You could pick a multitude of examples showing the forces on each side of the fast track fight. It’s the voices of workers against the voice of corporations (aided by 28 Democrats who need to face primaries).
Indeed, here is a quote that says it all: the fast track vote is “a victory for those with a narrow agenda that puts petty politics ahead of people, while jeopardizing the futures of millions of men and women in America.”
Oh, the source of that quote, the organization looking out for millions of workers?
It’s not the AFL-CIO.
It’s the National Retail Federation, one of the most anti-union trade organizations in the nation. There, that’s one of your allies, Mr. President.
The quote is here from David French, senior vice president for the National Retail Federation.
Want to know a little about the organization?
In the past few years, the National Labor Relations Board has taken a series of controversial moves that would make it easier for organized labor to unionize workers in the retail industry and other businesses, and overturn decades of well-established federal labor law. Among these actions is a decision to allow “ambush” union organizing elections to be held in as little as two weeks after a union seeks a vote rather than the current average of about five weeks for most elections.
What these cavemen see as “ambush” elections–that’s pretty funny–is an effort to try to have timely elections in the workplace so that the company doesn’t threaten and fire workers who try to unionize and drag out a process over months and years, which is one of the central reasons workers don’t get a chance to form a union.And:
NRF chairs the lobbying committee of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which was formed to block the Employee Free Choice Act. The coalition brought a lawsuit in 2012 arguing that the ambush election regulations adopted by the NLRB were unconstitutional and went beyond the board’s authority under the National Labor Relations Act. A federal judge overturned the regulations on technical grounds, but the NLRB re-issued the regulations in December 2014. NRF called the move “the latest attempt by the Obama Administration to aid their allies in Big Labor at the expense of employers and employees” and joined CDW and other business groups in filing a lawsuit challenging the regulations in U.S. District Court in Washington. The lawsuit remains pending, but the regulations took effect in April despite legislation passed by Congress to overturn them that was vetoed by President Obama.[emphasis added]
Ah, yes, Mr. President, your allies are the very people who hate “Big Labor” and worked to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, which was a pretty modest effort at ending the war against workers trying to organize.More? These are the same people who oppose any hike in the minimum wage, even the quite small hike to $10.10-an-hour.
This is the organization that churns out bogus study after bogus study about the effect of a minimum wage rise, even as the evidence is overwhelming that a hike in the minimum wage is a positive thing–maybe not for the greedy NRF members but certainly for the nation and the economy. Hikes in the minimum wage have almost no negative impact on employment, we could actually afford a hike in the federal minimum wage to $12-an-hour, and states with a higher minimum wage have faster job creation.
There you go, Mr. President. You preach the fight against inequality–along with the Chipotle-eating, van-driving candidate for president–but you make common cause with the most anti-union, anti-worker organizations which promote inequality.
It’s pretty clear what side you end up on.
Keep shoveling the dung arguments. Don’t tell me it’s raining when you’re pissing on millions of working Americans.
