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UNION BASHING!  WISCONSIN GOV. SCOTT WALKER ....takes on the unions |
Wisconsin's governor may be opening Pandora's box
of TheColumnists.com
I'm hoping the arrogant--and ignorant--new Republican governor of Wisconsin soon will live to regret his all-out campaign to wreck unionism in his state. Meanwhile, equally short-sighted GOP governors in other states are revving their engines, praying this will give them a chance to stamp out unions all over America.
Yes, it's a sorry time for America, all right.
Right now I'm pretty certain this anti-union movement is going to backfire on Republicans and they'll soon be facing an enraged and inspisred wave of Democrats and independents who are smart enough to realize what a stupid crusade is coming out of Wisconsin.
This is a time when large corporations are reaching for all the reins of power in our nation. They would love nothing better than to gain enough political allies to wipe all the union-enabling laws off our books so they can de-certify every union shop in America and go back to the days when their employes would meekly take whatever management wanted to give them.
To me, this anti-union movement truly exhibits the moral bankruptcy of the modern Republican party, which now stands for selfishness and greed above all. It's the party that believes rich people should be left alone to rule America and there should be no middle class left to stand in their way. They're fully involved in class warfare, rich against poor.
The ability of workers to bargain collectively is all that's keeping American business and industry from rolling us back to the days when children had to work to support their families and there were no health benefits, no pensions, no on-the-job safety rules and no future for anyone who disagrees with the venal programs of the bosses.
Hey, we're almost there already. One by one corporations have been shedding the pension programs that used to give workers some kind of incentive to stay with an employer for decades. Health plans are getting worse, not better. More and more workers are being hired to work part-time so the employer won't have to provide them with the benefits of full-time employes.
Many young people today have never worked in a union shop. They don't expect to be treated like valued employes when they're hired because so few employers do that unless they're forced to do so by a union.
I spent 40 years in the newspaper business, but only the first three in a non-union shop. My wife also spent her first three years working for a non-union newspaper. She voted against formation of a union while she worked there. It wasn't until she left that paper for a union paper that she finally learned that her previous employer had paid all women far less than the men were paid.
My first newspaper employer was a family-owned small town paper. The publisher called each of us into his office around Christmastime and gave us an envelope with our "bonus" in it. If you wanted a raise, you had to go in and negotiate for it. That's also the way it works in a union shop, although all the employes negotiate at one time, through their representatives, for cost of living increases, improvements in benefits and working conditions. If you feel you deserve a better deal than the union got for you, you are free to bargain privately for it. I did that on several occasions and every once in awhile I actually improved my deal, based on my improved performance.
Wisconsin's governor wanted to take away the negotiating rights of all goverment workers, except those involved in public safety, i.e. policemen and firemen. He also wanted to require an annual vote so workers could decide each year if the union would continue to exist. If that seems practical and fair to you, you are probably in management.
Trying to end the union's ability to enforce a closed shop is a bogus attempt to simply eliminate unions and collective bargaining. With that kind of shop, management just hires those new employes who don't want unions. Once it has enough anti-union workers in place, management calls for a vote to de-certify the union. It rewards the anti-union voters privately. Once management has ousted the union, it goes back to treating employes las shabby as it likes, even those who helped them oust the union.
When Democratis members of the Wisconsin legislature left the state in order to prevent a vote on the anti-union law, Walker and his GOP cronies simply rewrote the law, eliminating those aspects that required a quorum. With only Republicans voting for the bill, it passed, eliminating all collective bargainging rights for Wisconsin state employes.
Wisconsin voters put Walker in power and elected a majority of Republicans in the legislature, but I don't think they all wanted to see this happen. Walker's stated reason for eliminating collective bargaining was to keep the unions from blocking hisi plans to reduce benefits and wages for state employes. But the public already knows that those very same workers had agreed in advance to go along with the budget cuts he wanted.
That means Walker forged ahead with plans to cripple unionism among government workers purely out of his dislike of collective bargaining. He didn't want to have to negotiate with anyone next time around. Rather than try to persuade the unions to join him in trying to put Wisconsin in stable financial condition--something they clearly were willing to do--he chose instead to attack them and their hard-won rights to bargain together for wages and benefits.
This will so energize Democrats in Wisconsin--and whatever fair-minded Republicans may still exist there--that I'm hopeful it will result in a political backlash against Walker and all elected Republicans who backed him in this frontal assault on unionism. Already recall petitions are being circulated, targeting those legislators most responsible for the anti-union movement.
Unionism is good for America and it certainly is still good for Wisconsin. Unions were created in the first place because businessmen and industrialists abused their workers and performed so poorly in terms of working conditions for the people who did the work that made them wealthy. The Republican party seems intent on putting the power back into the hands of those same fat cats as if the labor movement never happened at all and never was necessary.
I guess it's true that we're all condemned to repeat history until we finally learn our lessons. I think the Wisconsin G.O.P is about to get a most seriosu history lesson shoved down their throats.
©2011 by Ron Miller.
This column first posted March 14, 2011.
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