LABOR LAW REFORM AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF STRIKERS

WHEREAS, the Reagan administration's economic policies have resulted in continued high unemployment; and

WHEREAS, many corporations have been taking advantage of high unemployment to require unnecessary givebacks and one-sided sacrifices from their workers; and

WHEREAS, the Reagan administration's destruction of PATCO has fostered a climate which has encouraged Greyhound Corporation, Continental Air-Lines, Phelps-Dodge and other major corporations to seek unilateral reductions in health benefits, pensions and wages and threaten mass dismissal of workers exercising their civil rights to strike; and

WHEREAS, the public is often poorly informed about the labor side of these and related collective bargaining confrontations; and

WHEREAS, there has been a serious deterioration in good management-labor relations in many sectors of the economy; and

WHEREAS, sophisticated "legalized" union busting techniques are now becoming more common and more effective; and

WHEREAS, labor's ability to organize and grow is seriously affected by this anti-union climate and by the anti-labor policies now promoted by the NLRB and various departments of the federal government; and

WHEREAS, there is a real danger than labor- management relations may return to the primitive and warlike conditions of the 1930's; and

WHEREAS, some corporations and their government allies have been able to ignore the spirit of such legislation as the Wagner Act (labor's Magna Carta), and the letter of the Norris-LaGuardia Act; and

WHEREAS, earlier heroic efforts to achieve national labor law reform, led by the late George Meany, were thwarted by sophisticated filibuster techniques used by reactionary southern senators; and

WHEREAS, a permanently strong, healthy economy is dependent on enlightened cooperation between management and labor; and

WHEREAS, the representation rights of state and local public workers are invariably less than the rights provided workers employed in the private sector and covered by NLRA:

RESOLVED, that the AFT and the AFL-CIO seek to re-introduce and achieve national legislation to strengthen worker rights under the Wagner Act, the Norris-LaGuardia Act, etc.; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT seeks legislation that would protect all workers threatened with dismissal because they exercise their civil right to strike; and