Republicans in Congress and elsewhere are going through laws and regulations to find anything that will reduce the ability of workers to resist their all-out assault on workers and their families - this time, they propose to eliminate food stamps to families of anyone who has the temerity to strike.

That’s right, HR 1135 is a bill submitted by several House Republicans that, if enacted would cut off food stamps to any family that includes someone on strike against his or her employer. They’re going after the adults in a striking family, but the aim of the GOP is to hit where it will hurt most, the striker’s children.

Even if it doesn’t have the slightest chance of passage in the Senate, even if it slips past a majority in the House, the bill indicates the direction the GOP is going in its attack on American workers, their families, and their communities. That’s what has trade unionists across the country in rallies and in the streets.

In Wisconsin, the scene of the opening salvo, where Governor Scott Walker blamed public workers for just about every ill of society, there are recall petitions for six Republicans, with petitions being circulated for a few more. He took a state budget problem that was the result of tax cuts for the rich and used it as an excuse to eliminate collective bargaining for government workers in Wisconsin.

HR 1135 was introduced by these House members: Louie Gohmert, R-Texas; Tim Scott, R-South Carolina; Dan Burton, R-Indiana; Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Scott Garrett, R-New Jersey. They are among Republican legislators who say their punishing proposal on food stamps is part of their effort “to provide an overall spending limit on means-tested welfare programs.”

Among these particular lawmakers are a few from states with very recent public displays of hostility toward unions, which means that they are hostile to any concerted actions taken by workers under the labor laws of the U.S. For example, just at the end of March, Republican Governor John Kasich signed into law a bill that largely eliminated collective bargaining for about 350,000 Ohio public workers. Where Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker intended to eliminate collective bargaining for most public workers, he exempted police and firefighters from the bargaining ban.

In Kasich’s Ohio, public workers can still negotiate wages and some working conditions, but they cannot negotiate pensions, health care benefits, or sick leave. Also, there will be no more automatic raises (read step increases for teachers and other workers at the city, village, county, and state levels of government) and any future raises for Ohio public workers will be based on “merit,” rather than seniority. Merit here is the code word for elimination of seniority, one of the equalizers of a union contract, which eliminates most forms of nepotism and favoritism.

It is strange that the gang of five Republicans would introduce HR 1135 at a time in the nation’s history in which there are few major strikes. The number of strikes each year has dwindled so much over the past few decades that one would think it was a non-issue. Nevertheless, the staffers of the Republicans have been combing the books for anything that smacks of benefits to working people and trying to find ways to eliminate them. This bill is one of those things, even though it might only be relevant to a literal handful of workers in the course of a year.

Over the past 70 years, workers were provided some protection against the capricious actions of their employers. Before such laws as the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, there were few protections for workers. In fact, in most states, workers who work without a union contract are considered “at will” workers. That is, they can be fired for any reason or for no reason. Men and women who work for wages in the U.S. know exactly what that means. The gang of five and their fellow Republicans across the country obviously do not.

Over the years, some states, recognizing the value of their citizens who were wageworkers, provided some extra protections. Although the food stamp program is federally funded, it is administered locally. Thus, Congressional Republicans can take the action anticipated in HR 1135 as a step to punish workers who stand up to their employers and go on strike. Since it is rare for non-union workers to strike, the aim of the gang of five can only be seen as another in a series of moves to weaken and render unions unable to represent their members, no matter where they work, in public service or in private industry.

When the labor laws were adopted in the U.S., if workers struck against their employer (with the exception of an economic strike), they could not be fired. Striking was a right that was given by a grateful country for the high productivity of the workers and the prosperity of their nation. It was a compact between labor and capital and, through that compact, the nation did prosper and we had a vital working class and a vast and growing middle class. For a few decades, many considered the United States to be a middle class nation.

The compact held until the presidential term of Ronald Reagan, who destroyed the compact by firing the air traffic controllers for striking in 1981. Firing was not enough, though, and he blacklisted all 11,500 from federal service of any kind. Because of that, none was allowed to work for any federal agency and many, if not most, never received their full pensions. Reagan’s action opened the floodgates for private employers to do the same. It was a semantic twist that gave them the power to destroy the compact: they were not actually firing the striking workers; they were merely permanently replacing them. As many pointed out at the time, it was a distinction without a difference.

Attempts by some lawmakers over the years to bring some fairness to the lopsided contest between workers and their employers were made from time to time and, along the way, food stamps for hungry families of striking workers was one. Republicans are determined to find all of those benefits (miniscule though they might be) and eliminate them.

If they can, they will do that until workers have little substance to resist employers of any stripe. One of the benefits that has been provided to striking workers in some states is that, after a period of time on strike, they are entitled to unemployment benefits.

Don’t tell the Republicans!

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.