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Art imitating life, Washington style

Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor March 31, 2009 05:27 PM

Some TV occupants of the White House are getting in the middle of the high-stakes fight over a bill that would make it easier for unions to organize.

Today, actors from "The West Wing" will join workers and members of Congress to unveil a new ad and grassroots campaign called “Faces of the Employee Free Choice Act."

Then, the actors -- Martin Sheen, Bradley Whitford, and Richard Schiff -- will join in lobbying on Capitol Hill for the legislation, according to the labor coalitions pushing it.

UPDATE: "It's a human rights issue," Sheen, who played president Josiah Bartlet, said, according to the Associated Press. "It's just bottom line fair that workers should be paid for their labor fairly."

Whitford, a union member and board member of the pro-labor group American Rights at Work, said he was behind the event. "I call this process celebrity lubrication," Whitford joked to reporters.

The pro-business Workforce Fairness Institute responded with this missive: “Today’s event on Capitol Hill with actors who played fictional political powerbrokers addressing a fictional problem is like a work of fiction that would be better suited for a comedy if their proposed ‘solution’ wasn’t so devastating to our nation’s economy,” said Katie Packer, executive director of the Workforce Fairness Institute. “Job creators don’t need policy prescriptions from out-of-touch, Hollywood elite who want to drive up costs and encourage a hostile takeover of American small businesses.”

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I can only assume that Ms. Packer was a strong supporter U of Ronald Regan when started his long union-busting career by illegaling firing the well-trained, well-qualified Air Control Tower Operators and then replacing them with minimally qualified new ones. I found this action to be rather strange inasmuch as he had been one of the better President's of the Screen Actors Guild (note: guild, not union). But, that was before he became spokesman for two giant corporations, and began speaking tours for them at various corporate board meetings, as well on acting as the tv commercial spokesman. Unfortunately, the anti-union war has been going on since then.

Since our Country is a Republic and not a Democracy, why shouldn't workers be given the same rights as the Republican, Democrats, Libertarians, et al.. That is, let the workers decide whether they want to be represented by a Union or not. It has seemed to me that in the past when they were aloud to vote and the right to unionize was voted in, it usually had the caveat of not being compulsary. However, it apparently was the case that for those workers who chose not to join the new union, they were only to happy to share in any benefits that the union obtained for the workers.

For anyone whom may be interested in any more of my "radical" thoughts on various subjects, I invite them to visit my blog site:

somethoughtsfromtheshower.bogspot.com

Posted by Charles MacPhee March 31, 09 05:02 PM
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