Labor Day and the Fat Cats -- Nader Sez Repeal Taft-Hartley

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Cindy Sheehan also calls for this.
Portion of Nader's article below; whole thing here: http://www.counterpunch.org/nader09032008.html

Employers have slashed benefits for those workers lucky enough to retain a job. And many workplaces remain far more hazardous than necessary.

Most people struggle to get by and they are working more and more—either working longer hours or picking up a second or third job—to pay the bills and meet rent or mortgage payments. In two-parent families, increasingly both parents are in the workforce. Just to meet everyday expenses, they’re borrowing more and more from credit cards, home equity loans, or second mortgages, or from legal loan sharks at check-cashing operations. If someone in the family gets sick and lacks health insurance—forty-five million Americans are in that boat—the economic pressures on the family can be overwhelming. Even if a family has insurance, the exorbitant price of medicine may not be covered, or covered entirely, and paying for the pills can drive a family into despair.

The Economic Policy Institute reports that: “The inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage is 19 percent lower in 2008 than it was in 1979. Since September 1997, the cost of living has risen 32 percent, while the minimum wage, even after the increase to $6.55, has fallen in real value.”

In recent times, the gap between haves and have-nots is more severe and the demands for worker rights have never been more powerless since World War 2.

Consider the following:

· S&P 500 CEOs now make about 344 times more than the average worker at their firms.

· The top fifth of households own more than 84.7 percent of the nation’s wealth, the middle fifth percent less than 3.8 percent of the nation's wealth.

· The percent of wealth owned and controlled by the wealthiest 1 percent of households, now equals that of the bottom 92 percent.

· Women and minority males earn 69 percent to 80 percent of what White men make. In addition, more than a third of single mothers with children live in poverty.

Repealing Taft-Hartley would certainly help workers to organize for better wages and working conditions. The fight would be monumental, but so would the gains.