponents—Colorado unions–didn’t even offer a response. As Senator Lois Tochtrop, chairman of the Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee, pointed out, the right-to-work (for less) issue was decisively defeated at the polls in 2008, and nothing has appeared to change since then.

The right to work supporters knew they had no chance of passing their bill, which was sponsored by Sen. Tom Neville (R-Littleton). They were seeking to produce some good theater for the press and some grist for their base’s mill. But they failed miserably. The committee voted against the bill 4 to 2.

After the hearing, Phil Hayes, lobbyist for the Colorado AFL-CIO, pointed out that the union busters couldn’t even draw a crowd at the hearing. Many business groups such as the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry (CACI), the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and others, Hayes noted, “chose to responsibly honor the will of Colorado voters who defeated Amendment 47 in 2008 by not supporting the bill.

The few supporters who were there included Jeff Crank of Colorado Springs, who represented Americans for Prosperity, a front group for the notorious billionaire Koch brothers, who have given massive amounts of money to Governor Scott Walker’s war on workers in Wisconsin. Attending from Washington, D.C., was Greg W. Mourad, a vice president of the National Right to Work Committee, which is also supported by the Koch brothers.

If the National Right to Work Committee believes it must tell Coloradans how to run their state, it could at least have sent Anne Coulter, who is an officer on the committee’s executive board. The Dragon of the Right would certainly generate more interest than did Mourad with his phony statistics.

Locally, lobbyists for the Associated Builders and Contractors and the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), spoke in favor of the bill. Although the NFIB is a consistent supporter of right to work laws, which depress wages of all workers–union and nonunion–the federation has few unionized employer members. NFIB’s only goal in supporting right to work (for less) is to eliminate the higher wage standards set by the unions for all workers. Ditto for the builders and contractors.

Senator Shawn Mitchell, a veteran conservative Republican on the committee, questioned the tactics of the unions in not testifying on the bill. He said the democratic process suffered because they didn’t join the debate.

That argument is an example of the well-known Shawn Mitchell hogwash. Indeed, a better example of true democracy was the overwhelming vote against right to work by the electorate in 2008, which Mitchell and his pals were trying to undo.

The hearing was a waste of taxpayers’ money, pure and simple. But at least it died a quick and humane death, thanks to committee Chair Tochtrop and the other Democrats on the panel—Cheri Jahn, Irene Aguilar and Suzanne Williams.

Colorado’s union leaders should be prepared f0r a barrage of anti-worker legislation to be introduced in the 2012 session of the state legislature, which begins on January 11.

After all, 2012 is an election year and that is prime time for posturing by both Democrats and Republicans. With a divided legislature in Colorado it is doubtful that legislation seriously offensive to either party’s base will be passed.

But one has to be careful.

Lawmakers from both parties will be introducing all sorts of goofy proposals to prove to their bases they are doing something for the cause — and the campaign contributions.

And in election years, strange things sometimes happen. Some Democrats in swing districts might decide it’s in their best interest to vote like Republicans. Less likely, but possible nonetheless, a few Republicans might vote with Democrats.

An indication of what might face Colorado workers in the 2012 legislature came late in the 2011 session when 26 House Republicans enlisted in the war against workers by introducing a proposal that would have prohibited collective bargaining by state employees, even though Colorado State employees don’t have collective bargaining rights.

They didn’t care; they wanted to send a message to state workers, the same message that Governors Scott Walker in Wisconsin and John Kasich in Ohio tried to send to workers in their states last year: We don’t care about workers’ rights; we’re out to gut their wages, hours and working conditions.

Of course, Walker and Kasich so far have paid a steep price for putting some kick back into a lethargic labor movement.

In Wisconsin, two Republican senators were successfully recalled resulting in a deadlocked state senate, and the governor is fighting his own political life in a recall effort which will soon qualify for the ballot. In Ohio, Kasich’s union-busting law was repealed overwhelmingly by a vote of the people.

But the fight for workers’ rights is not over.

In Indiana, labor expects that a so-called “right-to-work” proposal, which lowers workers’ wages and benefits, will be introduced in the 2012 legislature. Because both houses of the legislature are controlled by anti-worker lawmakers, union leaders are concerned it will pass and be signed by Governor Mitch Daniels.

So the fight isn’t over.

It will continue right on in the New Year and beyond. The union busters never tire of waging war against workers. They want to make it illegal for workers to belong to a union. Their goal is a Third World workforce for the nation.

Fortunately, though, working men and women in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states that were under siege last year mobilized and fought back. Through their hard work, solidarity and spirit of unionism, they have provided a textbook on getting the job done for the rank-and-file in other states.