The Plutocracy's Assault on Workers

According to Dr. Elaine Bernard of the Harvard Law School, the federal government, judges and anti-labor CEOs have colluded against private sector workers, denying them representation. It is now not only virtually impossible to organize workers, she says, but corporations are permitted to replace (i.e., fire) striking workers--effectively neutering unions.

As a consequence, private sector worker representation has plummeted in the U.S. to the lowest levels in the industrial world.

The result?

CEOs, corporate boards, Wall Street brokers and their water-carriers in government are free to concoct schemes without regard to the impact on workers and their communities. The rightwing promise was that ignoring workers America's ability to compete would be strengthen. Sounds dumb but America bought the line. Instead, plutocrats sought to enrich themselves by selling out American workers, American communities and the American nation.

Of course, a political attack on the American workers and the middle class they built is short-sighted and, ultimately, self-defeating. Thus, after half a decade of devastating U.S. plutocratic rule, it's time for government and corporate boards to treat workers like the day-to-day investors and true producers of wealth that they really are.



Photo: Plaque marking the 'Ludlow Massacre' of 1914 in which 17 men, women and children were killed by the Colorado Militia sent to chrush a miners strike at the Rockefeller owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation.