If you or someone you love works for a living (well, that should catch everybody!), you’ll enjoy my next public forum on labor rights:
Monday’s pre-Labor Day discussion is the second of four public forums (fora?) I’m hosting here in Aberdeen to help voters think about substantive policy issues before they vote on November 6. As I did in July at my forum on public education, I’ll talk for about 30 minutes, then open the floor to questions on issues affecting workers and their rights on the job in South Dakota.
I’ll hold similar topic-oriented events on the last Mondays of each month before the election (September 24 and October 29). These four public fora will be four more substantive policy discussions than my incumbent opponent has hosted or announced this year. Bring your questions and your friends!
Thanks Cory-labor, tho badly needed and necessary in SD is pushe way to the background of interest in our legislature business-friendly legislature. The way the leg tried to screw with the voter-passed minimum wage law was very significant to its serfdom mentality. Balance is the key and our “right-to-work” law only benefits the employer not the employee. Unions exist under the guise of lawyers guilds and various ‘association’ names here; Bar Association, Medical Association, Dental Association etc etc that if you are not a paying member you don’t operate on your own. Labor ‘union’ has been given a black name in SD, but the John Morrells, Homestake Mine and others have always looked out for their members and faced up to employers for better conditions…..
Reagan’s and Clinton’s assault on worker’s rights are why your kids will be the first generation to do worse economically than their parents. ~ Support Working Class Americans.
https://workinprogress.oowsection.org/2016/02/03/rising-us-income-inequality-was-fueled-by-reagans-attacks-on-unions-and-continued-by-clintons-financial-deregulation/
American workers wholly warrant the power to bargain for wages as a group. One political party aka The Party of the Wealthy does everything it can to deny wage workers these simple “field levelers”.
Workers without unions, face this …..
!!! Today, by one measure, the bull market hit a milestone — but most Americans aren’t at the party.
After 3,453 days, it ranks among the great booms in American market history. But as the stock market surged, prices for homes — the most important source and store of wealth for the American middle class — recovered much more slowly from the Great Recession and housing bust. Incomes, too, have barely budged.
One economics professor put it bluntly: “This is the decade in which wealth inequality has increased the most in U.S. history.” -nyt
“The economy is booming” blare the headlines.
But look deep into the Business section and you might find an article about how wages have not grown and, using inflation adjusted dollars, have actually shrunk dramatically. That narrative pleases the greedy because desperate labor takes whatever it can get.
Strong labor unions are the best tool working people have to get a fair deal.