What we are witnessing right now in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and other states is the final battle against the last bastion of union strength in this country. With the aggressive onslaught aimed at public employees and their unions that Republican governors have unleashed in recent weeks, it's long past time for politicians calling themselves "Democrats" to push aside the anti-labor elements inside their party and stand up for basic worker protections.
The share of private sector workers who belonged to unions fell from close to 20 percent in 1980 to 12.1 percent in 1990. By the 2000s it had dropped to only 7 percent. This decrease in private sector unionization is often attributed to changing attitudes among the workers themselves, but public employee unions grew steadily during this period and accounted for most of the new unionization. It was far more difficult for governmental institutions to practice the kind of aggressive anti-union tactics that have become the norm in the private sector since the 1980s.
Not anymore.
Now, using Wall Street's toxic waste dump of 2008 that produced high unemployment and budget deficits as their excuse, Republican governors and other puppets of big business are deploying the same underhanded, union-busting tactics to gut public sector unions that business has long leveled against private sector unions. This systematic destruction of public-sector unions must be fought as if the Democratic Party's life depended on it -- because it does.
It's time for politicians and public officials who call themselves "Democrats" to stop ceding the debate on deficits and taxes (and therefore public-sector unions) to the Republicans. It's all just rehashed Reaganomics: Give capital everything it wants and then prosperity will trickle down. But George W. Bush already put those policies into practice, and it was an unmitigated disaster. Now there's a concerted "bipartisan" project to take the deficits out of the hides of public workers, be they teachers, engineers, child protective services counselors, social workers, and in some cases, even police and firefighters.
"Democrats" who have been bashing public school teachers (and especially their unions) in the name of "reform" in recent years have done a gross disservice to all unionized public workers and to the labor movement as a whole. Now they find themselves on the same side as the anti-union Republicans who want to turn the whole country into a "right-to-work" free enterprise zone.
In Wisconsin right now, Democratic legislators have taken the extraordinary step of holing up in a hotel in Illinois to block a quorum for a vote on what would be the most anti-worker piece of legislation to come out of any state house in a generation. But they can't hide forever.
It's time to start acting like the labor party Democrats pretend to be when it's election time. A good start would be to stand unequivocally against any attack on public workers -- and that includes teachers and their unions too! Stand firm and in the streets if you have to -- but it's time to fight, not to compromise.
Voters who make up the progressive/labor base of the Democratic Party should ask the simple question of Democratic politicians: If you insist on going along with the long-term Republican project of dismantling the public sector and bringing down the working middle class in this country, then why should we vote for you?
What we need is a party that vigorously defends the role of government in society and the working people government serves. Most importantly, this new Democratic/Labor Party would be willing to fight rather than compromise on core principles.
Every time a Democratic politician (including Barack Obama) embraces the false premises of Reaganomics, it undermines the hard work progressives across the country are engaged in every day to push back against the assault on working people and their livelihoods.
Wall Street showed us in 2008 that the white collar crooks that run the "securities" racket are willing to take our society over the cliff if it allows them to pocket a piece of the proceeds as it goes down. Now these same moneyed interests are fighting tooth and nail against the mild regulations of the Dodd-Frank bill. Their puppets in the Congress, like Representative Spencer Bachus (R-Alabama), who chairs the most powerful financial committee in the House, wants to defund the regulators and bank examiners that are part of the desperately needed re-regulation of Wall Street.
So there you have it. There won't be enough government regulators to provide adequate oversight to head off the next meltdown and bailout. Wall Street wins, and public employees, who had nothing to do with creating the catastrophe, are paying the price.
Follow Joseph A. Palermo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JPalermo
Why have the employees at Google and Yahoo not unionized? Why is it that only those industries where the jobs can be easily reduced to a simple job descriptions have large unionized percentages (obviously excluding the public sector)? Why not try and figure out what the goal of a private sector union should be instead of pining for the days of big auto and steel unions?
The result of the global competition in these commodities are cheaper goods for consumers. If you really want higher wages then you need to buy only "made in the USA" products and pay a higher price. Our standard of living has been higher than it would have been because the majority of the stuff we buy is cheaper when made off shore.
Regarding public sector unions, raise the wages, get rid of defined benefit pension plans and medical plans. The problem today is that we are sending current dollars to past pension obligations, reducing services for the poor and needy. We over promised in the past, now we need to be honest about that fact, otherwise you will get no sympathy from the general public.
They allowed public employees to be savaged by Schwazzenager & Co and then just whimpered and threw up their hands as Arnold's judges hacked away at wages and pensions. They offered no fight what so ever when a judge said that the legislature agreed to and passed the cuts because they never objected.
Public employees are called "Welfare Queens" and the legislators with their fat cat benefit packages do nothing.
California is at a crossroads. We have no money because our current tax receipts, which are back at the 2005 level and 2007/08 receipts a huge bubble do to the housing bubble, are being pushed into a black hole that is the underfunded pensions. Every day that the investment portfolios of the two largest hedge funds in the world (CalPERS and CalSTRS) do not return 8% the taxpayer makes up the difference. Given that the 60 year return on the US stock market is 6.8% per year and this fund is obligated to own bonds, this movement of current tax receipts into past underfunded pensions is a given.
The result, fewer and fewer services or a higher and higher tax burden. The question is when both parties (the Repubs are supported by the prison guards union, the Dems the teachers union) will realize that it is unsustainable. Raise the wages, get rid of the pensions and benefits.
The public employees aren't likely to get sympathy from their private sector friends and neighbors. Republicans, corporations, the media etc. successfully delivered the anti-union message over the years. Middle america believed the oligarchy's message that unions were holding america back and money would rain from the sky for everyone if only corporations weren't saddled with obligations to their employees. This, of course, did not happen. The oligarchy still blames the unions and the government. So, taking to the streets is not going to generate any interest in the public employee's plight. It will generate only resentment from private sector people who don't receive half the compensation their government counterparts receive.
What's needed is a public demonstration of working people both union, non-union, public and private.