Worker rights bill deserves debate, vote

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090206/OPINION03/902060330/1008

Friday, February 6, 2009
Ron Gettelfinger: Labor Voices

February marks Black History Month -- and few chapters in our nation's history are more compelling than the moral crisis of the 1950s and 1960s, when civil rights activists forced us to confront a terrible reality: People of color were systematically denied basic rights of citizenship.

Blacks who stood up to claim their rights faced vicious harassment. In the light of day, white employers would fire blacks who attempted to register to vote; in the dark of night, cowardly terrorists would attack them.

No democratic nation can tolerate such outrages. But time and again civil rights measures were passed by a majority in the U.S. House and supported by a majority in the U.S. Senate -- only to be defeated by a filibuster used by a minority of senators.

Fortunately, popular pressure broke the filibuster, and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

The effort to stop social progress was led by Dixiecrats -- Southern Democrats who stood for the privileged elite against the will of a majority of the American people. Today, their spiritual heirs have changed political parties, but they still reward the fortunate few who hold wealth and power and trample the needs of everyone else.

In December, a group of Republican senators used a filibuster to block legislation authorizing bridge loans for the U.S. auto industry, despite majority support from both houses of Congress. They were unwilling to give a penny to American companies and workers without imposing conditions that would effectively legislate our union out of existence.

FULL story at link.