Thread: NFL Communism ?...A Controversial Viewpoint..

Originally Posted by loki520

Hold the damn phone... where in the hell is the right to UNIONIZE in the Constitution?

Oh, I am so waiting to hear this....

It's in the submission stage. The second half will give Green Bay to Canada.

Originally Posted by loki520

Hold the damn phone... where in the hell is the right to UNIONIZE in the Constitution?

Oh, I am so waiting to hear this....

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.


http://www.billofrights.org/

Specifically loki, the First Amendment protects Americans rights to peaceable assembly, which leads to the right for Americans to form labor unions. In the case that the people feel that their rights are being infringed upon by their employers or the government, they have the right to contest said actions before the courts or government. This is as old as the Great Republic itself, and, indeed, does exist.

Originally Posted by The Benjamin

All that is basically saying is they have the right to protest.

Nothing about unionizing

What you are basically saying, Benji, could also be said in the case of the 2nd Amendment. The syntax in the amendment states, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Liberals claim that since there are no communal township militias to be found in the United States, the 2nd Amendment should be abolished, while Conservatives allude to the existence of a militia as a clear and ever present threat to the rise of and in tyrannical rule by a government that is stepping on the liberties as prescribed in the Constitution. Both the 1st and 2nd Amendments are notoriously ambiguous in their wording, but there is no doubt in my mind that in the 1st Amendment, the right to peaceable assembly and to petition the government for the redress of grievances leaves the doors open for people to assemble, to unionize, and to take their matters to due process if they see that it is necessary in order for their rights to be recognized.

Wow... I've never seen anyone confuse the Constitution and the Wagner Act before.

Originally Posted by loki520

Wow... I've never seen anyone confuse the Constitution and the Wagner Act before.

Sorry pal, but I confused neither. The 1st Amendment is the base language that ultimately opened the door for the creation of labor unions. Had the American people not had the 1st Amendment, which laid out more rights and liberties than simply free speech, the ability to form labor unions would have been impossible. Anyone who attended grade school or took a high school civics history/civics class knows this. Apparently, someone or some people didn't get the memo.

Originally Posted by soulman

Dags, Loki is right. The US Constitution does not grant the right for citizens to form labor unions. The First Ammendment in the Bill of Rights that you refer to and underline only grants the right of a peaceful assembly to petition (ask) the US Government redress (consider or answer) grievances of the citizenry against them. It neither says nor implies anything specifically about anyone's rights to form or join a lablor union.

That's covered by the Wagner Act of 1935 which gave the right to employees to form unions and to collectively bargain. Here's a link to a reprint of that law which is a US Statute and not an Ammendment to the Constitution.

http://www.civics-online.org/library...agner_act.html

It's also referred to as the National Labor Relations Act which is what gives the NFL the right to appeal the NFLPA's decertification to the National Labor Relations Board as to it's legitimacy. Here's a link to the NLRA.

http://www.stfrancis.edu/content/ba/...rks/wagner.htm

I'm not trying to wrong you here pal but I think you ought to read these before you form an opinion as to what law grants those right you posted.

Paul, I am merely stating a fact here: without the First Amendment, the Wagner Act would never have passed because the federalized government (local, state, national levels) would have always favored the wealthy owners of production, and thus would have protected their rights to simply fire striking workers without due recourse and replace them with new ones. Under the First Amendment, all people are given the right to assemble and publicly address deplorable conditions, whether it come from the government or from bosses. There are precedents in nearly every case, and rarely is anything new under the sun. The United States, beginning in 1791, gave the people the right to peaceably assemble, which is the whole basis under which the Wagner Act of 1935 had to have been formulated.

I do not doubt the significance of the Wagner Act, but do get your history straight. (This is the historian in me coming out -- I am a history major at the University of Tennessee, and if I were set to the task of reading and researching the origins of labor unions in the United States, I would start at the very beginning of the early American republic, work through the Bill of Rights, the Industrial Revolution, the era of Populist politics in the latter quarter of the 19th Century on into the 20th Century, and eventually correlate this by linking how the First Amendment influenced the formation of the laws that were passed in the 1930s during the height of the Great Depression.) Even this article, with the link below, describes in detail how labor unions go back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries among tradesmen, with unionization increasing throughout the 1800s with the rise of the Industrial Revolution in America. I invite you to read it. It does mention the Wagner Act, but there were unions in the United States far before 1935. However, what the Wagner Act did do was expand the rights of workers to unionize without fear of crackdown by the bosses, as well as the government. Again, I repeat: the Wagner Act DID NOT formally legalize labor unions in the United States. I also never said directly that the First Amendment did, either. Labor unions date back to the 18th/early 19th Centuries in America, and were definitely FACILITATED in their formation by the right to peaceable assembly located within that amendment.

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/bus/A0861691.html

Regardless of what you might think, the Wagner Act DID NOT legalize unions in the United States. And, as I mentioned before, neither did the First Amendment directly. The First Amendment paved the way for this to happen, so unionization in America owes its entire existence to that amendment, for the Wagner Act's foundation was most likely built on that.

Consider what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has to say on their website about the history of labor unions:

"The ACLU, the NAACP, founded in 1909, and labor unions, whose very right to exist had not yet been recognized by the courts, began to challenge constitutional violations in court on behalf of those who had been previously shut out. This was the beginning of what has come to be known as public interest law. They provided the missing ingredient that made our constitutional system and Bill of Rights finally work." (Source: http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_p...-brief-history)

And lastly, regardless of whether the Central Labor Union or if the American Federation of Labor (AFL) were legally recognized in the United States in the year of its founding (1866), they were perhaps the first major labor unions to play serious roles in public policy. Consider what this website has to say:

"Labor Day, a holiday observed on the first Monday in September, is a creation of the organized labor movement. The day is intended to honor the achievements of American workers and the contributions they have made to the prosperity and strength of the United States. The first Labor Day celebration was organized by members of the Central Labor Union and held on 5 September 1882.

The American Federation of Labor (AFL), formed in 1866, made many contributions to the cause of protecting the rights of American workers. The group was instrumental in the creation of the U.S. Department of Labor and the Children’s Bureau in the 1890s. The AFL also worked to pass the Clayton Act of 1914. This important piece of legislation allowed workers to use boycotts, strikes, and peaceful picketing as negotiation tools." (Source: http://www.wisegeek.com/how-did-labor-unions-start.htm)

In conclusion, it is entirely possible that this whole powder keg argument between the three of us (me, loki, and soulman) that encompasses the existence of labor unions begins and ends with the Wagner Act of 1935. However, I prefer to believe that based on the evidence brought before everyone here, that unions were obviously recognized before the law was passed, and its seeds were sewn by the First Amendment. None other than the ACLU has taken up the torch that labor unions' plight to even exist, along with those of the NAACP and themselves, base themselves wholly upon their rights as it pertains to the Bill of Rights, most specifically, the First Amendment. While the Wagner Act was significant, and I am not doubting its implicit validity, it owes its entire existence on the right to peaceably assemble and to redress grievances before the government.