I can’t believe the Republicans.  They just lost an election and I guess they think that since they still control the House and the Governorship of a few key states, they can try to take away what some people gave their lives for.  Yes, gave their lives for.

Anyone who has ever read Steinbeck’s  Grapes of Wrath, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, and Nickle and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich will know the horrors of what it’s like to be a working man or woman.

My dad told me stories of how tough it was forming a union at the port in San Francisco where he worked for a time before working at the Port of Stockton.  (It was the ILWU – International Longshoremen and Warehouseman’s Union.) They used the police and thugs to enforce the laws against union organizers.  Of course police are now unionized so I guess they’ll just hire thugs.   And yes, men died and were severely injured.  My dad said that they were attacked with 2 x 4’s with nails in them.  The thugs hid behind pallets of boxes.   Now the Republicans want them to fight the battles all over again.  And when the Taft Hartley Act was passed. (I think that was it.)  Unions had the right to organize.  Harry Bridges was president of the ILWU and the conservatives labeled him a Communist, much like they did to President Obama.

I was watching Hardball with Chris Mathews and he was all upset because a union member attacked a guy from Fox News.  This is just the beginning and I can tell it will be the union organizers in the end who will be attacked and not the other way around.

The problem is that so many Americans take the fairly good wages, which haven’t gone up or kept up with inflation for years, for granted.   The reason non-union Fed Ex employees get paid good wages is because UPS is unionized.  Otherwise, they’d both be getting slave wages of around $10 an hour.  So the non-union people better wake up.

My hope is that the battle that will follow will finally get American working men and women to wake up and realize they will have nothing without the power of unions, which is being depleted daily by the Republicans. Does anyone think the Rs would be going after unions if they didn’t think they are a threat to their power and greed?

I love how the conservatives love to call what they are giving workers The Right to Work.  It is the right to work alright.  The right to work for lower wages and poor working conditions with the inability to fight to get them.

Enough said.