From a union worker family standpoint…

“I really want to know what the right wing and the Tea Party has against unions?”

As an active duty Army officer, I was somewhat surprised to find myself transferred to a Civilian agency in Detroit, MI. (A great assignment, by the way.) Anyway, I recall waiting for a phone to be installed. The installer arrived and promptly sat down upon my desk. Not a good sign, I figure.

“You here to install the phone?” I asked.
“Uh huh,” says installer.

But he doesn’t move. So after a couple of more polite inquiries, I ask him why he isn’t working. Answer: “Waiting on the union guy to come move the desk.”

At this point I got a bit annoyed, and said “I’ll move the @#$# desk.” I’ll never forget his response. He hopped off the desk, visibly paled and said, “Don’t do that. The union will file a grievance against me.”

And that was my first introductions to unions. After leaving the military, I went to work for General Motors in Flint, MI. UAW country, big time.

To make a long story a little bit shorter, I quit after having three requests to meet with my Director were refused. I had been promised certain things as part of the hiring process and wanted to discuss these promises. Three requests followed by three refusals to meet with me followed by a resignation. In contrast, I’d never once in my military career been refused the opportunity to speak with a commander.

After only four months, I ended my career with the auto industry with the ironic understanding that had I been offered the opportunity to join a union, I would have been first in line.

Now, understand as a military guy, it wasn’t as if I was unfamiliar with working in a structured environment. But while I never chafed under the military’s regimen, GM’s management practices were another story. I now understand on a personal level why there are unions — to protect workers. I get it. Didn’t always get it, but I do now.

Have unions abused their role? Absolutely. But American the so-called captains of American industry have shipped jobs overseas, raked in huge profits, decimated the American middle class and now are bound and determined to finish-off the unions.

Why attack the unions? The unions are an organizing force for Democrats. Destroy the counter-balance union campaign contributions provide and, as Rachel Maddow said last night, the Republicans can run the field — giving us Karl Rove’s much desired permanent Republican Party.

It’s not so much that the Right hates unions, although they do, because unions are perceived as more costly, less flexible, etc., it’s that the unions threaten the wealth power structure.

If you watch how the Governor of Wisconsin reacts to the protests, he’s angry. He’s indignant. He’s outraged. He just wants his way –or rather the way of those that funded his campaign. He gives 150 million in tax cuts and then claims he’s got to reign in the evil union contracts to get the looming fiscal crisis under control. It’s a con job — just like the Republicans having rammed through the Bush Tax Cut extensions through are now railing about the deficit. It’s a con.

This is not to say the debt and deficit aren’t real problems. They are. But the math associated with solving these problems is not that complex — nor are the objectives of the Right’s power structure. They want to keep the Military Industrial Complex booming. To do this, they are currently spending roughly 20% of federal spending, $665B annually. (Canada by contrast spends $21B.)

But the right feels threatened. We’re running a deficit, boomers are retiring rapdily and Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements expenditures will be rising. All this, plus the spectre of rising interest rates, threaten what the Right wants to do with your tax dollars. Solution – attack entitlements. What stands in their way? In part, unions stand in their way.

But unions are just the first step. A Republican controlled government will lead to radical reductions in entitlement programs — no doubt more tax cuts for the rich — and bring about a different America than the one in which I grew up. I find this prospect very disturbing. Again, just wait. This is just the beginning. States will use the same arguments to break their pension obligations to state workers. Meanwhile, the stock market will be perking along and the wealthy will just become more so.

Does the Right hate unions? Yeah, but the real issue is money. It’s only business from the Right’s perspective, but its impact on Americans will be very painful and very personal.

Thank you for writing this…I too want to know why so many don’t understand the history of the union movement and why they think unions are bad.

Obviously the many who are opposed to unions don’t understand the concept of the employment at will doctrine, which is the rule of the land in all but 1 state…Montana.

Too many people think they have more rights in the workplace than they actually do

Sounds like it’s make-or-break time for Wisconsin public servants. Time to strike until the gov leaves town. If you don’t he’s gonna fire you anyway.

“Neoliberalism is the expression of the desire of a class of capitalist owners and the institutions in which their power is concentrated, which we collectively call “finance,” to restore-in the context of a general decline in popular struggles-the class’s revenues and power, which had diminished since the Great Depression and World War II. Far from being inevitable, this was a political action.

The rules whose imposition define neoliberalism are generally designated euphemistically as “market” rules, avoiding the direct reference to capital. In this use of the term “market,” various types of mechanisms are at issue. The labor market refers to the tightening up of rules concerning hiring, layoffs, wages, and labor conditions. This market has been a favorite target of neoliberalism. The other market, directly at stake here, is that of capital. Neoliberalism has indeed completely changed the conditions under which the capital markets function. There are many aspects to this the centrality of the stock market and of capital in general, free international mobility of capital, and so on. Finally, neoliberalism is indeed the bearer of a process of general commercialization of social relationships, and that is one of its more shocking aspects. But it is the logic of the capitalist relationship that extends and governs the whole process, in accordance with its rules.”

Capital Resurgent
Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution

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The advent of economic neoliberalism in the 1980s triggered a shift in the world economy. In the three decades following World War II, now considered a golden age of capitalism, economic growth was high and income inequality decreasing. But in the mid-1970s this social compact was broken as the world economy entered the stagflation crisis, following a decline in the profitability of capital. This crisis opened a new phase of stagnating growth and wages, and unemployment. Interest rates as well as dividend flows rose, and income inequality widened.

Economists Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy show that, despite free market platitudes, neoliberalism was a planned effort by financial interests against the postwar Keynesian compromise. The cluster of neoliberal policies–including privatization, liberalization of world trade, and reduction in state welfare benefits–is an expression of the power of finance in the world economy.

The sequence of events initiated by neoliberalism was not unprecedented. In the late nineteenth century, when economic conditions were similar to those of the 1970s, a structural crisis led to the first financial hegemony culminating in the speculative boom of the late 1920s. The authors argue persuasively for stabilizing the world economy before we run headlong into another economic disaster.

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http://www.amazon.com/CapitalResurgentRoots-Neoliberal-Revolution/dp/067401158¬9

Union bashing has always been part of the right wing…Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco destroyed unions for their capitalist backers. Yes, fascists are in the service of capitalism…fascism has been called capitalism with a bayonet.

Justafarmer

First off let me say, I never worked at a union job. My husband did but because they never went on strike, I never thought much about it, until he retired. My husband worked for PG&E for 30 years and belonged to the IBEW. When he retired, he retired with a full pension at only 55 years old. You want to know how I now appreciate it? Well I have 3 times as much in my retirement account than he ended up with but I cannot touch until 59 1/2 and NO pension. That pension has allowed us to work at easy jobs and more than likely enjoy a much longer retirement than most people.

The only problem I had with union jobs, from listening to his tales, was it was very hard for PG&E to fire someone as opposed to my process in the financial industry.

And so it begins:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/116114284.html

And the R-Governor of WI wants to mobilize the National Guard?
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110211/GPG0101/110211052/Walker-says-National-Guard-ready-for-any-unrest-over-anti-union-bill

Here’s another point I like to make any time someone says that union contracts are unfair, or bad or whateveritis they say….

Um…. people…. contracts are TWO WAYS! They are signed by TWO PARTIES!

If you don’t like the contract, Mr. Schoolboard member, DON’T SIGN THE DAMNED THING!

Makes me crazy that companies or other entities enter into a negotiated contract with a union, then bitch about the terms of the contract THEY JUST SIGNED.

Sometimes I think people are just crazy…

8)

My daughter has been teaching Kindergarten for 8 years. For 6 of those years, she has been in a low income school district; she has always said these kids need a hand up primarily because they are being shortchanged at home. It’s both funny and sad how she is called Mom more than Mrs.X, and her kids are hugging on her all the time. They love her. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Education, a Master’s in Teaching and Learning (literacy based), and she will be a guest lecturer Spring Qtr. at a well-known local University — GO BUCKS!!

And…this is what’s been happening in the State of Ohio since the Republicans took over the whole fucking Statehouse:

Big money fuels a massive school reform effort
http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/insight/stories/2011/02/13/copy/big-money-fuels-a-massive-effort.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

GOP proposal means big changes for teacher contracts
http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/02/13/copy/gop-proposal-means-big-changes-for-teacher-contracts.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

Ohio Board of Education appointee fights to keep seat
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/02/14/ohio-board-of-education-appointee-fights-to-keep-seat.html

’09 appointee to education board sues to keep seat
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/02/15/copy/09-appointee-to-education-board-sues-to-keep-seat.html

***EDIY*** Please keep in mind The Dispatch is a right-leaning publication.

The NYC Transit Authority strike started on New Years Day 1966. My father a NYC Transit union-worker, who had moved-up through the ranks of subway maintenance to a desk job via the various educational and housing programs offered to WW2 Veterans. He was able to obtain a college degree from Columbia University, advance to better housing, better neighborhoods and better educational opportunities for his 4 children.

Mike Quill, the Transit Workers Union Leader was a family friend and many of their friends were the tough and VERY proud guys of West Indian, Italian and Irish families. I walked the picket line with my Dad in 1966. It was then I became aware via listening to the workers political discussions how fragile a middle-class existence can be. This strike, settled in 12 days, led to the passage of the Taylor Law, which placed limitations on unions and the rights of public employees to strike in the State of New York.

The weather in NY was in the 40’s when the strike started but dropped into the the teens on Jan 8. On Jan 13 the day the strike was settled the low was 14F and the max was 25F. Weather may have been a contributing factor to ending the strike. The transit strike was followed by teacher strikes in 1967 and 1968 and a 1968 strike by sanitation workers., Mike Quill in bad health, was jailed for calling the strike by in-coming “Reformist Republican” Mayor John Lindsay. Quill went from jail, to the hospital, and was released about 10 days after the strike was over but died 3 days later.

Lindsay was forgiven by the labor unions and they supported his reelection bid in 1969. Or perhaps big business had made a deal with Lindsay. Whichever, Lindsay won as the candidate of the Liberal Party of New York. The Liberal Party of New York founded in 1944 has a very interesting history. Information on the current reincarnation of the party can be found http://www.liberalparty.org.

My husband, justateacher, retired when he could not, after 38 years of teaching in DC, abide by MIchele Rhee’s reforms and obvious disdain for Unions and Teachers. 75 of the teachers fired under Rhee reforms have recently been reinstated, with back pay, following arbitration by the Union. It was determined that those 75 firings were illegal, without due process and did not follow established teacher evaluation procedures.

I ponder everyday, how and when Unions fell out of favor with American workers. I think January 1. 1966, NYC bears review.

Remember The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911?

I stand with BDM except I don’t drive a SUV and I do not own a boat. I do have a summer home, I travel a lot, donate, donate, donate, pay my taxes and give to the homeless every chance I get. This includes heading a community garden that shares excess produce with food banks. I do not own a pair of Birkenstocks, I prefer a designer who I will not name since I am embarrassed by my shoe obsession. My hair is short.
I abhor stereotypes.

There seems to be some consternation here over many union members that choose to vote Republican.

Actually, it’s pretty easy to figure out.

Most union workers I know are hard-working individuals, proud of the company they work for, and proud of the products and services they provide. They damn well earn their paychecks, day in and day out.

Liberals are seen as the party that defends free-loaders and hand-out seekers. And these union members see the tax deducted from their pay every 2 weeks. Taxes used to study yellow 3-headed horny-toads on the Colorado River.

So, these union members say, “I’m working like a dog to scratch out a living, pay for your own GD college”.

Not too hard to glean a Republican vote or two out of that crowd.

This is one of those topics that sets my blood to the boiling point….as the wife of a 35 year Teamster, I can’t tell you how many times over the years the union saved my husbands job from an unscrupulous employer.

Did anyone see Ed Schultz last night? He had a very good segment on this very subject, specifically about the firefighters union. Republicans are going after pensions and HC benefits all over the country, w/o a union to fight back, many people will lose agreements in their contracts.

Nothing is safe anymore from the knife in the hands of a republican looking to take away what they don’t think you deserve…..

justafarmer: Keep writing about this, our unions are worth saving…..10 stars for you.