Sally Kalson
They are manufacturing lies to keep workers from joining unions
By Sally Kalson
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Columnist
In the annals of big lies, it’s hard to top the tobacco companies’ insistence that smoking (a) did not cause lung cancer and (b) was inexorably linked to America’s rugged individualism.
Then along came the campaign to kill the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would make it easier for workers to form unions and harder for companies to intimidate and fire them if they try. The law would reverse decades of impotence on the part of the National Labor Relations Board, which has been reduced to a toothless body that employers barely bother to acknowledge anymore.
The assault against the free choice act rivals the tobacco campaign for sheer chutzpah by insisting that union busting (a) does not erode the middle class and (b) is inexorably linked to business’s deep regard for the sacred “freedom” of American workers. Which might be true if you’re talking about the freedom to be paid less for working more with no health insurance, pension or job security, but otherwise is a real laugh riot. MORE
Sally Kalson is a columnist for the Post-Gazette and a 25-year member and longtime officer of The Newspaper Guild/CWA Local 38061 (skalson@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1610). More articles by this author
Posted March 20, 2009 at 7:27 am, in From the News
