McCain has a long history of working against workers. He has worked with large corporations and the right wing to weaken and destroy organized labor by supporting right to work (for less) laws, he has attempted to limit overtime for workers by radically overhauling the Fair Labor Standards Act and he has blocked a Senate vote on the Employee Free Choice Act which would restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions without employer harassment.
McCain has waged a 25-year attack to destroy prevailing wages by attempting to completely waive or repeal the Davis-Bacon Act which requires that workers on federally-funded construction projects be paid no less than the wages and benefits paid in the community for similar work. He has also blocked votes on “Strikers’ Rights” legislation which allows SCABs to undermine striking workers by permanently replacing them while the workers are on the picket line fighting for wages, benefits and working conditions.
McCain failed to vote on legislation extending unemployment benefits to hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers whose lives are being brutalized in this economic crisis created by the Bush administration. McCain, who claims to be an independent thinker, has actually supported the Bush policies and positions 89% of the time including making Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy permanent and attempting to privatize social security.
McCain has made no effort to stop the outsourcing of jobs as corporations abandon the sinking US economic ship in their unending quest for profits in other countries where they exploit the people and steal their resources. The fact that US workers are being downsized to the point of non-existence is scarcely relevant to the wealthy ruling class as represented by McCain.
Working class families struggle to make ends meet as fuel, health care, food, housing and education costs soar out of control. Yet McCain seems indifferent to the economic crisis and its devastating effects on the lives of millions of people.
McCain is a strong advocate for continuation of the Bush agenda of perpetual war for perpetual profits. Under McCain the working class would continue to pay for military misadventures of The Empire with the lives of their sons and daughters. Their tax monies would continue to be sucked up by the military/mercenary/corporate war mongers while elimination of social services, environmental destruction and infrastructure deterioration would continue. McCain would continue to placate the underclass by appealing to their patriotism while the wealthy corporate elites laugh all the way to the bank. A working class vote for McCain is the equivalent of a slave asking to be caned.
Life for the working class and the unemployed would not improve in a McCain administration. The policy of domination at home and abroad through force and economic strangulation would essentially replicate that of the Bush administration.
Sue Bastian, Bend
This article appears in Sep 11-17, 2008.
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Spare me your crocodile tears, Sue. Do you belong to a union? Have you ever belonged to a union? Have you ever been forced to join a union against your will as a condition of being hired? Or are you an left wing elitist who is so brilliant and therefore “knows what is good for the folks?” Do you think it’s in the best long term interest of a company to have union thugs deciding who the company can hire or fire, who stays who is let go? Was it the union who provided the impetus, the intelligence, the capital to construct an enterprise that creates jobs? The enterprise creates the jobs… is it in the best interests of a given company to have it’s employees controlled by union thugs? Logic would dictate if conditions do not increase jobs, then conditions are generally adverse for workers.
Unions artificially level a playing field that is not fundamentally level in it’s natural state. Water seeks it’s own level. The work force seeks it’s own level through individual competence. Why should some moron, who is barely able to do a particular job, keep his job over someone who is bright, attentive, hard working and makes the extra effort, because of “seniority?” Is that good for the company? Is it good for the worker who has more to offer the company? The answer is a big fat resounding no. If it is not good for all concerned, save the moron, then it is clearly not good for workers in general.
Left wing elitists like yourself promote the redistribution of wealth in this manner by promoting the redistribution of stupidity. Unions lower the overall possibilities for everyone. Unions promote the “dumbing down” of the work force. That is why they are disappearing and should disappear.
Take it from someone who is a long time blue collar worker, and has been forced to join unions, McCain is on the right side of this issue and you are a Bastian of elitist partisan ignorance.
Unions generally protect the least productive, the incompetent and drag the quality of the whole workforce down.