Republicans and corporatists have always hated unions. They hated them in FDR's day, and they hate them today.
They hate them because unions stand in the way of gross exploitation and obscene profit maximization.
If there are no unions around and no government regulation, employers can treat their workers as shabbily as they want and pay them as poorly as they want, and we'd be back to the Grapes of Wrath.
That was paradise for employers, and they want a return ticket.
So I wasn't altogether surprised the other day when I heard South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint proclaim: "I really don't think that collective bargaining has any place in representative government."
It's kind a nice to get it all out in the open, I suppose.
Because this is what we're up against.
But to give you an idea how off base the DeMinted one is, let me quote from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was passed by the UN in December of 1948 in response to the "barbarous acts" of the Nazis, which included the outlawing of unions.
Article 23, Section 4, reads as follows: "Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."
Pretty simple, isn't it?
Union rights are human rights.
It says so right there in the most important human rights document on the books, which DeMint, I guess, has never read.
If you liked this story by Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, check out his story "Did Scott Walker Confess to a Crime in Koch Prank?"
Follow Matthew Rothschild Follow Matthew Rothschild @mattrothschild on Twitter.