A Message from Business Manager Chris Erikson
You can’t say that it wasn’t predicted. With majorities in both houses of Congress and a President who would like nothing less than to weaken and destroy the Labor Movement, how could working men and women – union members – vote for this? Harry Van Arsdale Jr. on his deathbed 39 years ago stated, “The Labor Movement will be stronger 100 years from now, but unfortunately, they will have to lose everything before they realize they have to fight to win it all back.”
It took a long time for unions to make the gains that brought millions of working-class Americans into the middle class. The passing of the National Labor Relations Act, the right for workers to organize, to have unions, the right to collective bargaining – all of this built the middle class in America. We have been under attack for a long time. Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers in the 1980s and permanently replacing workers for going on strike was the signal to corporations that their objective of a union-free environment was ok.
You see, the trade union movement was and is the only organized group that has kept the wealthy and the corporations from having it all, and that is the main reason why we have been in their crosshairs ever since.
Just think of the plight of workers before the laws were passed to protect us and which helped raise our standards. Peasant wages, no safety, no pensions, child labor, violence against workers striking for better conditions. Think of the sacrifices those who built the Labor Movement made and the fights and attacks they endured. Robber baron, financier, and railroad magnate Jay Gould once proclaimed that he could “hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
The National Right to Work Act will destroy the Labor Movement and all that we have accomplished. WTFU, Local 3! Look closely at all the co-sponsors of this bill bought and paid for by corporate America and the billionaires led by Elon Musk and Donald Trump. The America we knew is going down the toilet, and the whole world knows it.
