Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
I am always apolegizing to the entire enlightened world for Mitch McConnell. This time I must do it because Mitch McConnell definately does not know the meaning of the word “enlightened”. In a ridiculous argument against the Employee Free Choice Act McConnell once again proved that when it comes to understanding the problems that face working Americans he definately needs to brush up some on his history.
Of course, McConnell started out spewing the usual right-wing lie catch slogan:
If the Employee Free Choice Act, which McConnell calls the “Employee Forced Choice Act,” passes the Senate, the Democratic members will have to do it, he said during a telephone conference call with reporters.
http://www.kentucky.com/210/st…
Next, he offered forth this pathetic rambling which demonstrates just how out of touch he is with what is really happening in the American workforce:
McConnell said the AFL-CIO wants the measure approved because “private sector union membership has declined from a high of 35 percent in the 1950s to 7.5 percent now.”
That has happened “because we have very enlightened management in this country now, treating employees better and employees have decided they don’t want to pay the dues.”
Enlightened?? In the last several decades management and ownership have outsourced untold middle-class working jobs with benefits because they did not want to pay a living wage and sought instead to exploit desperate oppressed workers in third world or communist countries who are forced to work long hours at slave like pay. Even children are not exempted.
The same “enlightenment” that has caused these occurences in our own country have stagnated wages and created jobs that deny benefits and pay at or just above the poverty level. This same “enlightenment” refuses to pay workers enough to buy their own health insurance, refuses to provide health insurance and then spends hundreds of millions of dollars to fire up every right-wing nutcase about nazis killing their grandmothers.
Union membership is at least partially down because of the difficulty that workers have forming a union. Having participated in two such drives I can tell you the current system gives ownership way to much sway. The Employee Free Choice Act lets them decide whether they want their cards to serve as their vote, or if they want to wait several months and be forced to listen daily to anti-union propoganda on the clock, hurting their productivity.
It is not enlightened to be greedy, selfish and prey upon the most vunerable people in America and the world. It is not enlightened to lie through your crooked teeth about a bill that will help Americans achieve the middle-class. With reports showing that Corporate greed is creating a whole “Lost Generation” we need the Employee Free Choice Act now more than ever.
Get informed on what the Employee Free Choice Act really does.
Giving more people more freedom from powerful monied interests that seek to exploit their labors and markets is always the enlightened thing to do. Of course, men like Mitch McConnell have been too busy trying to roll back the Enlightenment to understand what it really means.