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Dear John,
Many Republican leaders wink and nod while talking about “making America great again,” as if the country was more prosperous when they were in charge.
Rubbish.
As our most recent video explains, Republicans have been waging a decades-long war against one of the biggest drivers of prosperity for the working class — labor unions.
Research has shown that a big reason much of the workforce was better off decades ago than today is because of the power of labor unions to organize and fight for the rights and dignity of workers.
Despite this evidence, Republicans have fought labor unions tooth and nail. They’ve enacted deceptively named "right-to-work" laws, which are all about weakening unions rather than giving workers more rights. And they've voted against bills allowing workers to form unions with simple up or down majorities at the workplace.
So why do nearly all Republican lawmakers in Congress oppose proposals that would make it easier to unionize?
It’s simple: Nothing scares the GOP more than working people recognizing their collective power.
This is the great irony of the MAGA movement. If Republicans really cared about American greatness, they would support unions — one of the major tools at our disposal to actually combat inequality and lift up the working class.
Instead, Republicans and their corporate benefactors have always feared that working people would rise up against them to attack their power and wealth, both through union organizing and at the ballot box. So the rich are doing everything they can to hold working people down.
Fortunately — even in the face of these efforts — labor unions are on the rise once more. And so are pro-labor Democratic politicians across the country.
The recent midterm elections and the resurgent worker power movement should give us hope that a more just and equitable United States will be built with union labor.
Solidarity!
Thanks for watching,
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
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