This week, Maine's Republican governor, Paul LePage, went forward with his effort to scrub Maine's Labor Department building clean of any reference to the movement that was responsible for the creation of that department: the union movement.
LePage argued that references to the union movement or union leaders were inappropriate in this state building ("one-sided," his spokesman said) and ordered the removal of an 11-panel mural depicting workers in which unions also were portrayed in a favorable light.
At the same time, Maine's labor commissioner has announced that she is erasing the names of labor leader Cesar Chavez; the first female presidential Cabinet member, Frances Perkins; and other pro-union figures from the Labor Department conference rooms that were named in their honor. She is holding a contest to come up with new, and presumably less labor-friendly, names.
The nation has witnessed an aggressive set of attacks on unions this year. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker pushed through controversial legislation that stripped most of his state's public workers of many of their bargaining rights. Ohio legislators just passed a bill that would restrict the collective bargaining rights of some 350,000 police officers, firefighters, teachers and others. Their counterparts in Florida are contemplating banning public employee unions from collecting dues from their members through an automatic payroll deduction.
In the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans are pushing legislation that would count any worker who fails to vote in a union election under the Railway Labor Act as having voted against union representation.
