Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Today's and tomorrow's civil rights movement will be the jobs rights movement. But it will not be on television -- not till it really bites enough corporate asses. Kinda like the anti-Jim Crow movement: the congress could never seem to get anything past the senate, and its own fine old peculiar institution, the filibuster, till all hell had broken loose a number of times. It takes a movement, Hillary.

In this light: mock dKos update:

"Hoo hoo hoorah, all but two Democrats in the House voted for card check class struggle." Yes, brothers and sisters of the great unorganized, the Employee Free Choice Act passed the House with flying blue colors yesterday:

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/03/01/house-passes-employee-free-choice-act/

and will now sail into a full and final stymie as it hits the big check -- namely, the fine old aforementioned filibuster

Mr Peabody observes: "Yes, Sherman -- the cliff-hanging drama and ultimate defeat of card-check unionization -- 'twill be another instance of the grace and balance of our bicameral legislative branch. Nothing hasty, nothing rash, nothing faddish. Of course the chronic humiliation of the labor movement, splendid as that is, can't compare with the Senate's greatest historic achievement, the life-support of segregation. Why the filisbuster kept lynching alive, for an extra 30 years at least. Speaking of checks, Sherman, you might even call our legislative system a rubber check democracy."

PS: Here is a nice story of the piecard jack ass dance on this from Carter through Clinton:

http://labornotes.org/node/664

As recently as 2000 the AFL-CIO was disinclined to support labor law reform in any fashion, still smarting from the disappointment and embarrassment of the failed labor law reform push of 1977-78.

This labor-led reform drive during the Carter presidency ultimately crashed on Senate rocks after winning passage in the House. Carter eventually threw in the towel on this issue, leaving labor and the reform legislation hanging.

The angry reaction of many union leaders and rank-and-file members to what was perceived as a Democratic Party failure at minimum -- and betrayal at worst -- played a part in the collapse of the Carter regime and the election of the notoriously anti-union Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Significant sections of top union officialdom resolved to never again broach the labor law reform subject and risk another electoral debacle.

In recent years, the AFL-CIO refused to seriously support labor law reform, privately fearing that it would serve only to expose Democrats who were happy to accept labor's support while doing nothing to address the labor rights catastrophe. Promotion of labor law reform by organized labor was minimal-to-non-existent throughout the Clinton years, being routinely dismissed as "unrealistic."