Well…if you needed another example of the repubs concerted efforts to kill organized labor, look no farther than Wisconsin, where the repub governor and legislature are trying to take the collective bargaining rights away from all public employees, and you know who’s next..any other union that tries to keep it’s members in the middle class. This is being done on the pretext that they have a 137 million dollar budget deficit and something has to be done. but the only pertinent fact here is that, until they gave away a matching tax break to business, the state was running a surplus…just another example of these repub thieves trumping up crises that don’t exist to attack the middle class. I sense the beginning of a revolt here…where the repub plans are finally being exposed and getting the coverage that was lacking before the election…at least I hope so…the pie here in the US is big enough for everyone if the repubs would stop thinking they deserve it all….
Tag Archives: unions
More union bashing..
Well…today may be a day of a lot of short ones in response to lies and omissions that are coming out of the commentators on the right…I’ll start with Daniel Howes of the Detroit News…in his column this morning he talks about “failed states” and makes the assertion that the reason they have failed is the high incidence of unionization in those states, and the people that live there are at fault because their unions have been able to wrestle a living wage out of their employers instead of giving millions to the ceos. What he conveniently forgets to mention in his trashing of the middle class is that the conservative’s star state, Texas, with one of the lowest union membership rates in the country is on track to have a 25 billion dollar deficit this year; even with the destruction of the minimal social safety net they used to have, ranking it next to California. What do you say to that Daniel? Just another incidence where the right will make up facts and use outright lies to try to destroy the hated unions….Daniel, you should be ashamed…
Let’s stop blaming the unions…
Well…I hope the latest profit numbers from Ford will blow up the repubs tired old arguments that everything that is wrong with American industry can be traced back to the supposed greed of the union represented workers that are the backbone of the auto industry. 3.1 billion dollars in profit…yep, that’s right…so far this year Ford has made 3.1 billion dollars on it’s North American car business…a completely unionized manufacturing company with fairly paid workers sharing in the success but also giving back when the company was in trouble. How did they do it? I know, the repubs will point to the pay and benefits of the unions as the reason that GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy…but let’s look at it closer..it was just bad management from the top down at those companies….and a failure to look farther into the future than the next quarterly statement. Plus, they just made cars and trucks that no one wanted and were of lower quality than their competitors.
Unlike their competitors, the Ford family recognized that things were changing in the industry a few years before the bottom fell out and and also recognized that a different kind of management was needed for the coming downturn. But, they also recognized that new, better products were needed as well and embarked on programs to make better cars that the public wanted. Personally, I think the right moves were made, to a large part, because the family’s name was still on the side of the building, and there was pride that all of the workers, salaried and union shared. It’s that dynamic that the repubs don’t care about…that there can be successful companies where both labor and ownership are successful; and the Ford family recognizes that without their skilled and dedicated union workers, their success would not be assured if the only labor plan was to bash the unions and take all they can with no regard for their workers. But, the repubs only know that labor is their mortal enemy, to be crushed at all costs….geez…
Cut, Cut, Cut….
well…reading the newspapers over the last few years has revealed a troubling theme the I just have to comment on. Even with the overall middle-class tax burden at it’s lowest point in the last 50 years, the prevailing wisdom is that the only way to get the states and federal budget under control is to cut services, to cut the wages and benefits of workers, and cut the gains that have made the middle class the engine of our economy. Just yesterday, ole Newt suggested in Michigan that the only way out of the problem is to cut benefits that teachers and other workers have fought for the last 50 years to get.
I just have to relay what one of my professors in grad school told our class; that you can’t cut your way to prosperity and growth, that a monkey can come in and take away benefits and lay off people…but that is all I hear today…cut, cut, cut….is this jealousy from the people that are now on the outside looking in without protection that comes from being part of a unionized workforce? Where is the shared sacrifice that made our country unique in the world? I truly believe that this is a plan by the righties to fragment the opposing powers that they have fought with for control of the profits of the economy; and they are winning the battle to demonize workers to the benefit of their corporate sponsors. Why is there no uproar on the right when their leaders champion the outsourcing of American jobs which puts downward pressure on the wages of the remaining workers here? Why doesn’t anyone think that a rising middle class in wages and benefits is a good thing? Who is going to buy the 40,000 dollar Suburban when the average wage is being pushed down to minimum wages level?
I think it’s sad that our supposed leaders have stopped leading us to the future and the ideals that have been part of this country since it’s inception; that we can do anything if we just work together and that the future will be better than today….small minds think small….geez…