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(Union Busting in History - At least today they wear nice suits)

When the famous Patco strike unfolded and President Reagan promptly fired the strikers and crippled the union, it signaled open season on Unions and the beginning of busting, deregulation and a general dismantling of our labor laws and the subsequent fallout that's been reverberating all over our society ever since.

In 1983 we were in the midst of strikes at Continental Airlines and Greyhound Bus. Those strikes made it clear just how damaged our labor laws had become and how the face of Union Busting had changed.

On December 4, 1983 Face The Nation ran a panel that consisted of William Wimpersinger of the International Association of Machinists, Frank Navjot of Greyhound, Studs Terkel, John Nesbitt and Stephen Cabot discussing the state of labor in the midst of Reagan.

Leslie Stahl: “Do you think there is a national management conspiracy to bust or break the unions?”

Studs Terkel: “There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy, I wish it were as simple as that. No, the climate is set and the climate of course is set by the most outrageous anti-labor administration within memory. So we have not, Apple Blossom Time but certainly Union Busting Time”.

Stahl: “Yeah but the public seems to be behind . . .not just the administration . . . .

Terkel: “That’s precisely the point. I think there’s been a lobotomy performed down through the years as Unions and labor are concerned. Ever since World War 2 . .and it’s changed. Big business has become more sophisticated in the person of Mister Cabot say, in contrast to a guy Henry Ford hired in the 30s to fight UAW, Harry Bennett, who would hire thugs and ex-cons with baseball bats to bust the heads of picketers. Today you have smiling three-piece suit guys doing the same job. So much more sophisticated and the result the young members of the workforce have no idea how the minimum wage came to be. They think it came as an apple from the hand of Eve in the garden of Eden. It was bloodied heads that did it, and guys were blacklisted and so minimum wage came to be – that’s under attack today. There’s definitely a union busting climate, no doubt in my mind."

Considering it's 26 years later - the situation hasn't changed. It has only gotten worse, thanks to the Bush Administration. The systematic dismantling of those laws which protected workers from unfair and unethical practices have only become more prevalent with time - and the affects of greed and contempt have only become more entrenched.

It's not going to go away overnight - remember that.

(Note: The broadcast begins with breaking news of U.S. raids on Syrian positions in Lebanon and then goes to the original program)

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(The Joys Of Travel)

When the deregulation of the Commercial Airline industry came into full bloom by 1983 (the bill was signed into law in 1978), everything was bordering on chaos. Granted, the major airlines had something of a monopoly for years and abuse was rife. But the pendulum swung the other way and cost cutting measures, layoffs and threatened bankruptcies of airlines like Continental created an uneasy and in many ways, an unsafe environment for air travel. There was talk about considering the airlines a public utility. But as was evidenced by the breakup of AT&T (which was considered a public utility) that alternative wasn't viable either. The trouble was, things were getting worse and no one was willing to offer an alternative. Strangely, they still aren't.

As a reaction to the worsening conditions, The Airline Pilots Union went on strike against Continental Airlines (one of many during the 80's).

The strike was the subject of a "Face The Nation" episode from October 2, 1983 featuring Leslie Stahl and a panel consisting of Sen. Mark Andrews (R-North Dakota), Dan McKinnon (Civil Aeoronautics Board), Phil Bakes (CEO, Continental airlines) and Capt. Henry Duffy (Airline Pilots Association).

Bakes: “It’s interesting that unions will charge us with union busting and not being fair to the employees – the one group of our employees who’s not a member of a union, which are our agents and number over 50 percent of our employees were allowed to vote on the pay cuts that we’ve instituted. Ninety percent of them voted for it. But yet the unionized employees were never allowed to vote. Now they’re voting with their feet and so are the consumers.”

Duffy: "What makes it a union busting maneuver is that, his employees had come to him and told him that they would do whatever was necessary to make that company profitable before they filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Instead, they chose the course of action of going Chapter 11 in order to do away with the union contracts and seniority and all of that’s been done in these emergency work rules that they published, and that tells us what they’re up to.”

Although it didn't dissolve into name-calling, it did cast light on just what a serious mess the Commercial Airline industry had become.

One which we're still living through today.

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(PATCO - After this, Union Busting became trendy)

Today's episode puts us in August 2, 1981, literally hours before the members of PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) voted to go on strike. It features a Face The Nation interview with Senate Majority leader Howard Baker, brought out to do spin and denial that the Reagan administration had anything other than killing off this union in mind.

George Herman (CBS News): "Does this kind of government pressure historically play a successful role in ending strikes amicably and getting us back to work?"

Howard Baker: "No, they don’t. There’s a very poor record of judicial . . . maximum judicial effort to end strikes. But there’s also a precedent involved here that we’ve not dealt with before and that is, an avowed purpose of striking by Federal employees, who in this case are forbidden to strike by statute. And the reason for that is not capricious, the reason is the public safety, and to a remarkable extent the social welfare of t his country and its economic health depends on the air traffic controller. It depends on the ability of the air traffic network in this country to function. I would not favor frankly, arresting and jailing people who do not abide by the requirement of the law. But with the same token, short of that, I think the government should do everything that is necessary to make clear that we will not stand by and see the law violated, that we will not stand by and see the economy disrupted; the social fabric of this country rent, because the air traffic controllers will not go back to work, or will not stay at work. Now, they have grievances, they’ve got problems and I’m sympathetic. But they are holding a club of enormous weight and proportion over the head of America and they simply mustn’t do that."

The Air Traffic controllers had a legitimate beef - they wanted a 32 hour work week, rather than 40 because the pressure of maintaining a level of alertness essential to doing the job was crucial. And a full 40 hours took its toll and created a lot of unsafe scenarios.

In hindsight, it would almost seem the Reagan Administration had used this as a test case in their Union Busting campaign. Unions, along with regulations were a hindrance to the Reagan Administration. Over the next 8 years there would be a dismantling of just about every regulation that stood in the way of unbridled greed and corruption. It's important to realize the state our country and economy are now in are not the exclusive property of the Bush Administration - the roots and fundamentals go back to the 1980's, and most likely well before to the Nixon Administration. But it was The Reagan Years that created ultimately the most damage. PATCO was the first of many episodes. And of course, the outcome was not successful. But that's our next installment.

In addition to Face The Nation, I also tacked on The World This Week from CBS News, covering the events of the week of August 2, 1981. It appears to have been a rather busy week!

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Can we please see more of Thom Hartmann on the cable news networks? Good for David Shuster for bringing him on while filling in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown. They discuss the Republicans absolute hatred for unions and the labor movement and their reasons for wanting to destroy it. Thom also has a suggestion for the Obama administration to get the economy back on track. Read Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures from 1791 which Thom has posted at his site.

Hartmann: David what he needs to do immediately is read Alexander Hamilton's 1791 report to Congress on manufactures. Hamilton laid out this six step plan to build an industrial economy in the United States and we followed it. We, Congress actually put into place in 1792 and it stood until Ronald Reagan came along and started deconstructing this, followed by George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush now and the legislatures, mostly pushed by the Republicans taking this thing apart. You could argue some of this started with Taft-Hartley. But basically the founders laid this thing out. They had it figured out and it worked. We built the biggest industrial infrastructure and industrial economy in the world.

We have gone, when Reagan came into office we were the largest exporter of manufactured goods and the largest importer of raw materials on the planet. And the largest creditor. More people owed us money than anybody else in the world. Now just twenty eight years later we're the largest importer of finished goods, manufactured goods, exporter of raw materials which is kind of the definition of a third world nation and we're the most in debt of any country in the world. This is the absolute consequence of Reaganomics.

A little more background on the Senate Republicans who sandbagged the auto industry bailout - and why:

The fiercest opposition to the loan proposal -- and nearly a third of the 35 votes against ending debate on the deal -- came from Southern Republicans, and the ringleaders of the opposition all come from states with a major foreign auto presence. Not coincidentally, nearly all of those states -- except Kentucky -- are also "right-to-work" states, which means no union contracts for most of the employees at the foreign plants. The Detroit bailout fell victim to a nasty confluence of home-state economic interests and anti-union sentiment among Republicans.

This week Southern Republicans had a chance to go to bat for foreign automakers while simultaneously busting a union. At a hearing last week, Corker explained that his constituents "have a tough time thinking about us loaning money to companies that are paying way, way above industry standard to workers." Which may explain why his proposed alternative to the loan agreement between Congress and the White House would have required the United Auto Workers to agree to significant wage cuts next year, based on a spurious claim that union workers earn significantly more than non-union workers.

Even George W. Bush's White House didn't push to crush the UAW the way Corker and his buddies did, say Democrats involved in the negotiations with the administration. "It was all about the unions," one senior Democratic aide said. "This is political payback for lots of things, and probably even more to come." Labor officials expect Republicans to keep taking shots at unions whenever they can. "This cynical stance they took last night -- they're willing to jeopardize 3 million jobs so they could gain some advantage in their war against unions -- is appalling," said Bill Samuel, the chief lobbyist for the AFL-CIO.

As the Republican Party consolidates in the South, the fight this week could turn out to be a preview of many battles to come over Barack Obama's economic plans. If those plans involve the domestic auto industry, the GOP pushback will come from somewhere down I-65, the new auto corridor that runs from Kentucky south to Alabama. Expect to hear more not just from the very vocal Bob Corker, but from the rest of a core group of Southern senators whose bread is buttered by the Japanese, Germans and Koreans.

Go read the rest. You'll want to know the players in the years ahead.

Countdown obtained a new memo that explains the GOP's strategy for blocking a bridge loan to the auto industry:

Countdown has obtained a memo entitled "Action Alert - Auto Bailout," and sent Wednesday at 9:12am, to Senate Republicans. The names of the sender(s) and recipient(s) have been redacted in the copy Countdown obtained.

The Los Angeles Times reported that it was circulated among Senate Republicans. The brief memo outlines internal political strategy on the bailout, including the view that defeating the bailout represents a "first shot against organized labor." Senate Republicans blocked passage of the bailout late Thursday night, over its insistence on an immediate union pay cut.

From: Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 9:12 AM
To: Subject: Action Alert -- Auto Bailout

Today at noon, Senators Ensign, Shelby, Coburn and DeMint will hold a press conference in the Senate Radio/TV Gallery. They would appreciate our support through messaging and attending the press conference, if possible. The message they want us to deliver is:

1. This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.

2. This rush to judgment is the same thing that happened with the TARP. Members did not have an opportunity to read or digest the legislation and therefore could not understand the consequences of it. We should not rush to pass this because Detroit says the sky is falling.

The sooner you can have press releases and documents like this in the hands of members and the press, the better. Please contact me if you need additional information. Again, the hardest thing for the democrats to do is get 60 votes. If we can hold the Republicans, we can beat this.

The GOP sent the first shot across the bow of the upcoming Obama administration as they killed the auto rescue plan Thursday night. It never was about trying to help the automakers or the economy, but an effort to crush the working class and punish unions. There are many more people in line to suffer if the Big 3 go out of business, but Shelby and his band of brothers couldn't care less.

"Union Busting" is a high priority for these Conservatives fools that have allowed our country to be run into the ground. Can you name anything good that has come out of the eight years of Bush and Conservative dominance? So what is their solution? To take it out on the blue collars of America.

If anything this memo should be used as a reminder that the Employee Free Choice Act should be one of Obama's "high priorities" just after he takes office. Check out this video that explains a few things about it.

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In an impassioned press conference today, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger upped the ante in the auto bailout fight as he urged the White House and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to help prevent the "imminent collapse" of the auto industry by using TARP funds.

He spelled out a last-minute negotiating process in which he says the Senate GOP caucus blew up a compromise agreement hammered out by the White House and Sen. Bob Corker.

The UAW chief said they knew going in that negotiating with an individual senator was a difficult challenge - that Corker "really didn't have a knowledge of the industry."

"And then the other thing was, quite frankly, we wondered if we were just being set up," he told reporters. (Looks like there's something to that theory: Corker is now blaming the UAW, claiming the union refused to strike a deal because the White House made it clear they'd get the money, anyway.)

Who to believe? Hmm.

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Rachel Maddow hits the nail on the head with this one. The GOP has now decided it is good for them politically to rail against unions and against Americans earning a living wage. I'd love to know just how low the wages of auto workers should go before it would satisfy these guys if someone is a union member, or if it just doesn't matter as long as the UAW is busted and their foreign interests in their states are satisfied.

It's a fine rant, kind of like an extended symphony, and she wraps it up by setting off the cannons behind Barack Obama's express concerns about the "devastating ripple effect throughout our economy" the collapse of the Big Three would have:

Maddow: That's what most Americans are worried about with this issue. What are the Republican Senators worried about who say they don't want to deal unless they can break the unions in this way? Besides their friends in Japan, I guess, who have state-subsidized plants in their home states, we can tell that Senator Corker's plan requires even further cuts from union workers and stakeholders in the companies than already have been offered. Blame the workers -- especially, blame the United Auto Workers. That's what we're hearing from Senate Republicans as our auto industry skids toward the brink of extinction. And they're saying if you do save the industry, they want to do it with conditions that break the unions while the industry is being saved.

It appears to me that Senate Republicans are on an ideologically driven union-busting adventure here, that happens to have the prospect of increasing the market share of the foreign-owned companies who work in their states. American-owned companies and the American economy as a whole be darned -- those foreign-owned companies that serve the individual states of these senators who are objecting to this bailout, they're the ones who are getting served.

Why aren't Democrats making them filibuster this -- making them stand up and defend this, if this is really what they want the country to know they're doing?