Posted on 12/04/2013 2:13:52 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Firebrand Congressman Alan Grayson hailed Black Friday civil disobedience in an afternoon interview, saying the protests by Wal-Mart workers and supporters show “the dissatisfaction of the middle class” since the 2008 financial crash “coming to a slow boil.”
“If one person falls out of the middle class, that’s sad,” Grayson told Salon. “But if millions of people fall out of the middle class, that creates a backlash which is being seen all over the country, and will potentially create a new political movement of the disenfranchised.”
Members of the union-backed workers’ group OUR Walmart promised 1,500 protests today, including nine civil disobedience actions. Organizers say at least eighty-one total people were arrested among six of those actions, including a St. Paul protest which included both Walmart workers and striking sub-contracted janitors who clean buildings for Target. “Even people who are employed now, many of them are not making enough money to survive,” said Grayson. “And the outlet more and more for people that they see is this kind of civil disobedience, because the political system has become completely unresponsive to their genuine concerns and their physical needs.”
In a Friday statement, Wal-Mart Vice President David Tovar said that the company pays “on average, close to $12.00 an hour” and “The real issue isn’t where you start. It’s where you can go once you’ve started. Retail is one of the few industries that has jobs at all levels and ongoing advancement opportunities.” Using Glassdoor.com and 2011 IBISworld data, OUR Walmart has pegged the retailer’s hourly wage at below $9.
Grayson charged that the company “feels compelled to cheat its own employees to the point where they’re forced to turn to public assistance simply to stay alive.” The common thread between deadly disasters at factories which have supplied to Wal-Mart in Bangladesh and abuses in the United States, he contended, is that “Wal-Mart is a machine that exists solely for the purpose of enriching its owners and…the top managers of Wal-Mart, and in so doing wreaks havoc on the lives of both workers and suppliers.” As workers have in industries like miners and auto, he argued, the solution “is for people to get together and stop fighting each other, but rather fight the boss and beat the boss.”
As I’ve reported, Grayson cited Wal-Mart’s firing of activists – including a worker he had accompanied when she went on strike last Black Friday – when he introduced a bill in June to dramatically broaden and strengthen the remedies available to workers fired for organizing. Asked Friday if that bill has gotten traction in the House, the Florida Congressman told Salon, “not yet,” but that it was an effort to “point things in the right direction” for a time when the House has more progressive leadership.
While some congressional Democrats have joined Grayson in blasting the retail giant, the Obama Administration has not. Asked whether the Administration’s repeated praise for and appearances with Wal-Mart hurt the workers’ cause, Grayson told Salon, “It certainly doesn’t improve things.” Then he asked, “What has Wal-Mart given the president in return? Or, for that matter, what has Wal-Mart given to the president’s constituents in return?”
Grayson said he expected today’s civil disobedience to have an impact because “it shows that people are willing to put their lives on the line, and at least temporarily their liberty on the line, in order to improve the circumstances for working people in this country.” He cast those circumstances as dire: “We’ve established a system that makes a tiny, tiny number of people unbelievably wealthy at the expense of everyone else – and turns everyone else into debt slaves and cheap labor.”
Private sector unions are continuing to fade as union burdened manufacturing heads offshore or to RTW states.
They are desperate to get more members and min wage workers is the only real avenue of recruitment.
Even if they can only grab 10 bucks a month in dues, it’s decent money if they can organize a couple mil at WM and fast food.
I suppose he supported the Tea Party movement. /s
What do the left call it when the right protest, astroturf as opposed to grass root.
So the new definition of grass roots is union paid protesters.
I would like to see state by state referenda that make mandatory union dues illegal. Members of unions should have to PERSONALLY make their payments.
Every time he opens his piehole, Grayson proves he has more than a few screws loose.
“The real issue isn’t where you start. It’s where you can go once you’ve started. Retail is one of the few industries that has jobs at all levels and ongoing advancement opportunities.”
...that sums it up! The problem is idiots in this country don’t care about “moving up”. Getting off the couch to go to work everyday is enough for them to think they deserve $15 p/h. They have no drive, no work ethic.
Has he addressed the unpaid interns the Dems are exploiting?
“We’ve established a system that makes a tiny, tiny number of people unbelievably wealthy at the expense of everyone else – and turns everyone else into debt slaves and cheap labor.”
The man’s a certifiable lunatic!
“Slaves” don’t make $10/hour; “slaves” don’t make $5/hour; “slaves” make ZERO an hour. All these whiners and complainers moaning because the job THEY CHOSE TO ACCEPT doesn’t pay $50K or $65K a year...
...and they expect me to give a rat’s fuzz-butt about that??
LUNACY! Abject LUNACY!!
2. If you get arrested anywhere for any reason, even if you are not tried or sentenced, it will go on "your" record.
3. Your record will be accessible to all companies including credit rating companies who will use any prior arrests as reason to downgrade your credit score. Similarly, insurance companies will use the information to increase your payments, credit card companies will use this information to increase your interest rates, future potential employers will use this info to throw your resume in the circular file, etc.
4. Liberals who are arrested for protesting "the man" will be able to have their arrests (and even convictions) expunged and will be able to force the credit rating agencies to upgrade their credit scores and all other companies to ignore any prior arrests or convictions.
5. Conservatives who are arrested will not be so fortunate.
People working teen-ager jobs think they should be in the middle class?
In the mind of liberals, the minimum wage needs to be enough to comfortably support a family of four.
I’d love to see the House pass a $20/hr min wage bill and dare the Senate and Baraq to make it law.
Let’s have the grand experiment.
Years ago unions tried to unionize our plant in Oklahoma and New Mexico. We learned quick how they tried to do it.
The union would quietly send a man to get hired in as a common worker in the plant.
He would then begin to talk up the unions and in general became an ass to those around him. His purpose was to get fired, then the union would sue the company because they fired the man for union activities.
The problem the unions never caught on to was that the men they sent in to get fired were always so incompetent they were fired for that reason.
They always lost the suit against the company because the company cold prove how incompetent the worker was.
I expect they are doing the same at Walmart.
“If one person falls out of the middle class, that’s sad,” Grayson told Salon. “But if millions of people fall out of the middle class, that creates a backlash which is being seen all over the country”
“If one person loses his health insurance, that’s sad,” Graybeard says. “But if millions of people lose their health insurance, that creates a backlash which is being seen all over the country,
Seriously, would Grayson be happier living in North Korea?
will potentially create a new political movement of the disenfranchised.”
________________________________
Yep.
This isn’t the new political movement you were looking for, Alan.
This fruitloop finally got something right. 0bamaCare will be the spark. The movement will look a lot like the attack on the Benghazi consulate. Dems like Grayson will be the main targets. The attackers will be mostly OWS type lefties.
Grayson is mentally ill, what kind of idiots would put him back into office.
put their lives on the line????
what a crackerass idiot..
now the guy in tienneman square, standing in front of a line of tanks, now HE put his life on the line..
you puny little union activists just stood out in the cold..
at most a minor inconvienience
Grayson’s grip on reality is fragile to say the least.
Let’s all remember to include Alan Grayson in any list of the stupidest women in the Congress from now on.
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