From Reagan To Boehner, The GOP Holds FAA Hostage
ProudProgressive
2011/08/04 01:46:38
History has a way of repeating itself. Thirty years ago, Ronald Reagan began the Right Wing assault on working Americans in order to destroy the American middle class by attacking the nation's air traffic controllers, ruining the careers of 13,000 hard working Americans whose only "crime" was seeking safer working conditions. Today the Right Wing continues Reagan's "legacy" by holding the FAA hostage in another attempt to break a union made up of hard working Americans, delaying vital infrastructure projects, putting over 64,000 Americans out of work, and weakening the entire American civil air transportation system. So much for John Boehner's promise that "jobs are our top priority". Who knew he meant "destroying jobs is our top priority".
Article excerpt follows:
30 Years After Reagan Busted The Air Traffic Controllers Union, GOP Holds FAA Hostage Over Anti-Union Demands
By Travis Waldron on Aug 3, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Thirty years ago today, President Ronald Reagan threatened to fire almost 13,000 air traffic controllers unless they called off their strike and returned to work. He then followed through on his threat, firing most of the workers — represented by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (Patco) — and banning them from the federal workforce for life. Today's GOP is celebrating by holding another group of airline industry workers hostage over the party's radical anti-union stance.
Republican demands that a measure making it harder for workers to unionize be attached to the re-authorization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has led to the agency's shutdown, costing the government more than $200 million a week, leaving 4,000 FAA employees and 70,000 construction workers out of work, and forcing airline inspectors to work without pay. And because Congress is now in recess until September, the shutdown is almost assured to last at least another month.
The FAA shutdown is the latest GOP effort to weaken unions at the federal and state level. And while Reagan broke Patco, a move that had many damaging and long-lasting effects on the American labor movement, today's Republicans are going much further, according to Joseph A. McCartin's editorial in today's New York Times:
Over time the rightward-shifting Republican Party has come to view Reagan's mass firings not as a focused effort to stop one union from breaking the law — as Reagan portrayed it — but rather as a blow against public sector unionism itself.
As McCartin points out, Reagan did not oppose public or private workers' right to organize or collectively bargain, only the ability of public workers to strike. Reagan himself was a former union leader and led the 1960 strike of the Screen Actors' Guild.
The GOP's attempts to further weaken the labor movement, meanwhile, come at a time when union membership continues to shrink, thanks in large part to Reagan's 1981 effort and Republican policies of the last 30 years. And the moves come at a time when American workers could benefit the most from robust unions.
Union members make more than comparable non-union workers, and a recent study tied declining union participation to rising levels of income inequality. Other studies show that returning to 1980 union membership levels would add more than $1,500 to the income of the average middle-class American worker.
Republicans still insist that they care about workers and ending America's job crisis. Unfortunately, by standing up for airline companies and against the 74,000 people they have put out of work, their actions continue to tell a different story.
Article excerpt follows:
30 Years After Reagan Busted The Air Traffic Controllers Union, GOP Holds FAA Hostage Over Anti-Union Demands
By Travis Waldron on Aug 3, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Thirty years ago today, President Ronald Reagan threatened to fire almost 13,000 air traffic controllers unless they called off their strike and returned to work. He then followed through on his threat, firing most of the workers — represented by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (Patco) — and banning them from the federal workforce for life. Today's GOP is celebrating by holding another group of airline industry workers hostage over the party's radical anti-union stance.
Republican demands that a measure making it harder for workers to unionize be attached to the re-authorization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has led to the agency's shutdown, costing the government more than $200 million a week, leaving 4,000 FAA employees and 70,000 construction workers out of work, and forcing airline inspectors to work without pay. And because Congress is now in recess until September, the shutdown is almost assured to last at least another month.
The FAA shutdown is the latest GOP effort to weaken unions at the federal and state level. And while Reagan broke Patco, a move that had many damaging and long-lasting effects on the American labor movement, today's Republicans are going much further, according to Joseph A. McCartin's editorial in today's New York Times:
Over time the rightward-shifting Republican Party has come to view Reagan's mass firings not as a focused effort to stop one union from breaking the law — as Reagan portrayed it — but rather as a blow against public sector unionism itself.
As McCartin points out, Reagan did not oppose public or private workers' right to organize or collectively bargain, only the ability of public workers to strike. Reagan himself was a former union leader and led the 1960 strike of the Screen Actors' Guild.
The GOP's attempts to further weaken the labor movement, meanwhile, come at a time when union membership continues to shrink, thanks in large part to Reagan's 1981 effort and Republican policies of the last 30 years. And the moves come at a time when American workers could benefit the most from robust unions.
Union members make more than comparable non-union workers, and a recent study tied declining union participation to rising levels of income inequality. Other studies show that returning to 1980 union membership levels would add more than $1,500 to the income of the average middle-class American worker.
Republicans still insist that they care about workers and ending America's job crisis. Unfortunately, by standing up for airline companies and against the 74,000 people they have put out of work, their actions continue to tell a different story.
Read More: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/03/286573...
Because there were no 'shovel ready' jobs of any consequence. Just another TRILLION BUCKS down the black hole of Democrat lies.
Second, as a former UAW member for 18 years, I have seen the corruption, the back room deals, the thuggery, and have see companies GO OUT OF BUSINESS for unreasonable demands. My own company for those 18 years was put OUT OF BUSINESS by the UAW because they did NOT follow the contract and let NON UNION companies take OUR JOBS. There is NOTHING the Unions care about, but to gather the union dues to do their Marxist bidding.
My own local was given up by the UAW to save Walter Reuther's bankrupt local. Now that is loyalty personified.
DON'T ANYONE TELL ME THE UNIONS OF TODAY ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE. THEY CRUSH US JUST LIKE THE LIBERALS IN WASHINGTON TODAY.
By the way, it was the Republicans that passed a bill to keep the FFA running. The Democrats are the culprit here. But the facts NEVER get in the way of a liberal diatribe of lies and denials.