After two weeks of protests in Wisconsin, we are now watching demonstrations spread across the country. Over the weekend, the online advocacy group MoveOn.org helped mobilize tens of thousands of people, who marched in all 50 state capitals in support of Wisconsin workers. Demonstrators are speaking out against attacks by Republican governors in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan and their own states.
It is entirely appropriate that protests should spread, because recent events in Wisconsin are only a window into what is happening in states scattered across the country. It is important that we understand the scope of this debate. This is a discussion that has impact on all Americans, not just union members. One point should be clear: This is not a story of public employees trying to feed at the trough. It is a story about whether or not governors can take away fundamental workers' rights.
Everyone in this country is entitled to their opinion about politics and public policy. Every governor is free to propose policies that he or she feels are in the public interest, even if others might disagree with those actions. But they must follow the rule of law.
In this case, newly elected Republican governors can certainly negotiate contracts with public employees. But there is a lawful process for such negotiation. It involves sitting down at a bargaining table, talking through disagreements, and coming to a mutual agreement. Instead of engaging in this process, governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker want to unilaterally take away people's rights, while claiming that they are doing something entirely different. He and others like him are using budget issues as a subterfuge for their power grab. That is not acceptable. And it is why they have stirred the passions of so many.
Many people may not see collectively bargaining as relevant to problems in their own work lives. You might think, I don't need a union because I'm a professional. Even if this is the case, you are nevertheless affected by a growing imbalance of power in today's workplaces.
There was a time in America when employers couldn't unilaterally decide to take away health care or pensions. Workers had some say in deciding to accept less in wages in order to hold on to their families' health care coverage. Yet in recent decades, we've moved toward a situation where there are little or no counterbalances to the whims of employers. America's once-strong middle class has dwindled as a result.
Whether any of us happen to be union or non-union, we need to get back to the day when people had a say in negotiating the terms of their employment. In the past, public employees opted to prioritize their health care and retirement over other forms of compensation. They should still have a right to believe their employers will abide by the legitimate contracts they previously negotiated. They have the right, in other words, to be treated just as any of us would expect to be treated when we've come to an agreement with an employer regarding our livelihoods.
It is important to understand that this is not a question of tightening belts to cope with a moment of economic crisis. Public employees in Wisconsin and beyond have been very clear that they are willing to bear their share of common sacrifice in tough times. But they are not willing to give up the basic rights to associate, to belong to a union, or to organize collectively.
This is something that should matter for all Americans. Because if our rights related to association and collective bargaining can simply be denied, taken away as part of an executive initiative disguised as being about something else, then other rights are also at risk. We avoid restricting freedom of speech in our country because we recognize that encroachments on our freedoms create a slippery slope. One violation of basic rights leads to another. If we don't stand up now against abuses of power on the part of state executives, the safety of our dearest liberties could be called into question.
Our ability to freely associate and form organizations to advance whatever political and economic interests we might have is one of the things that makes this country great. It is something that Alexis de Tocqueville admired about American democracy when he wrote his renowned observations about our political system in the early nineteenth century.
We abandon this democratic tradition at our peril. A politics that condemns public employees for being greedy because they insist on maintaining their rights is profoundly dishonest and dangerous. The fact that we have elections in this country is not enough to safeguard our democracy. If we allow rights to be restricted, under the auspices of a twisted interpretation of the rule of law, we follow a treacherous path that has historically led the way to tyranny.
Those outside of Wisconsin who have joined in solidarity protests, and those speaking out against assaults by their own governors on middle-class employees understand that this issue impacts us all. Our rights are too precious to be sacrificed without a fight.
Amy Dean is co-author, with David Reynolds, of A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement. She worked for nearly two decades in the labor movement and now works to develop new and innovative organizing strategies for social change organizations in progressive, labor, and faith communities. You can follow Amy on Twitter at @amybdean, or she can be reached via the Web site, www.amybdean.com.
Follow Amy B. Dean on Twitter: www.twitter.com/amybdean
http://staffingtalk.com/2011/03/cba-protesters-full-force-columbus-ohio-picture-gallery/
Build businesses, not labor unions!
If all the time, energy, and resources that has gone into Labor Unions over the past 50 years had gone instead into entrepreneurship, our economy would be a whole lot stronger, today, than it is!
Cut the government bureaucracies down 25%.
Then, there's lots of money for the lowly teachers at the bottom, struggling to make a living.
The dirty secret is, this is all about maintaining the government bureaucracies. So that bureaucracies (BIG-Brother) that keep growing and growing, and growing. SUCKING the last dollars from the Citizen's Treasury. Now there nothing left for the low paid teacher on the ladder.
Oh, and how about those brand new schools (that weren't needed)? A small town in Wourburn Massachusetts has about FIVE multi-million dollar, brand new schools that were not needed. All the schools needed were some rehab......Oooooo, gotta have new schools. Well the coffers are now broke everyone, and you expect to keep ROBBING the Taxpayers, for poor decision-making? Who do you think you are,,,,,,AIG, or Goldman Sachs? (ha, ha, ha)
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Union "Auto" workers and "Truck" drivers created the Middle Class. These worker unions produced something that people wanted.
"Government" workers SUCK off us all, to feed their burgeoning BIG-Brother bureacracies, commissars, administrators, etc., etc., Then they create more "offices" for government bureaucrat relatives, who want in on the gravy train, so their family members can SUCK off the Taxpayers as well. All those wonderful (paid for by the Taxpayer) "benefits" for cronies and relatives for the politician's families, and families fo the Bureaucrats.
This is what the Chinese government does. They create jobs in government, for the Elite Class of leftover Communist families. They SUCK off everyone else to survive.
Let's not confuse "workers" who produce something, with "government" workers who drain the Taxpayers' Treasury.
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"Government" workers ARE the wealthy, compared to all those poor folks who acturally "produce" something out there in the work force. We're not talking about "Auto" workers who actually produce things people want.
Are you living in the real world?
I meet people every day, who have 1/2 of "government" workers.
Are you interested in reality?
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WE THE PEOPLE do not owe government workers a living.
You're attempting to confuse the issue of "Auto Workers" (who actually build something people want) with "government workers", who shake the Taxpayer's down.
Also, we need to stop the Global Banker gangsters as well, who have legally RAIDED the US Treasury. Another shake-down, provided by the gangster parties: Bushwhackers, and the Demoncrat controlled Congress in 2008.
Both the "Stimulus Package", and the Banker Bailouts (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008) are legalized THEFT, that still need to be addressed. It is possible Americans may bring justice later, when they lose everything in the financial calamity coming in 2012.
You think the economy is bad now?
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1. Living wages rather than slave wages
2. 5 day workweek rather than 7
3. Minimum wage
4. Health care
5. Pension
6. Paid holidays
7. Paid vacation
8. Safety in the workplace
9. Bottom-up representation
10. Liberal voice in Washington (Democrats have defaulted)
11. Middle Class
12. Countervailing force to corporations.
Though fought for and won by union labor, these benefit ALL workers.
The more important question would be why would anyone, other than the few
rich in this country, support management in Wisconsin and their Republican
lackeys who are hell-bent on destroying the middle class?
Public employee “unions” are NOT unions and NEVER HAVE BEEN.
They are NOTHING MORE than corrupt collusion with the Social Democrat Party designed to artificailly inflate the wages and benefits of the former and ensure the political success of the latter. They are corruption incarnate.
WHO is "Corruption Incarnate?" Corporate CEOs that take taxpayer money to bet with in the stock market, and then take more taxpayer money to cover their losses? OR teachers, police, firefighters, and other union workers trying to make a living and support their family? Its an easy answer if you live in the real world.
I too am middle class, though a former corporate guy. The problem is not some teacher (or police, fire, etc) making fifty to sixty thousand a year, health care, and small pension. The problem is Wisconsin's new tax breaks for corporations and the Wall Street collapse under Bush that precipitated 20% unemployment and collapsed tax receipts in all fifty states. These same corporate pigs were not only bailed out by taxpayers, they never missed a paycheck, stockoption, bonus, company car, or ride on the corporate jet. You might notice teacher's get none of the above. Teacher's are underpaid not overpaid and I don't know any corporate guy that would work for the teacher's packages you say are "sucking the real working class dry."
Though a corporate management guy myself, I now wish I had the benefit of a white collar union where I worked before the mass layoffs. No such luck.
I left out of the above list the eight hour workday, child labor laws, and overtime pay.
The next election will probably turn on support of labor/middle class in America. Republicans have done the Democrats a huge favor with their Wisconsin Labor assault in that it has unified a Democratic Party that was splitting, its put the Midwest back in play where they were Republican in the last election, and the Wisconsin Crisis has put a renewed focus on unions in America with latest polls showing unions holding almost 2:1 edge over anti-union sentiment.
Look at this Income and Expense graph from Mary Meeker at Kliner Perkins (west coast hedge fund and Obama supporter)........ it says it all ---> http://read.bi/e9dlms
She's a slasher. Not a mention of corporate taxes or defense spending.
And what of the increased number of folks needing Medicare because they
grew old? Must be their fault that they grew old and infirm after working
for a lifetime.
BoulderGuy, she's not the type of supporter Obama needs.
We need the plumbers unions and teachers and nurses and village clerks and sanitation people and people who are unemployed to put on their marching shoes this spring. We need to raise a ruckus in 2011 and then vote big time in 2012.
DIRT CHEAP LABOR = HUGE CORPORATE PROFITS
HUGE CORPORATE PROFITS = HAPPY CORPORATE STOCKHOLDERS
'Nuff said.
Why aren’t the unions protesting collective bargaining rights in states were they are illegal? Like Colorado for example, could it be that those states are not important enough for the democratic party or that they don’t want anger the voters in those areas?
Why aren’t the unions calling for collective bargaining rights at the Federal level? Are they worried that this issue would then be relevant to all Americans?
Why do they support only closed shops in WI, if I am a state worker then I am compelled to join the union. That doesn’t seem democrat let alone progressive.
And the one thing they can’t defined is the fact that the union workers in this state are paid Salary & benefits, on average, more than the average tax payers, that is also not right.
The attacks against the governor of these states, to me, seem to be a way to draw attention away from the failure of their own ideals.
I bet you think taxes should be voluntary too. That would be cool, because then I could choose not to fund those stupid wars or those oil and agribusiness subsidies.