Labor Day, 2011

by Dick Mac

Yesterday was Labor Day.

It was a day off. A paid day off.

We are lucky to have a day off from work.

For me, Labor Day was the end of my week-long vacation, giving me ten days off.

We are lucky to have paid vacations.

I went to the doctor's office on Friday, because of a pain in my side.

We are lucky to have health insurance.

I spent some time looking over the investments in my retirement account.

We are lucky to have retirement plans.

I go back to work tomorrow, it's a short week because of the holiday.

We are lucky to have a 5-day work week.

My child starts second grade this week.

We are lucky to have jobs and child labor laws.

We have these things because of unions. Not because of the largess of corporate America, bankers or industrialists.

We have these things even though corporations, banks, and industry would rather we didn't. In fact, they have started a Tea Party to spawn a nationwide campaign against these benefits. Many people who enjoy the benefits won by unions have joined the tea parties.

If you are against unions, if you think unions are destroying America, if you think that business would prosper and jobs would be created if we removed all workplace regulation, then perhaps you would like to sacrifice these things (since this is what you are against):

Weekends
Breaks at Work, including your Lunch Breaks
Paid Vacation
FMLA
Sick Leave
Social Security
Minimum Wage
Civil Rights Act/Title VII (Prohibits Employer Discrimination)
8-Hour Work Day
Overtime Pay
Child Labor Laws
Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
40 Hour Work Week
Worker's Compensation (Worker's Comp)
Unemployment Insurance
Pensions
Workplace Safety Standards and Regulations
Employer Health Care Insurance
Collective Bargaining Rights for Employees
Wrongful Termination Laws
Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
Whistle blower Protection Laws
Employee Polygraph Protect Act (Prohibits Employer from using a lie detector test on an employee)
Veteran's Employment and Training Services (VETS)
Compensation increases and Evaluations (Raises)
Sexual Harassment Laws
Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
Holiday Pay
Employer Dental, Life, and Vision Insurance
Privacy Rights
Pregnancy and Parental Leave
Military Leave
The Right to Strike
Public Education for Children
Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011 (Requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work)
Laws Ending Sweatshops in the United States

After you give-up all those things, let me know the quality of your life, and if it is better than mine, I will join you for tea.

Until you give-up all those things, however, you have nothing valid to say about unions and workers.

Put your money where your mouth is: put-up or shut-up!

The list is from Thank a Union: 36 Ways Unions Have Improved Your Life

New Jersey Governor Follows The Primrose Path

by Dick Mac

I heard a news story this morning about New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, making plans to privatize more schools and replace traditional schools with charter schools.

Christie is that breed of American who believes that the supply-side economic theory, including the privatization of all services, is our only hope; and has, indeed, been a huge success.

There is a 30+ year history of statistical and anecdotal evidence about the success of deregulation (as it is popularly called) and union-busting (as it is more accurately called), and none of that evidence points to this being a good idea for anyone but the very few people who will be given the taxpayers money to keep for themselves while the schools continue on their downward trajectory.

Let's take a handful of industries that have enjoyed deregulation and you tell me how this economic theory has played-out: airlines, banking, manufacturing (especially food processing), government services, drug manufacturing, insurance, home development and mortgaging. OK, we'll stop there.

Over the past thirty-plus years, have these industries become better or worse while enjoying the implementation of deregulation and union-busting?

Yet, the robber-barons and their apologists in the GOP (and the teeny-tiny tea party) sincerely believe, with all their cold, black hearts, that things are better.

In fact, they will tell you that the poor (you and me - the middle class) are destroying our government and economy. In reality, the poor (that is, the middle class) are paying higher taxes than ever before and getting less government services, and the rich are paying lower taxes than they ever have and getting more government services.

What Christie is doing in New Hersey is exactly what the GOP plans to do everywhere: raise the taxes on the workers, lower the taxes on the wealthy, eliminate governmental services for the middle-class (like education), and continue to push more money up to the wealthiest where they've promised it will trickle-down to the rest of us.

And yet, I know people who continue to vote Republican and complain that this is happening. Somehow they blame the Democrats and the working people of America while all statistical and anecdotal evidence contradicts the entire notion.

But, that conservatism for you: close your mind and your eyes and listen only to those who tell you that your fears are the correct fears, your hatred is validated, and that the middle-class is out to take advantage of you.

Sad.

A Wisconsin Conservative Turns On The Tea Party Republicans

by Dick Mac

A marketing ploy of the right-wing (Americans who like to refer to themselves as "conservatives" even though they are anything but) is accusing Democrats of being dishonest and running bad government. It isn't graduate=level research needed to find that most of the corrupt, unethical, anti-taxpayer, anti-family, anti-worker, unChristian, immoral political practices of the past generation have been almost exclusively the gift of the right-wing and their minions in the Republican Party.

Wisconsin is the current poster child for immoral Republican governing, where a newly-elected governor has decided to destroy worker rights and government services, just as he did in Milwaukee by firing unionized security guards at the County courthouse, then privatizing the jobs. Not only did the Wisconsin citizens lose their jobs, he then contracted the jobs for $1.1 million per year to a private contractor who then imported workers from out-of-state to take the lower-paying jobs!

In early 2010, when Walker was Milwaukee County Executive, he fired 26 union security guards who worked at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. They were public employees and were represented by a union, but he fired them anyway, in favor of hiring private security guards. The county board opposed Walker's security-outsourcing move, but he pressed ahead with it anyway, claiming the action was needed due to a budget crisis, to help ameliorate a potential 2010 year-end deficit of around $7 million. After firing the guards, Walker hired private security contractor Wackenhut G4S to provide security services at the Courthouse, as well as two other venues in the county, under a $1.1 million contract.

See, Walker's M.O. and Past Privatization Disaster Revealed

Scott Walker doesn't care about Wisconsin, he cares about big business! Privatization never saves money, it just ensures that a small number of right-wing businessmen profit from our tax dollars by providing less services for more money.

One of the unions being destroyed by Walker is the Corrections Officers union. These are the public employees with, perhaps, the most dangerous job in every state.

One of these corrections officers is a life-long Republican, a man who has supported the Tea Party movement. He wrote an open letter to Wisconsin lawmakers about the state of affairs, and the impact right-wing greed is having on him, spiritually and politically. He is a man in a crisis of conscience: the people he has supported his entire life have turned on him and are jeopardizing his security.

I encourage you to read the entire letter. I particularly liked this paragraph:

To all you Democratic lawmakers, I apologize for voting nothing but Republican all these years. They are not who I thought they were!! Don't you Republicans see the protests throughout the state? Hey, I'm a taxpayer too!! Don't tell me that you're protecting the taxpayers. This is simply a way to attack some of the finest middle class workers and I for one am considering moving out of Wisconsin as I am so distraught at the lack of honest wholesome government.

See, Letter to the Wisconsin Republicans From a Conservative Prison Guard

One might say that this prison guard gets what he deserves for even using the words "Honest," "Wholesome," and "Government" in the same sentence, especially in reference to Republicans; but we will ignore that for the time being. We night say that everyone who supports the tea party movement deserves the results they will get - and it won't be pretty for any of them.

What is refreshing about this letter, is that perhaps there will now be some realization among all Americans that the pro-business, supply-side economic and political policies of so-called "conservatives."

What is happening in Wisconsin is exactly what every Republican voter has promoted since 1980.

Those of us who think that destruction of collective bargaining and workers' rights will save the government money are misinformed. Whatever it costs to run our government today is a deal compared to what it is going to cost when the Republicans privatize everything.

Fortunately, there might be other voters like this prison guard who begin to see that Republicans have only the interest of the very rich at heart.