Wages & Worker Rights in Red & Blue | National Catholic Reporter

Wages & Worker Rights in Red & Blue | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: Interesting analysis of laboratories of democracy, although I don't think they had the Koch funed American Legislative Exchange Council in mind when the quote was made originally.  Also, the Myerson piece shows that voters in some of the Red States raise their minimums anyway, bucking the trend.



ALEC, and even its grandfather, the John Birch Society, did not exist in 1933. New York experience helped, but the truth is that the New Deal was made possible not as much by Msgr. Ryan as the spectre of a socialist revolution - not FDR's early attempt at social democracy but full on confiscation of factories. Listen to a Green Party activist for long enough and the subject of seizing factories under state charter law may come up.  The reason the Greens are largely ignored is that this is the best way to avoid talking about this, as it might force some other blue-green accomodation for workers.



Interesting about Ford raising wages and lowering prices is that this is the essence of consumerism. I suspect that that the socialists scared him too.



Indiana's recent episode  was a pander to the right wing religious faction, plain and simple, using the RFRA.  Threats to cancel events may have had a part it its demise, but the fact that it was being use in a way that directly violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, so everyone would their cake, made it null, even before they repealed it.



Companies usually move to avoid unions, not little bitty pay raises.  Reagan through W helped them by making organizing really hard by simply not enforcing the law.  As troubling is that this pattern persists in red states on immigration - being against reform while looking the other way while Tyson et al bring in factory workers without papers or protection.  Unionize the factorty and that stops automatically.  No one will pay a US wage to an immigrant or give him protections in the union and pay for the human trafficking too.  Workers here will be better off and the strenght of the Union will help other things too, like a higher minimum wage.



The South does not like the Union, mostly because when the Union tried to organize back in the day, no strike benefits were provided.  There was no benefit to any who joined, so they the organizers packing and gave their devotion, or at least the fear, the bosses.  Such authoritarianism works well when you have autoritarian religious figures keeping social and racial order. Of course, the children of that generation are ALEC/Tea Party supporters. More migrants in (including blacks returning from the rust bel) and more right wing die off and even the Democratic Party will rise again in Dixie, but not the one that fell.  (Including the NEA and its women's rights agenda).