What’s going on in Wisconsin and Ohio today is a radical right-wing Republican attempt to break public employee unions for the dual purpose of weakening the Democratic party and crippling private sector labor unions (leaving both without public employee allies). Claiming to plug budget gaps these Republicans are seeking to abolish collective bargaining rights. The public employee unions have agreed to paying a share into their pensions and health insurance equivalent to what private sector employees contribute. But, abolish their unions, or restrict them to negotiating only salaries and you take away rights of public employees recognized for the past seventy five years – this the working people of Wisconsin are protesting. Irresponsible politicians of both parties have spent the past decades negotiating deferred compensation -- where for low or no salary increases public employees were allowed to contribute less to their pensions and health insurance. The real cause of the state deficits is the Great Recession - caused not by public employees but by large multinational corporations and the super wealthy on Wall Street who are paying income taxes (when they pay and can’t find loopholes) at the lowest rates ever. Minnesota had a huge budget deficit. It raised income taxes on all those making over $½ million by 5% and closed the gap. Right wing Republicans want to close those gaps on the backs of the working men and women of America and while at it destroy their ability to exercise influence collectively through a labor union.
Labor Unions are not without their faults. Too many fat cat leaders who like corporate CEO’s earn too much (although nothing like the corporate salaries). Too much special interest style hob-nobbing with incumbent elected officials of both parties; and, in some union locals too much corruption. But those problems can be cleaned up, as they should be, and as they should be in the case of the multinational corporations.
Labor unions are an easy politcial target since today only about 16% of American families include union members. What some fail to realize is that all workers public and private, union and non-union, benefit from unions and collective bargaining. There would be no minimum wage laws today and few increases in those wages without the grass roots lobbying of unions most of whose members earn more than the minimum wage. Without organized labor this country would never have passed child labor laws, and our 9 to 14 year old children would still be working in sweatshops and at menial jobs. Many companies provide health and pension benefits to their workers modeled on what union workers receive in part to discourage their workers from organizing unions.
There is a tendency today to classify Americans in groups. There are the union and blue collar workers. Then there are the white collar and professional workers. The latter are often college educated with many having graduate degrees. These higher educated workers have bought into the canard that they are too good to be in unions. That’s another reason for the attack on public employee unions because they include well educated teachers and social workers and bridge the gap between the two. But if the radical right is successful in breaking the public employee unions they will come after the private sector unions with the misnamed “right-to-work” laws that have no legitimate meaning in an era when we no longer have closed shops.
If large multinational corporations are going to be allowed to spend whatever they want of their profits, to control the political branches of our government; and if the federal government is no longer to be what Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) saw it as, i.e., a powerful enough entity to control big business, -- then the preservation of our democracy depends upon enforcing the peoples’ rights. One of those rights is the right of association (though not named specifically it exists as a combination of the 1st and 9th amendments; the 1st includes “the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”.and the 9th provides that “the enumeration … of certain rights, shall not be constructed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”)).
In 1832 President Jackson was faced with the same crisis confronted thirty years later by President Abraham Lincoln -- whether the Union would be preserved. It Was. Now we must make certain that the working peoples Unions are Preserved!
2-21-2011
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