Fair to workers, so why cry “foul”?

The Feb. 28 issue of Mountain Xpress contained a piece by Hal Millard entitled “Business Chafes at Shuler’s Pro-Union Stance.” It is no wonder that business leaders are unhappy about Rep. [Heath] Shuler’s support of the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800), the intent of which is to make union organizing more fair for workers.

For a working-class person in the South, compared to the rest of the United States, wages are lower, benefits are slim or non-existent, working conditions are more dangerous and state labor laws are the weakest. The reason for this is because large corporations (beginning with the textile mills in the early 1900s) have been able to fight labor unions through force (for example, Marion and Gastonia massacres in 1929 and the breaking of the textile general strike in 1934 throughout the South). These local corporate owners were also able to get their state legislators to pass anti-union legislation and to prevent labor laws, which would protect workers, from being passed.

“Labor law was intended from the outset to encourage working people to come together and bargain collectively for better wages and benefits than they would be able to get on their own. But in the past few decades, labor law has been so twisted by corporations and their union-busting hired guns that it is now virtually impossible to form a union against an employer’s wishes. The choice that should belong to employees now belongs to employers. Corporations routinely fire, intimidate, harass and coerce workers during organizing campaigns, and labor law is helpless to stop them. The current process is rigged from the outset by the side that holds the power of the paycheck.” (John Sweeney, president, AFL-CIO)

It is a vast change to now have someone representing the 11th Congressional District who is on the side of working people and who understands what it means to work for a living.

For those who have been critical of Shuler for having support from labor unions during his campaign and for his taking a stand with working people in his support for H.R. 800, one has to wonder what the objection is? Is it because union workers earn on average 30 percent more than non-union workers? Is it because union workers are 63 percent more likely to have employer-provided benefits? Or would it be because union workers are four times more likely to have a guaranteed pension? Is it because union workers have safer working conditions? Or maybe it is because union workers are treated with more respect on the job? For generations, union workers have been the backbone of the middle class.