Back on Our Feet

December 05, 2008

Contributing editor Trapper John had a great entry on Daily Kos earlier this week titled "How We Got Knocked Down, and How Employee Free Choice Can Get Us Back on Our Feet." Citing "the most coherent and cogent explanation I've seen of the financial crisis," the post includes some choice excerpts from a speech from AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel Damon Silvers, including the following:

For thirty years, America’s economic elites and their political allies have pursued a combination of economic and social policies designed to produce a low wage economy. These policies—our labor laws and our broader system of labor market regulation, our tax policies and our approach to globalization, have yielded decades of stagnant wages and rising economic inequality. But at the same time, policymakers of both parties have sought, with some success, to maintain high levels of consumer spending. The pursuit of the contradiction of a low wage, high spending economy has systematically destroyed the various ways we individually and collectively save and invest. Instead of an income driven economy, we have become an economy driven by asset bubbles fueled by cheap debt. The ultimate unsustainability of this strategy has brought us to our current economic crisis.

Adds Trapper John: "Without a real opportunity to join unions and build bargaining power, American workers will continue to experience stagnant wages. The Employee Free Choice Act isn't just about fairness in the workplace — it's a tool for engineering stimulus. And it won't cost the government a dime." Read the full post.