Social Issues

By Sally Herrin

The Occupy movement is not the workers’ revolution that was supposed to happen 100 years ago, give or take, but the root cause is the same: too much economic power in the hands of the vested elite makes life increasingly intolerable for all the rest of us, with most of the most grievous suffering born by children—the poorest people on earth.

By E. Benjamin Skinner

Imagine that Robert E. Lee’s staff officer had not lost his three cigars in 1862. Imagine that the general’s Antietam battle plans, which were wrapped around those cigars, hadn’t wound up in Union hands. Alternatively, imagine that George McClellan hadn’t finally used the providential intelligence to stop the rebels in the bloodiest battle in American history. Imagine that a thus disempowered Lincoln was unable to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Imagine that the South had won and spread slavery to the Western Territories.

Organized labor has long known about the weakness of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). For well over 30 years, unions understood it was no longer an effective tool for supporting organizing and bargaining. They complained that anti-union corporations and their consultants used the long period between employees showing an initial interest in forming a union and the actual National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) supervised election to create a hostile environment in which to hold the election. Additionally, unions had concerns about weak remedies and sophisticated employer strategies to avoid first contracts.

By Glenn Spencer

Congress is about to consider legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act, or Card Check. While few people have heard of this bill, it is the most sweeping rewrite of federal labor law in 70 years. Card Check would essentially abolish the protection of a private ballot during union organizing campaigns, would likely eliminate workers’ ability to vote on a union contract establishing the terms and conditions of their employment and would impose substantial new penalties, but only on employers.

By John Kretzschmar

Our economy is in the worst crisis since the Great Depression. But unlike the weather, economic vicissitudes are influenced by pubic policy. We arrived where we are thanks to economic policy decisions made by both Democratic and Republican administrations over at least the last 25 years. Now the new Congress and the Obama administration are shaping an economic recovery plan.

By John Kretzschmar

Few Nebraskans have any real understanding of organized labor, and it’s not their fault. The history surrounding the evolution of the American labor movement is rarely taught in school, discussed around the dinner table or even described in media coverage of current events. Few of us could name our nation’s two large national labor organizations: The American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and Change to Win. Fewer may know that our largest single union, the National Education Association, is a member of neither. Unions, like other institutions in the U.S., are human institutions, and their history is full of the frailties of human beings. But for all its faults, organized labor has been guided by some noble goals and ideals.

By Mark Gudgel

I am in an airport in New Jersey, by accident. Accidents like that can happen in the United States, much more so than they can happen in other places, I am told. It’s called Newark, after the city it’s in, after the city the people came from hundreds of years ago, I’m guessing. It’s shiny; the floor squeaks under my feet as I approach the terminal, and there is enough neon lighting there to open a casino. I am flying to Seattle to coach basketball, and I am waiting for my flight. I acknowledge that I am very blessed. I sit down to have a beer in a dimly lit airport pub; it costs eight dollars, but that doesn’t improve its taste. The pale woman next to me, perched awkwardly on her stool, is from New Jersey, the first and, of yet, the only state to have mandated “Holocaust education” in the state school’s curriculum.

By Mara D. Giles

This summer I had the opportunity to return to my native New Mexico. I got to spend some glorious days in Albuquerque and parts north. While visiting, I extolled the virtues of New Mexico, its people, its communities, and its marvelous diversity to whoever would listen. There were many who did. They in turn spoke to me about what they perceived to be the considerable amount of cultural conflict in the state and were interested in hearing my perspective on it, both as someone who no longer lives in New Mexico and as a cultural anthropologist.