AFL-CIO Blog Announces Winner of Chicken Little Contest

re-printed by A. Bratton from: http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/01/and-the-winner-is%e2%80%a6/

We have a winner in the heated contest for the Chicken Little Sky Is Falling Bizarre Corporate Panic Over Workers’ Rights Award.

The award for the most egregiously over-the-top bottom comments about the Employee Free Choice Act goes to casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who said that there are two “fundamental threats to society”: “radical Islam” and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Hundreds of you voted in our contest, and Adelson had stiff competition: Other hyperventilators up for the award included Fox News pundit John Rutledge, who called the bill to restore the freedom to form a union “a Gestapo tactic,” and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said it’s “a mortal threat to American freedom.”(take note that Gingrich is real busy making a power play for the Republican presidential nomination 2012)

Adelson won with 27 percent of the vote. Coming in second, with 20 percent, was Randel Johnson of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who promised to make the corporate front groups’ battle against Employee Free Choice “a firestorm bordering on Armageddon.”

It’s a good time to ask, why the panic by corporate fat cats? Because they know today’s labor laws are badly tilted in favor of management and against workers, and they’re terrified the Employee Free Choice Act could put things back into balance. It would give workers the freedom to choose how to form a union and to bargain for a better life without the interference management has gotten used to. Giving workers power and making corporate leaders accountable is terrifying to Adelson and his cronies—and they’ll stop at nothing to mislead and scare people.

So, a plucked chicken award to Adelson—along with a bit of advice: Tactics such as his won’t work. America’s workers demand a free choice in how they form a union and bargain and an economy that works for everybody, not just billionaires and their hired guns and favorite politicians.

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