Unions have historically protected workers’ rights Re: “Anti-union mood moves to Nebraska’s modest unions,” March 30
As a union sheet-metal worker for over 20 years I, like so many others, fear my unemployment benefits will be exhausted and/or my health care plan will expire before I get another job. Sometimes, while watching my grandchildren playing, I wonder what their future holds.
Everything comes with a price. For generations, organized labor struggled to fight for worker rights, withstanding intimidation, beatings, and imprisonment. Some union members sacrificed their lives to establish a safe workplace with fair wages and good benefits that helped make our country great.
Our predecessors’ wisdom and vision proved we must have a shared commitment, lest the gains of workers be swept aside. Some at the helm are steering with a broken moral compass, selling our rights and earned privileges down the road, forgetting what “for and by the people” means.
But undermining workers’ rights by decimating labor unions is not only an affront to our freedom, it won’t solve the unfunded liabilities problem or wasteful spending in our country.
Darrell J. Fisher
Erie, Pa.
Buying ‘green’ supports Chinese regime
Re: “Blame environmentalists for plastic bag litter,” from readers, & “S.C. lawmakers take a dim view of new light bulbs,” March 29
It was fitting that this letter to the editor and an AP article on South Carolina’s effort to keep incandescent light bulbs while the federal government tries to phase them out in favor of those “squiggly” fluorescent ones both appeared on the same day.
Besides the fact that they’re supposed to be “green,” what do canvas bags and twirly light bulbs have in common? They’re both made in China! And in just a couple of years, we’ll have to buy them.
We should be boycotting China with all the fervor with which we were boycotted and isolated South Africa not too many years ago — and for morally comparable reasons. And given the undeniable fact that the regime forces women to abort their own children, the so-called “pro-choice” movement should be spearheading that effort. Yet we support and enrich a morally bankrupt regime to make ourselves feel morally superior.
Stephen Kosciesza
Silver Spring
United Nations is biased and corrupt
Re: “U.N. authorizes no-fly zone over Libya,” Beltway Confidential, March 17
If there were a United Nations in 1861 when the American Civil War started, I wonder what, if anything, it would have done. Voted to interfere? If so, on which side? Or would it do nothing?
In the Civil War, as in all wars, there were plenty of humanitarian issues that would have allowed the United Nations to interfere. However, because the Southern states wanted to secede from the United States and become a separate, independent country, would the United Nations have had any right to interfere?
What would the United Nations have done when the U.S. Army slaughtered the Indians so the U.S. government could steal their land? Would it have intervened then?
Today’s United Nations is biased and corrupt, just as the League of Nations was. Its charter isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Goodwin P. Back
Etowah, Tenn.
