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From People’s World:

“The American middle class is under assault,” the platform declares. After a prior GOP “administration that was bent on destroying unions, the president and the Democratic Party believe in the right to organize” and in “supporting American workers with strong labor laws.”

While platforms are usually filed and forgotten, they are indexes of party principles at that point in time. And a recent academic study showed, surprisingly, that platform promises were later written into law more often than expected.

That makes the Democrats’ strong endorsement of worker rights, while not unexpected, welcome. The Employee Free Choice Act, with the provisions the platform backs, would have helped level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing drives and in bargaining first contracts. A planned GOP Senate filibuster killed it.

“Democrats believe the right to organize and collective bargaining is a fundamental American value,” the platform says. It pledged the party to fight for “laws that provide a fair process to choose union representation and for increased penalties” for labor law-breakers. Both concepts were key sections of the EFCA.

And the platform declares the party’s opposition to “attacks on collective bargaining that governors and states are undertaking” – a thinly veiled reference to GOP-run state governments that killed collective bargaining rights for public workers (Wisconsin) and tried to do so (Ohio).

Meanwhile, the GOP Party Platform seeks to erode workers’ rights:

Steven Greenhouse of The New York Times says the Republican platform “calls for numerous steps that could significantly weaken America’s labor unions.”

Just what does the platform say about workers’ rights, unions, job safety, wages and more?

It “salutes Republican governors and state legislators” for their efforts to weaken workers’ rights, such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott’s Walker’s assault on the public-sector workers and the law he pushed through eliminating their collective bargaining rights.

For the first time ever, the Republican platform calls for national “right to work” for less law. Such laws, says American Rights at Work:

drive down wages, benefits, and overall living standards for everyone…and laws do not create jobs or improve a state’s business climate.

Today, workers and employers are allowed to enter into voluntary agreements that allow the workers to choose to join a union by signing recognition cards and if the majority does, the employer will recognize the workers’ choice. The Republican platform calls for banning that practice.

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