The Christofascist Republican bullshit machine is working overtime, trying to convince workers -- particularly union workers, and especially UAW -- that the party of corporate greed and cutting taxes for the 1 percent is on their side. With the Malignant Loser planning a campaign trip to Detroit next week to portray himself as a friend of workers, it's helpful to be reminded of a few things:
"... Politics is politics, but the sight of senior Republicans posing as the true friends of the union workers is so outlandish as to be almost comical. From Trump on down, the G.O.P. has spent decades siding with employers and seeking to frustrate union efforts to organize workplaces and raise wages. Even as it has sought to rebrand itself as a workers’ party, the G.O.P.’s actions have made a mockery of this claim.
Start with Trump. After taking power in 2017, he restored the Republican majority on the five-person National Labor Relations Board, the agency that was established during the New Deal to support workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively. Trump appointed a former House Republican staffer, Marvin Kaplan, as chair of the N.L.R.B. Under G.O.P. leadership, the agency quickly moved to reverse several pro-labor rulings that it had issued during the Obama Administration, including one that made it easier for workers at fast-food franchises to organize. This pro-employer slant continued throughout Trump’s term. In December, 2019, the agency issued two rulings that introduced new restrictions on unionization votes and made it easier for firms to classify workers as independent contractors, thus depriving them of union wage scales and benefits. [snip]
As the rate of unionization has steadily declined, most Republicans have consistently opposed legislative efforts to reverse that trend, including two bills that would have made it easier for unions to organize: the Employee Free Choice Act, which a Democratic-controlled House passed in 2007, and the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which the House passed in 2019 and again in 2021. (On the latter occasion, five Republicans voted for the bill; two hundred and five didn’t.)..."
At least one Republican candidate for president wants striking workers fired. How's that for a friend?!
Blah blah blah, yes we know white blue collar workers have been motivated less by "kitchen table" issues and more by appeals to cultural and racial resentments. And white blue collar workers aren't the only ones susceptible to those appeals by a long shot. But that's a discussion for another day.
It's really galling, though, that the lying union- busters aren't called out more often, as UAW President Shawn Fain did recently. At some point, can reality sink in?
