As a longtime member of sublocal AFL CIO National Writers Union, as we say in Indiana, ‘Hell yes! Hail Mary! Push em back, push em back, wayyyyy back.’
Solidarity mis amigos. Siempre.
“Right to work” in this sense as proposed in Michigan, means right to kill the middle class. Again.
Here is the story of the Italian Hall massacre I wrote two years ago remembering the true meaning of “labor day in the US” which is really “the day of the martyrs” … especially remembering the martyrs amongst the working men and women of the United States of America in the mines, sweat shops, construction, railroad companies.
Labor Day was meant in part to remember that the workers are the life’s blood of a thriving civilization and ought be treated with the same decency, respect, regard for safety and wages, a mogul expects for those in his own family. Unions have been the only direct way to force the issues of decency in all respects when a mogul uses workers as chattel in ways he or she would never use his or her own family.
This is the story of the massacre at Italian Hall in the state of MICHIGAN, 99 years ago this month during the Christmas Holiday, when Slovenian, Croatian, Finish and Italians and other immigrant groups were gathered for a humble celebration of birth of the God of love, little Jesu Cristo.
There are more than a few protesting so-called ‘right to work’ law in Michigan right now. [Repubs love to name things what they are not… there is no right for workers and no worker’s interest in ‘right to work’ law as it is proposed in Michigan. It is in my opinion another “Mr. Withers from the game of Monopoly” legislative Christmas gift wish to knee-cap the workers, while the moguls wear their vicuna overcoats and their foolish fur hats atilt.
Repub. lawmakers support this ‘right to work’– which is actually ‘no rights for the worker’ and possibly ‘no work either’ because such legislation historically gives preferential treatment under RTW laws to –huge corporations…. damn the little guy in comparison, who cares.
The lawmakers may have forgotten that in Michigan are descendants of those union men and their families who were murdered ninety-nine years ago this yuletide. Fifty-nine children. Children. And fourteen adults, many dying from trying to protect their very young children.
Memory is a funny thing when it’s about slaughter of your own. It can call you to rise up for generations afterward, along with all your progeny and all your ancestors– even in the coldest time of year in order to combat those who have the coldest of hearts and minds of the eons.
My family people who were in the trade unions and on the factory lines taught me this: I hold to it and wish it onto others of good heart: “Negotiation in good faith, but Righteousness without retreat.”
May it be so.