Employee Free Choice Act: Workers need a revitalized labor movement-Charleston gazette

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.wvgazette.com/section/Opinion/200703128

March 13, 2007

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John David
Employee Free Choice Act: Workers need a revitalized labor movement


There has been considerable outcry about economic apartheid in the United States. Corporate profits and CEO compensation have climbed to record highs — accompanied by rising poverty rates, 46 million Americans without health insurance, loss of pensions for an increasing number of workers, and deteriorating workplace safety standards, including more deaths in the mines.

According to the Center for Economic Policy Research, the federal minimum wage, in current dollars, is at its lowest level in 50 years. This is a major problem here in our state. The Gazette noted: “If you work in West Virginia, you’re more likely to bring home minimum wage — or less — than any other state except Oklahoma, which is tied for first.”

Furthermore, employers are squeezing even harder. Wal-Mart, according to The Wall Street Journal, is moving “1.3 million workers from predictable shifts to a system based on the number of customers in store at a given time.” In this manner, hourly low-wage workers will become subject to having their time turned on or off like water from a spigot.

This turn of events has not only shattered the national social contract, it has also seriously eroded the democratic voting process. Disengagement and disenchantment have reduced voter participation to the lowest level of any industrial nation in the world. The result has been growing control over both economic and political life by fewer and fewer people, primarily those who are affluent and privileged.

Abraham Lincoln once stated that a nation cannot endure half free and half slave. Similarly, the nation cannot survive when its people are free politically but enslaved economically.

FULL 2 page article at link.