STAND

Are those feet cool or what?

According to biologists, birds are the contemporary descendants of dinosaurs. And peacocks definitely have dinosaur feet.

Don't you wish you had feet like that? I do (aside from the whole shoe thing).

But El Cabrero digresses....

Do you want to do something for the good of the country? Something that will promote shared prosperity and the stability of democracy?

If your answer is "yes," then there's something you can do: support restoring the right of workers to organize into unions without fear of retaliation. That one step would probably do more to restore the proverbial American Dream than any other single piece of legislation.

If workers could freely organize, they'd be able to negotiate better wages, health care, and pensions and we'd all be better off in the long run. Even the rich folks.

As things now stand, though, trying to organize brings a serious threat of retaliation, including job loss, even though doing so is illegal.

According to a new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research,

By 2005, pro-union workers involved in union election campaigns faced about a 1.8 percent chance of being illegally fired during the course of the campaign. If we assume that employers target union organizers and activists, and that union organizers and activists make up about 10 percent of pro-union workers, our estimates suggest that almost one-in-five union organizers or activists can expect to be fired as a result of their activities in a union election campaign.

One way to counter this injustice is to support the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to join unions without fear of retaliation and increase penalties on employers who break the law.

As things now stand, this measure has a decent chance of passing the U.S. House but faces more serious challenges in the Senate. But if enough people push for it over the next two years, we have a chance of winning a victory that would make possible the expansion of the U.S. middle class after years of skewed priorities and maldistribution of wealth.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED