on the merits of sticking SOLIDARITY stickers all over my face

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

Will the protests further stoke the resentment many harbor for public worker's unions? Or will the backlash in reaction to Republican attempts to throttle organized labor be the bigger impact of these events? What about people like me, people who have criticisms of some aspects of public unions but generally support the idea that public workers should have decent wages and pensions? (Really all people should have the opportunity to work for those things.) Are these events making "nuanced" positions invisible?

I mean... I'm ticked off enough to start sticking SOLIDARITY stickers all over my face. (Will that help?) yet, I don't feel this accurately represents my views on the essential, yet easily corruptible role of unions in this country. *sigh*

Comments

[farchivist.livejournal.com]

What I fail to understand is why people are focused on unions anyway. I barely know they exist. They don't have any power in GA.

Do we have them? Sure, I guess. There's the IBEW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBEW), which has no power whatsoever and can't even set standards or prevent electricians from fradulently representing themselves as IBEW-certified. The Lockheed people sort of have a union, but last time they tried anything (over a decade ago), Lockheed just fired them all and hired strikebreakers immediately. Illegal immigrants were happy to be picked up by the truckload for that one. The former Bellsouth Union died around 2005 and is totally toothless. Our teacher's union (if one still exists) is powerless and has no bargaining powers whatsoever.

If Wisconsin doesn't like unions so much, why don't they just become a right-to-work state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law) and depower them that way? Under right-to-work, unions become pointless.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Very valid point. Nuance is a bitch, and it tends to get drowned somewhere inbetween the loud, screaming extremes. It always happens this way.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Personally speaking, I see little difference between the compulsion of working within an existing structure at a union or non-union shop. Both have organizations and authorities in place, you're the newcomer, this is the way it is.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Sadly, even if you did, I doubt whether most people would get the reference.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I'm with you.

I've previously noted that public sector unions have a peculiar problem of having to negotiate salary and benefits with people who get campaign contributions from them. That needs reform the same way corporate donations to their own regulators needs reform.

And the unions in Wisconsin have said they are willing to negotiate on the benefits issue, yet the governor wants to plough ahead with this "budget" bill without having sat down to negotiate with them at all -- he's been in office for two months and goes straight to this "solution".

Wisconsin public workers have been unionized for half a century and nearly all state governments with such unions have underfunded their share of the pension, raided it for the general budget and/or mismanaged its investments. Meanwhile, rank and file contributions to pension and health care plans are automatically deducted, so even if their end of the deal has been fairly sweet, they lived up to their ends.

But we're supposed to blame the UNIONS for the problem?

It would be more honest if the governors would just submit legislation to bar public workers from having a CBU at all.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

If the governor was inclined to actually negotiate, as opposed to trying to be Don Vito Corleone, this would be different. The Union yields almost everything to him except one inch, but he wants the whole hog. Though I also find it hilarious who Solidarnosc was striking against....