The real problem with government is elected officials who don't truly represent their constituents

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Just Saying: Politicians not worker friendly
By Josh Moon, April 13, 2014

Big government is bad.

You hear that a lot from conservatives, usually as they're speaking on one of the federally mandated free-broadcast networks or being quoted in news stories delivered by the big government-created Internet. But really, they say, government is pretty much awful, with its business-crushing regulations and Nazi-like intrusions into the personal lives of Americans.

And every election year, just like clockwork, they trot out the Big Government Boogeyman to demonstrate just how awful government can be and prove the lengths to which they'll go to protect you from it.

Montgomery Congresswoman Martha Roby has been following that script word for word lately as she's gone after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

OSHA announced a few weeks ago that it would perform targeted inspections of auto parts suppliers in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi — in part because of higher-than-usual rates of injuries at those plants over the years.

Immediately, Roby smelled a rat.

Setting aside that these targeted inspections are routine for OSHA — they perform them regularly all over the country and in various types of plants — Roby decided that the agency was singling out these three states because they are right-to-work states. And to prove her point, she noted the OSHA practice — established long before the current administration took office — of allowing a third-party representatives, sometimes from a union, to accompany the agency on its inspections.

Well, this was just too much.

Roby has penned an op-ed, appeared on Fox News and quizzed labor secretary Thomas Perez at a Congressional hearing.

But what she hasn't done is explain how in the world a targeted safety check, which has clearly defined parameters, that is announced weeks in advance is somehow overstepping the bounds for an agency that ensures safety.

Nor has she explained how going through these safety inspections — which ensure compliance with rules and regulations that each company agrees to follow when it opens up on American soil — is unfair or improper.

In fact, all she's done is complain that Perez and OSHA haven't provided enough evidence to justify the inspections. And that might be a decent point, if it were at all true.

There are documented higher rates of accidents and injuries at these plants over an extended period of time. Perez said OSHA made special efforts over a five-year span to work with these plants to lower the injury and illness rates, but to no avail.

There's your cause for inspection.

As for a union representative possibly going along, so what? Why does everyone get so freaked out over the mention of a union? As a matter of fact, so what if Alabama's auto suppliers unionize? (I'll pause here so conservatives and Republican politicians can ward off the vapors.)

It's unimaginable to me that unions have become this scary boogeyman to working-class people. More unimaginable than a government safety program being cast as a supervillain.

The middle-class working man is a dying species. And we all know it.

For years, unions provided the middle class with protections and a negotiating voice. Unions ensured that employees got a proper percentage of profits, that CEO pay didn't skyrocket while worker wages stagnated, that worker benefits weren't systematically stripped away and that workers were properly trained and worked in safe environments.

Look at major U.S. corporations today, as unions have steadily died, and tell me what the problems are. Start with the list I just mentioned.

Conservatives love to sell this line that the free market will solve all of these issues, that there's no need for unions or the government agencies because the free market will make sure they do right.

Except without unions and those agencies, the wage gap in this country is on par with where it was just prior to the Great Depression and worker safety measures used to consist of making sure the dead co-worker next to you was out of the way before continuing on.

Look, don't get me wrong, government agencies aren't all sunshine and roses. They make mistakes. Sometimes they overstep. But at the same time, let's stop acting as if some of these agencies are evil or that the work they do isn't important.

And if you happen to be an elected official — particularly a Congresswoman representing a large district with thousands of blue-collar workers — maybe your focus shouldn't be on trumping up this fairytale of injustice being heaped upon the poor ol' million-dollar company. Maybe it should be on figuring out why your constituents are being injured, sickened and killed at a higher rate.

Call me crazy, but a member of Congress choosing to protect the big company at the possible expense of her constituents seems like the real problem with government.
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