Letters to the Editor - Labor Day, unions, Rep. Chip Roy, Ken Paxton, Park Cities

Speaking of labor ...

Re: “Airline groups plan to picket — American flight attendants and Southwest pilots still have no contract,” Wednesday Metro & Business story.

Thanks to Alexandra Skores for her story about the struggles of airline workers. I particularly liked the paragraph that began, “Labor Day should take on a whole new meaning ... ”

One could note many things changing as Labor Day is here, but the sea change is in Americans’ attitudes. While polling shows that Americans can barely tolerate our political institutions, 71% of us approve of unions! That means that workers’ actions, including strikes and contract fights, can count on tremendous support from the public.

The Dallas Labor Day Breakfast, which will feature the SAG-AFTRA strikers, will show that Texas political figures also support working families. Here’s the best news for Labor Day: A new poll reveals that Americans under age 30 support unions by 88%! The youth of America are backing change, and backing working families big time!

Gene Lantz, Dallas

... Your support matters

I’d like to share what Labor Day means to me.

My sister, Barb, killed herself in 2014 at age 59 because she couldn’t face one more night of work as a stocker at her local big-box store where she was paid $8 per hour. She struggled to pay her bills while her company’s CEO received millions. And while it’s true that last year her store raised its minimum hourly wage to $14, according to one study, the livable wage in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington today is $18.24 for one adult with no children.

Many of these big companies hire “labor-busting” lawyers when there is any effort among its workers to organize. But think about where the good jobs are in our community. They’re mostly union jobs: police and fire, pilots and flight attendants, UPS drivers, auto workers, communications workers and teachers.

The Service Employees International Union successfully organized workers in Las Vegas, and they now have about two million members representing over 100 occupations, including health care workers, security guards and hotel housekeepers. Support labor when you vote.

Elva Roy, Arlington

Lawmaker’s letter ‘an insult’

Re: “These are not comparable,” by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, Thursday Letters.

The letter from Rep. Roy was an insult to any Texan with a brain. He argues for defunding Homeland Security because he disagrees with White House policy. What claptrap!

A brief history of Roy: In 2021, he was caught on video saying he wanted “18 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done” during the Democratic-controlled Congress. He held up billions in aid to Texans after Hurricane Harvey and then blamed Rep. Nancy Pelosi for not holding members in Washington, D.C., to vote on the aid.

He advised Mark Meadows in the search for fraud in Georgia’s election results but then flipped, calling former President Donald Trump’s actions before Jan. 6 impeachable. Yet he voted against impeachment.

He blocked a bill praising the Capitol police because he said the bill included unrelated events. During COVID-19, he fought attempts to limit its impact and said that cases in Texas were dropping when, in fact, they were surging.

I could go on but all these actions and more can be easily verified. It does sound like Roy does believe in misinformation, chaos and confusion. And clearly, he expects this newspaper and us to ignore this.

Kerry Mayer, Lewisville

This actually won’t work

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy tried to justify his desire to defund the Department of Homeland Security by saying the intent was to force the administration to change its immigration policies at the border. He invoked James Madison’s words in his defense.

That may be his smokescreen intent, but such a defunding would prevent any kind of border enforcement. Perhaps he and other members of Congress could try to pass immigration enforcement and immigration law instead of relying on the executive branch to do the entire job.

Brian Bowles, Dallas/Southwest Oak Cliff

Thanks for Roy’s letter

Kudos to The Dallas Morning News for publishing U.S. Rep. Chip Roy’s pushback on the partisan journalism that equated efforts by the GOP to defund the Department of Homeland Security for not enforcing southern border security to defunding the police for enforcing the law.

Don Skaggs, Garland

Thanks to those with ethics

It seems the corruption in the attorney general’s office has spread from Ken Paxton to others who work there. When the top person lacks ethics, a signal is sent to the team that it is either OK for them to set their ethics aside or that they cannot be ethical in the support of the team leader.

That is why the state employees in the attorney general’s office should not be available to Paxton as part of his legal team. The citizens of the state of Texas should not have to pay for the defense of a self-serving man who has let us down by apparently skirting the law repeatedly over many years.

I appreciate the whistleblowers from his office who showed they do have ethics. We need to vote!

Dorothy Smith, Plano

An interesting situation

Interesting that the cities of Highland Park and University Park do not have to spend any taxpayer funds to “raze, clean and fence homeless encampments” because they do not have any. Does anybody in the city of Dallas Office of Homeless Solutions ever consider asking these government officials how they accomplish this? What do they do in the Park Cities that keeps the homeless folks from settling there?

Steven Wolfert, Dallas

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