In 1916 Congress passed the first federal child labor law, the Keating-Owen Act, and a reluctant President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law. The law covered only a fraction of the children working at the time. It left unprotected nearly two million other kids. Two years later the Supreme Court ruled the measure unconstitutional. Child labor legislation had to wait until President Franklin Rosevelt’s New Deal’s Fair Labor Standards Act to get Supreme Court approval.
The pattern of rights fought for, won and later denied continues to this day.
Civil rights, women’s right, Constitutional rights such as free speech and assembly are under attack and often with the support of the Supreme Court which is packed with Trump appointees.
Education is under attack at the state and national level by politicians who want to channel education into a narrative to their liking. If the channel happens to entail lies about the nation’s past, teaches the so-called positive side of slavery or calls for banning or burning books, they will do it. They are doing it.
The National Labor Relations Board was established to protect workers, unionized and not. Now some major corporations are asking the Supreme Court to call the NLRB unconstitutional. The same people who overturned Roe vs. Wade and gutted the Voting Rights Act will rule on the case.
Starbucks has claimed that it will talk to its unionized baristas, but it is one of the companies looking to get rid of the NLRB. Will it talk and talk and talk in hopes of a new administration favorable to curtailing the agency as it appeals to a Supreme Court unfriendly to workers.
If the NLRB is lost, what’s next: OSHA, the FCC, the Department of Education, the EPA? All Americans, not just union members, depend upon these agencies to protect their right to health and safety, information, and a clean environment.
The only way to protect our rights is to vote. And even that right is under assault as voter suppression is the radical right’s game plan. Their actions range from intimidating election workers, to cutting voting hours and reducing voting places and spreading misinformation. As APWU President Mark Dimondstein advocates, the most secure way to vote is by USPS mail.
**_Protect your rights, register to vote and vote. _**
