Following the union-bashing pattern set by his fellow Republican governors– Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich and others– Maine’s Paul LePage has announced plans to remove a mural depicting the history of the state’s labor movement from the state’s Department of Labor offices in Augusta.
(You can see a slide show of the mural here.)
[A]fter what administration officials characterized as a handful of recent complaints about the perceived message behind the mural, the governor ordered its removal.
“When you walk into that lobby, there’s a clear message that comes across,” said the governor’s press secretary, Adrienne Bennett, citing complaints about the pro-union themes in the artwork. “There’s a new message in Augusta, and that’s that the governor works for the people, all the people, not just a single group.”
…..
Administration officials provided one written complaint about the mural, but said more informal complaints were raised with the governor’s office.“In studying the mural I also observed that this mural is nothing but propaganda to further the agenda of the union movement,” reads the written complaint, dated Feb. 24, and penned to LePage by a “secret admirer.” “I felt for a moment that I was in communist North Korea where they use these murals to brainwash the masses.”
Well, yeah. Except that in communist North Korea, free and independent unions don’t exist. In Maine, perhaps despite the wishes of Gov. LePage and his “secret admirer,” they still do.
[S]ome of the mural panels depict women shipbuilders during World War II, the 1986 International Paper strike in Jay, and former federal Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, whose family homestead in Newcastle is now the Frances Perkins Center. The 11th panel depicts a worker from the past offering a hammer to modern-day workers “who are unsure of its value in a changing world,” the website says.
Shocking stuff, indeed. But there’s more. Conference rooms at the Department of Labor are named for Frances Perkins and the late farmworkers’ union leader Cesar Chavez. LePage has called for renaming them.
David Clough of the Maine Federation for Independent Business said he saw the reasoning behind LePage’s requests regarding the mural’s removal and the renaming of the conference rooms.
“I know conference rooms A and B aren’t the most remarkable, but they are probably the least offensive,” said Clough, whose organization represents small-business interests.
Oh, I don’t know. That sounds kind of half-assed to me. Why not go all the way? How about changing the name of the Perkins conference room to the Jay Gould conference room– in honor of the 19th century railroad baron and union-buster who is reputed to have said, “I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.” And the Chavez conference room could be renamed for George F. Baer, president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, who wrote this memorable letter in 1902:
