I first started thinking about workers rights back in 1979 when I was president of a shoeworkers local here in Maine. One day, I was arrested for refusing to take down a flyer on the bulletin board about a resolution my union had passed against a nearby nuclear power plant.
Nukes don t have anything to do with it.
So the antinuke flyer wasn t protected activity. I d grown up thinking that we had freedom of speech in this country, so I was stunned. We put this paper together because we believe we need a whole new way of looking at our rights as workers and at labor law. There s a story I sometimes tell to explain why we need a new theory of labor law. Let s say you know nothing about cars except how to drive one.