Throwing Labor Under the Bus

[Geee]

American Thinker:

 

As Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and other states try to limit the collective bargaining rights of organized labor, the national media work to create the impression that Republicans are anti-labor and are undermining the labor unions' hard-earned collective bargaining rights. All "labor unions" are intentionally framed as one homogeneous group idespite the fact that Wisconsin's state legislation was only directed toward public sector unions.

The key to understanding why public and private sector labor are combined by the media reports is to realize that there are three major groups of labor, and that the Democrats created all three.

Historically, Democrats have always been the friends and supporters of organized labor, passing legislation for over one hundred years such as the Wagner Act of 1935. This act was directed toward the traditional private sector organized labor unions such as the AFL-CIO. The second major type of organized labor, public sector labor, was also created by Democrats. In 1959, Wisconsin passed the first law to enable public sector workers to organize and lawfully use tactics such as collective bargaining. Shortly thereafter, Federal government workers were allowed to organize through John Kennedy's Executive Order 10988, issued in 1962. It should be noted that the Federal public sector group was not established through legislation but Executive Order.