The labor movement, as its supporters rightly say, is just the folks who brought you the weekend. Now as Americans mark this Labor Day, it seems that Mitt Romney wants to take it back.
After all, the man who said that "corporations are people, my friend" routinely decries the "crony capitalism" of "union stooges." A supporter of so-called "right-to-work" laws, Romney wants to end collective bargaining rights for public employees, including policemen and firefighters. The Republican nominee looks forward to shrinking the historically small federal workforce while slashing its pay. And while he has turned his back on a minimum wage increase he once supported, Mitt Romney has proposed dramatically shifting the federal tax burden from the leisure class to working Americans.
Earlier this month, Mitt Romney granted an exclusive interview to Bloomberg News in which he spoke of how he learned about leadership from his father. As we'll see below, the example he chose was a curious one:
"I watched him at American Motors as he interacted with not only executives, but workers there. I remember going to Milwaukee as he addressed UAW employees at the Milwaukee stadium and described to them the new profit-sharing program that he and the head of the UAW had put in place."But while Romney the Father extended his hand to the United Auto Workers, Romney the Son instead gives them the finger. As we learned in March, the man who pretends he used to worry about getting a "pink slip" still chuckles thinking about those who did when his father moved AMC jobs from Michigan to Wisconsin. It's no wonder Mitt Romney turned his back on his former home town in 2008, declaring, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." Earlier this year, he explained why he opposed the Obama rescue package that saved the U.S. auto industry and with it over a million American jobs:
"I call it crony capitalism. I've taken on union bosses before. I'm happy to take them on again because I happen to believe that you can protect the interests of the American taxpayers and you can protect a great industry like automobiles without having to give in to the UAW, and I sure won't."Mitt Romney may love American cars, just not the people who make them.
Mitt Romney might also think the trees are the right in his home state of Michigan, but he's not too happy about the size of the unions there. But in his effort to crack down on what he calls "labor stooges," Mitt looked to South Carolina for inspiration.
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