In this announcement live from the Oval Office, President Obama signs a memorandum of disapproval in response to SJ Res. 8, condemning the Republican Congress’s killing of a new set of rules for the National Labor Relations Board, which would have made it easier for Americans to join unions.
Crippling union power and dismantling worker’s rights is enshrined in the modern Republican handbook; the NLRB is vilified as harshly as if it was a Soviet Worker’s Council by the right wing, who cannot tolerate anything that might cut into corporate profits and the draconian reign of the free market on our nation. The blocking of such reasonable legislation is symptomatic of the deep cancer that is insidiously working its way through our economy, a fact that the President alludes to in his remarks:
“We’re finally seeing wages being to tick up after many consecutive years of job growth. Nevertheless, what’s true is, is that we’ve got record corporate profits. Folks at the very top are doing very well. Middle-class families and folks trying to work their way into the middle class still have some big difficulties.
And part of what we want to do is to make sure that we give workers the capacity to have their voices heard, to have some influence in the workplace, to make sure that they’re partners in building up the U.S. economy, and that growth is broad-based, and that everybody is benefitting just as everybody is contributing.”
Watch the clip here: