Happy Labor Day

The Delaware State Education Association made their annual appearance in the Labor Day parade today. This event is always a positive experience and an opportunity for DSEA members to see themselves as part of a larger movement. The two themes of this year's parade were "health care for all" and "employee free choice". This blog has posted many times on the former, the latter needs a little explanation.

The Employee Free Choice Act is a proposal under consideration by Congress to make it easier for workers to organize themselves into unions. Under current law, workers must first sign Authorization Cards to be filed with a Petition for Election. Once the Petition for Election is filed, many employers engage in stalling techniques that can delay the election for unionization by months. In the meantime, professional anti-union campaigns are run against the employees with a good deal of intimidation and misinformation. This action often results in petitions being pulled or lost elections.

This is not the process followed by the rest of the developed world. The Employee Free Choice Act would move the US more toward the norm with an abbreviated process.

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In other news, most of our members are aware that President Obama will address the students of the nation tomorrow with an inspirational message about applying themselves and staying in school. Not all of the US students will be given the opportunity to hear this message because some districts have bowed to pressure and are not allowing the speech to be shown.

This is an interesting development considering the fact that both Ronald Reagan and George Bush (the first) had similar addresses to school children. In fact Reagan's speech was in parts blatantly political. Of course, the people raising the objections have no sense of history, even when that history is contemporary history from only twenty years ago.

We are living in the age where some folks believe the President is a Kenyan Socialist. Speaking of contemporary history, the last time we had such foolishness being spread around the country, a misguided young man named Timothy McVey blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building killing many innocents that he had learned to hate through a haze of paranoia. God help us.