Republicans strive to make their platform worse on workers' issues in 2012 than it was in 2008

The horrors of the 2012 Republican platform are legion, from abortion to marriage equality to to financial reform. To that list, you can of course add labor issues, where the Republican Party's quest to have its 2012 platform be not just bad but decisively worse than previous ones continues. Josh Eidelson compares 2012 to 2008:

The 2008 platform affirmed 'the right of states to enact Right-to-Work laws' in the same breath as the right of workers to bargain collectively. In contrast, the 2012 version 'encourage[s]' states to pass such laws, and endorses 'the enactment of a National Right-to-Work law to promote worker freedom and to promote greater economic liberty.' [...]

The new platform also takes a more hostile stance towards construction unions, demanding 'an end to the Project Labor Agreements' and 'repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act.' Both PLAs and Davis-Bacon establish wage standards for construction projects, making it easier for contractors that use union labor to compete with cheaper non-union contractors for work (Davis-Bacon covers federal contracts; PLAs are project-specific agreements).

Republicans would also "rein in" the "overreaching regulation agenda" of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, i.e. the effort to keep workers from being killed, injured, or made sick by their jobs. In fact, they'd rein OSHA in with a law they've oh-so-cleverly titled the REINS Act, under which Congress would have to vote on any regulation with more than $100 million of annual economic impact. Congress would have 70 days to vote on these regulations, so basically, either no regulation would ever be passed or that would be all Congress did. Which is the point. Already, safety and health regulations are being passed at a glacial pace, with some delayed for decades.

Workers in the states do have one thing going for them, though: They're not in the Pacific territories, which the Republican Party thinks "should have flexibility to determine the minimum wage, which has seriously restricted progress in the private sector." That's what you'd call a foot in the door on the way to repealing the federal minimum wage altogether.

The basic message of the Republican platform on labor issues is this: Rights are there to be taken from workers and given to the 1 percent. Workers should lose the right to be paid a decent wage or protected from harm; the 1 percent should gain the right to pay lower wages and ignore safety concerns. Intrade should open betting on whether it'll take until 2024 for the Republican platform to advocate abolishing the minimum wage or whether they'll get to it sooner than that.