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Highlights from Saturday’s Arkansas Rallies |
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More than 1,500 union members across Arkansas rallied in 100-degree heat this Saturday, asking their senators to support the Employee Free Choice Act and give workers the freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. Here are some highlights from press coverage of the event.
Arkansas state Rep. Jim Nickles was among the hundreds who joined the rally at the State Capitol and told Little Rock’s KATV he strongly supported the Employee Free Choice Act:
This is an attempt to make it to where [workers] can form unions and they can bargain…with employers.
Labor laws brought us minimum wage, brought us pension plans, brought us health insurance…all have been eroded in the past 20 years.
The Texarkana Gazette reports that Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard, who spoke at the Texarkana rally, called the freedom to form a union and bargain “a fundamental human right” that gives workers the ability to “climb the economic ladder.”
The Pine Bluff Commercial highlights the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff, who told the crowd in Pine Bluff that “everyone is watching Arkansas” to see how its U.S. senators will vote on Employee Free Choice. Acuff made an economic argument for the bill:
American families are being continually squeezed by the economic crisis, Acuff noted, adding weight to the union argument that [the Employee Free Choice Act] is vital to recovery.
While American productivity is up 75 percent since 1973, wages have remained flat, leaving 50 million without health care and poverty rolls that have increased by 20 percent, Acuff told the Pine Bluff rally.
Consumer demand, which drives the U.S. economy, is down because of lower income, Acuff added.
You can see more photos from the weekend’s rallies here.
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We are faced with the international sovereignty of capital.
That’s why hedge fund and prvate equity fund managers call themselves, “MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.” The only labor relations system they recognize anywhere in the world is a MASTER/SLAVE one. Individual nations haven’t the reach to legislate globally. Therefore, in the absence of global organizations to write, implement and enforce living wages
based on currency and wage parities and to develop and enforce univsersal labor and work standards, then the sovereignty of capital, like the sovereignty of monarchs and despots of old, must be brought to heed human rights laws of the nations, as prescribed in the United Nations agencies and organizations. In this respect, employee labor union rights around the globe must be interpreted as Human Rights. Meantime, mega hedge fund and private equity fund sovereigns must be brought under the authority of individual nations respective labor laws.
In addition, there is a dire need for the International Labor Organization to be given a new and expanded role, with enforcement powers, to curb international capital’s global cabal and crimp its licentious behavior. Enough is enough ! Basta !
Finis !