There is an all out assault on labors right to collective negotiation with their employer. Wisconsin newly elected Tea Party Republican governor, Scott Walker, has put before the legislature in a very undemocratic way through a last minute introduction without prior proper notice for debate by Democrats a bill that would effectively strip any government employee union of their right to negotiate wages, benefits or working conditions. Thus it would result in dismantlement of the labor unions. He claims it is for budgetary needs, but the unions have already agreed to increasing their share of the health care insurance premium and pension fund, but that is not enough, he wants everything in his bill, no compromise, period. That is not how our system of self governance works.
The whole labor union movement came about because of abusive policies of business owners, especially the large developing companies in the 19th Century as the industrial revolution started. People worked 6 or 7 days a week, some worked 14 hours in a day for very little pay. The robber barons of that day made millions of dollars on the backs of the workers. The concept of collective bargaining through a representative organization elected by the workers was developed in Europe, what we call labor unions. This concept crossed the Atlantic and many states in America, Wisconsin being one of the first, passed legislation legalizing and recognizing the right of the worker to organize, so as to be a counter balance to the extreme power the company owners had over their welfare.
For many before this time, many a small town in America was built by a company, like some of the rail road giants at the time. A worker would live in a home built by the company and rented to the worker. The worker had to purchase their goods and services from company stores and businesses. The cost of all of this was deducted from their pay each month. What was left over, which was not much, was theirs to spend. The workers had no control of how much the company charged them for their housing, food, utilities, etc. In Utah, Copperton next to the Bingham Copper Mine was one such community. It was not long ago that Kennecott sold the homes to the people renting them and sold the businesses in the town.
Labor unions are who gave us the 5 day work week, 8 hour work day, overtime pay for anything over 40 hours a week, sick pay, vacation time off with pay, holidays off (many with pay), employer based health insurance, pensions, safer working conditions, child labor laws, and much, much more.
Yes, many labor unions did get to be too big, like some corporations have been allowed to get too big, and thus might have been too aggressive in their dealings with management. And yes, some did get infiltrated by organized crime (Teamsters), but that is not much different than how large corporations operate like organized crime families today.
With that said, they were instrumental in creating the large middle-class in America and Europe during the post World War II years, until the 1980's. They were able to obtain fair pay for workers that allowed only one parent to work to make a decent living for a family. Today it take both parents having to work, some times more than one job, to make ends meet. During this period of growth, American corporations were doing very well, the economy was buzzing along very nicely. Executive management compensation averaged about 39 times that of the hourly worker. Today it is about 300 times that of the hourly worker. With that much disparity, you can not sustain a middle-class.
Wall Street and large corporations equate labor unions as communist ideas and non-American. They think it has dramatically hurt their productivity by reducing the amount of hours a person can work, forced to pay a minimum wage and otherwise take care of their workers health and well being. Therefore, since the Republican Party represents these large corporations and Wall Street, they too are anti-labor union.
Since the Democrats support the democratic process of elected representative of the work force in dealing with labor issues and compensation with their employers, these union members have traditionally voted Democratic. It was the Unions that pushed John Kennedy over the line to become president. It was labor unions that got people out to vote for Obama in 2008. It was labor unions that gave Democrat Senator Harry Reid victory in Nevada.
So the objective of Gov. Walker's bill in Wisconsin and similar bills in 13 other state legislatures is to kill the last remaining large labor union that give large amounts of money to Democrat candidates and gets people to the polls to vote, so that it weakens the Democratic Party in their attempt to win elections against the might and wealthy corporations and special interest groups that support the Republicans. This also destroys the middle-class of America, whether intentional or as a casualty to their political quest for absolute power.
The outcome of this move to kill unions is to create an environment that allows the financial supporters of the Conservative movement that have large sums of money to use for media campaigns and fake grass root organizations, the conservative Republicans can achieve a virtual single party system and control of governance.
If you believe in the pluralistic party system of democracy, you are witnessing the demise of it and a move to a oligarchic form of governance. That means the masses are governed by the select few individuals who are chosen through a closed selection process. Centuries ago we call this an Aristocracy Republic.
In Utah, the Republican caucus process and convention process is tightly controlled to make sure the chosen ones are placed in position of authority, they in turn are endorsed by vote of the limited delegates of the party. The party members at large are then allowed to vote to confirm that choice. Since most Republicans vote in absolute loyalty to their party, regardless of the policies or platform being presented, it is a guarantee of continued control of the party and its political agenda and control of governance. BTW governance is something they hate, thus they are horrible at it.
As we have seen in Utah and Texas, Republicans are good at gerrymandering the voting districts to lean in their favor to help increase their power. They do this by carving up communities that are more Democrat leaning and add communities that are heavy Republican. In the Utah legislature, they did that to eliminate 2 Democratic seats on the House in 2001.
You combine these actions with the huge sums of money pushing the Republican lies and rhetoric through the media, especially FOX News, and they can easily control the outcome of an election. Unfortunately the traditional mainstream news organizations, with the exception of MSNBC, have not reported on what is happening with our political system, as they are depended upon the advertisers who purchase ads on their networks, and since these advertisers lean more Republican, this suppresses the news organizations ability to report the facts and truth of what is going on.
Wisconsin Gov. Walker also has a bill to make it harder to register to vote, thus reducing the number of potential Democratic leaning voters. Typically Democrats have more success getting new voters to register and getting them to the polls to vote, and thus they tend to lean more toward the Democrats when they vote.
This is all in the game book that the Conservatives created several decades ago. It is working out very nicely. They have had only a few upsets that have delayed them, like Bill Clinton's election, the take over of Congress by the Democrats in 2006 and now the election of Obama. But that is not slowing them down now that they have a majority in the House and the hope in 2012 to control the Senate and maybe the White House. Their hope, not mine.
There is a lot more to this battle in Wisconsin than most people understand. It really is a battle of the survivability of the democratic process of representative democracy. It is the struggle for the middle-class. If the unions loose in Wisconsin and the other 13 states, then democracy is in danger within our political system as well. Labor unions are only an extension of the belief in self governance through the election process in choosing who represents your interests in dealing with parties of opposite self interests. If unions loose, who will fight for your rights as a worker? And this is coming from a business owner who understands that you don't abuse your employees for self enrichment. There is plenty of the pie to share with those who make the pie. When you treat the work force fairly, then you have a better company and better product or service. It is a win-win. Why can't the current business culture and conservatives realize this truth?
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