REPORT: Five Things Unions Have Done For All Americans
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on March 6th, 2011 5:34 am by HL
REPORT: Five Things Unions Have Done For All Americans
Over the past few weeks, right-wing legislators have unleashed a torrent of radical legislation upon the American electorate designed to gut collective bargaining rights and attack the middle class. As these conservatives have launched their assault, a Main Street Movement consisting of ordinary Americans fed up with living in such an unequal country has fought back.
Conservatives have sought to malign this movement by claiming that it is simply defending the parochial interests of labor unions, who they claim are imposing huge costs on taxpayers with little benefit. Yet the truth is that America’s public and private unions have been one of the major forces in building a robust and vibrant middle class and have fought over the past century to improve the lives of all Americans in a variety of ways. ThinkProgress has assembled just five of the many things that Americans can thank the nation’s unions for giving us all:
1. Unions Gave Us The Weekend: Even the ultra-conservative Mises Institute notes that the relatively labor-free 1870, the average workweek for most Americans was 61 hours — almost double what most Americans work now. Yet in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, labor unions engaged in massive strikes in order to demand shorter workweeks so that Americans could be home with their loved ones instead of constantly toiling for their employers with no leisure time. By 1937, these labor actions created enough political momentum to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped create a federal framework for a shorter workweek that included room for leisure time.
2. Unions Gave Us Fair Wages And Relative Income Equality: As ThinkProgress reported earlier in the week, the relative decline of unions over the past 35 years has mirrored a decline in the middle class’s share of national income. It is also true that at the time when most Americans belonged to a union — a period of time between the 1940′s and 1950′s — income inequality in the U.S. was at its lowest point in the history of the country.
3. Unions Helped End Child Labor: “Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined” in U.S. history, with organization’s like the “National Consumers’ League” and the National Child Labor Committee” working together in the early 20th century to ban child labor. The very first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national convention passed “a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment” in 1881, and soon after states across the country adopted similar recommendations, leading up to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act which regulated child labor on the federal level for the first time.
4. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage: “The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers. In 1942, “the US set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering “fringe benefits” – notably, health insurance.” By 1950, “half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another.”
5. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.”
In 2007, Australia’s Manic Studios produced a short film titled, “What Have Unions Ever Done For Us?” which satirically portrays a handful of employers asking that question and realizing that unions have actually done a lot for the average person in their country. Although the film deal’s with Australia’s unions and not the United States, many of the rights mentioned by the mock executives — like workers’ compensation and expanded health care — are exactly the same. Watch it:
Conservative Conference Warns Of Hidden Islamic Danger In ?Race To The Top? Funding
A new memo that has been making the rounds in conservative circles is a dire warning about an onslaught of Islamic “Gulen schools,” a growing international network of charter schools begun in Turkey that offer “a blend of religious faith and largely Western curriculum.”
At the Educational Policy Conference, a large gathering of social conservatives in St. Louis in January, prominent neoconservative and anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, and former Colorado State Board of Education member Peggy Littleton sounded the alarm on the “creeping threat” of Gulen schools hidden in President Obama’s landmark education initiative, the Race to the Top program, which encourages innovation in education, including charter schools. Littleton, who currently serves as an El Paso County Commissioner, told conference-goers that “the only reason [Obama is] pushing more charter schools” through Race to the Top is “because of these Gulen schools.”
ThinkProgress caught up with Littleton after her speech. She told us that the Obama administration “intentionally had already thought through how they could have a proliferation and a sneaking creep, if you will, of Gulen schools by embedding their acceptance and even promotion of charter schools under this new wonderful thing of Race to the Top.” She warned that these schools were teaching our children to “hate Americans.” Watch it:
Not to be outdone, Gaffney told the audience that, along with the federal government and CPAC, Gulen schools were “another example of this Muslim Brotherhood kind of operation, stealth jihad.” Completing Fox News host Glenn Beck’s “worldwide Muslim caliphate theory,” Gaffney also declared that Fethullah Gulen, the namesake of Gulen schools, “is a fellow who I think envisions himself being the next Caliph.” He finished by calling Gulen schools “an insidious, seditious program” and called on conference-goers to spread the word to friends and elected officials. Watch it:
Full transcript, after the jump
First video:
LITTLETON: If you’ve done any research on Gulen schools, you need to get on the Internet and do some. Because I believe – and this is just my own personal opinion without any factual data to back it up – one of the only reasons the Obama administration is willing to stand in the face of teacher’s unions, who supported his campaign with large numbers by the way. The only reason he’s pushing more charter schools, even in the face of teachers unions, is by making states adopt charter school rules that are open and who are applying for Race to the Top funds, I think that he’s doing that because of these Gulen schools. The Gulen schools are the Muslim schools in our country. I’m showing you how many of them are already operating, you can see there’s 107 of them. Twelve of them are opening in 2010, nine are pending, 22 were declined. There are over 150 schools in the United States that are already out there that are telling the kids of the United States of America, “hate Americans and the whole rest of the…” and you’ll hear more about that tomorrow, I’m excited you’re going to get to see that.
KEYES: Do you think the administration anticipated the rise in Gulen schools as a result of Race to the Top education money?
LITTLETON: I don’t think they tied it to the money in any way, shape or form. But I do think they intentionally – and again, this is my own opinion – but I think they probably intentionally had already thought through how they could have a proliferation and a sneaking creep, if you will, of Gulen schools by embedding their acceptance and even promotion of charter schools under this new wonderful thing of Race to the Top and “let’s fund the schools this way.” Even though there’s not really the direct funding source, I think it was the intention to promote charter schools.
KEYES: Couched in very flowery language.
LITTLETON: Absolutely.
KEYES: Why do you suppose they want to do that?
LITTLETON: Well, there’s going to be speculation, by everyone that’s out there. You yourself I’m sure have done the research, you’ve seen and heard some of the things our own president has said about the Muslims. You’ve heard that he thinks we ought to be friendly to some of their causes, that we should be tolerant in promoting some of the Muslims that are scientists and technology people. I think we need to go back and research what our president has said and by his own words and admissions, I think you can probably make the connection.
Second video:
GAFFNEY: As to this question about a Turk by the name of Gulen, this is one of those little-known stories that I’m thrilled that you’ve mentioned because it is another example of this Muslim Brotherhood kind of operation, stealth jihad. This is a fellow who I think envisions himself being the next Caliph. He is enormously influential in his native Turkey, where he has helped instigate, essentially, an Islamist takeover of the country with a wholesale repudiation and replacement of Ataturk’s secular form of government with one that is through-and-through Islamist. And that’s now increasingly making common cause with Iran, with Syria, with Hezbollah, with Hamas, which is very clearly hostile to Israel, which Turkey was until recently strategic partners with. In short, it is headed in a very dangerous direction indeed, Turkey is. This guy, Gulen, has been extending his influence by building large numbers of these schools all over the world. And the really extraordinary thing is he’s doing so from a safe haven in Rick Santorum’s great state of Pennsylvania. For a time his operation was considered a terrorist group, until inexplicably the Clinton administration decided it wasn’t anymore. And so he is churning out an insidious, seditious program from within the territory of the United States. And I would venture there isn’t one member of Congress today who has ever heard of his name, let alone understands what he is up to. We’re anxious to try to spread this word, and to those of you who are in contact with one of your five folks you are reaching out to happens to be your elected representative at the federal level or for that matter the state level, we can help educate and equip with this kind of information, we’re anxious to do it.
When it comes to hatching conspiracy theories, conservatives and Islamophobia are a match made in heaven. In the wake of Egypt’s peaceful democratic revolution, Fox News host Glenn Beck warned his viewers that former President Mubarak’s ouster portended an impending worldwide Muslim caliphate, a prediction that earned Beck the ire of even the likes of Bill Kristol. Leading neoconservative Frank Gaffney is also a regular propagator of fanciful theories of Islam, from Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the Conservative Political Action Conference to Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the United States government.
