Barbara Ehrenreich: Challenging the Workplace Dictatorship

By Barbara Ehrenreich, AlterNet. Posted March 12, 2007.

George Orwell's "1984" is already here and it's called the American workplace, but finally there's a law in the works that might make jobs livable.

With the Employee Free Choice Act heading toward a Senate vote, conservative columnist George F. Will has suddenly developed a tender concern for workers' rights. The act "strips all workers of privacy," he fumed in the Washington Post last week, and will repeal "a right -to secret ballots -- long considered fundamental to a democratic culture ..." As Will sees it, the unions are backing the act out of sheer desperation: Since they can't seem to win a fair fight for workers' allegiance, they want government to take away the workers' rights and help herd them into union membership.