Link: http://century-club.com/blog3.php/2009/05/14/heating-up-the-battle-seiu

Click here to sign on in support of worker rights!

If you listen closely and pay particular attention to the rhetoric coming out of the corporate-led media and Congress, you'll notice that a blind defiance is building as the debates continue on the economic future of our nation. The "blindness" comes mostly from the extreme right of the Republican party and the hardliner Reaganites who still cling to the failed "trickle-down" freemarket theories of the 1980s. But the Republicans are not the only ones in the pockets of Big Corp. Many of our Democratic leaders are also blinded by the color of money, as many believe can be clearly seen in the recent healthcare roundtables held by Senators Max Baucus(D-MT) and Chuck Grassley(R-IA), where Senator Baucus claims to have the "people's" ear while medical professionals are arrested at the proceedings for protesting the lack of single-payer healthcare advocates. I have yet to hear of a poll taken that does not show a majority of Americans in favor of a public single-payer system. Additionally, polls show most doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals also favor single-payer. Including the conservative members of the American Medical Association. So how can Senators Baucus and Grassley, among too many others, believe the contradictions they follow? In their minds, trickle-down economics was not at all a failure. Never was. They believe in a kind of social Darwinism that says workers have no rights that are not given by the corporation, that we workers are devoid of the intellectual faculties that are otherwise necessary for the kind of wealth they enjoy, and the government needs to stay out of the way. It's Feudalism. It's corporate Fascism. And what they gain from the polarization they create is exactly what they want. To keep the population at odds with their own best interests, while they meanwhile rob us of more of our own future wealth and opportunity. And most importantly, our dignity.

A major aspect of the healthcare debate centers on the insurance industry's economic stake, and the current business-based delivery system. One of the fears that the opposition uses to delude us is to make us believe that our insurance is somehow inextricably tied to our jobs, and in order to keep us adequately covered, we must sacrifice in other areas of our employment. With 50 years of steady globalization and the growth of the multinational corporations has come an ever growing income disparity in America and around the world. A disparity larger than any since just before the Great Depression. Labor organizing fought an uphill battle for the next 30 years to bring us Minimum Wage, Overtime, holiday pay, Unemployment Insurance and work safety standards, among other rights and benefits. Then in the mid sixties, the corporations began to mount an ever-increasing public campaign of deception, jobs off-shoring, strategic bankruptcies, mergers, splits and whatever they could do to reverse those gains and break up the unions for good. They have come very close to succeeding.

Along with the healthcare debate, the Employee Free Choice Act is also quietly being readied for public debate and congressional consideration. It will be as hard, if not harder of a fight.

SEIU has made another clever and humorous video below to help us fight back against the Big Brother Corporation for our worker rights. Take a look at it and please sign the petition HERE.

Excerpt from the SEIU Action:

For decades, America’s CEOs ran the show, leaving the American people to fend for themselves.

The damage done to the American economy was a direct result of this era of CEO excess. To get back on track, we need to change the way that we do business.

The Employee Free Choice Act is a common sense economic recovery for working families that will pump billions into our nation’s economy. By empowering workers to form unions, we can better negotiate safer working conditions, honest wages, and better healthcare.

Click here to sign on!

Some good reading on the subject from Amazon.com