I know, I know, it's been a while.
And thus, I feel it's an appropriate time for an angry rant. (And, I will note, I have family members who will be directly and personally affected by this; this may increase my ire a bit.)
But because it's me, I have to deluge you with facts and such while I do so.
Brace yourselves.
The events in Wisconsin are demonstrating the exact reason that public sector employee unions are frightful and wrong.
Wait, wait, back up.
First, a tiny, shiny history lesson.
See, back in the day, the unions came about as a direct result of working conditions in this country; at the time they served a purpose, because they protected workers against actual injustice.
Once upon a time, there were what they called "factory towns."
You've no doubt heard the term.
Well, the term comes from what was at one time in the past a common practice. Companies - usually at that time owned by single individuals - would buy land and build a factory. Because they were pursuing the best deals possible on land, the factory sites were typically far out in rural areas.
Because they were far away from any of the places workers were, and the transportation methods available today didn't then exist, in order to have a workforce, the factory had to provide infrastructure.
So what they did was build houses and neighborhoods around the factory. Build a store. Build a school. Build a hospital.
But all those things were owned by the factory owners.
So workers would come for the job; move their families into the houses and schools; buy their furniture and clothes, as well as food, at the store; plow their wages from the factory back into the owner's pockets, even if by an indirect route.
But once there, they were stuck for good. They'd signed a mortgage, you see, and they couldn't get out of it. If they got into trouble at work, they could find themselves evicted, their children expelled from schools, their loans called in, be denied health care, be denied groceries, and - most importantly - unable to move somewhere else and find another job.
The company stores were DELIGHTED to extend lines of credit to workers who hit a rough patch; it gave the factories, and their owners, even more leverage and control over their workers.
The formation of the unions allowed the workers to demand fair treatment; the owners couldn't screw their workers like they used to, or they wouldn't HAVE any workers.
But those conditions no longer obtain.
See, Best Buy doesn't also own your house.
Target doesn't have the power to deny you groceries.
Kmart can't get your kids expelled from school.
And you have cars and public transportation. If you really, really feel like you're getting screwed at work, you can go down the road a block or so and find work somewhere else.
So the CURRENT unions are NOT THE SAME AS the unions of the past.
The current unions, on the other hand, do a lot of things; it's just that "helping" the workers is low on the list.
For example, at most union workplaces, you MUST belong to the union to keep your job.
You are REQUIRED to pay union dues.
You are heavily encouraged to buy ONLY union-produced goods. (Don't worry, they hand out flyers so you know which businesses are "acceptable" for you to buy from. And each union has a convenient web list.)
And while making the union officers rich - off the union dues - there are sure a lot of union dues left in the coffers.
Right; fine; so where do they go?
Well, they go to pay for Democrats to get elected, mostly. In the 2010 election cycle, the unions as a whole donated $62,249,282 to political campaigns.
Of that, 93%, $58,121,960 went to Democrats.
But, well, that's just one election, so it's not as important, right?
So, let's see a trend here. Since 1990, the major unions have donated a total of $486,440,870 to Democratic candidates. Oh, and $27,886,800 to Republicans.
To put this another way, they gave Democrats 17 and a half (17.443) times as much money as they gave Republicans.
Regardless of the political viewpoints of their members.
Who had no control over that expenditure at all.
And what do the Democrats do?
Why, pass union-friendly legislation, of course!
So.
There are distinctions between public - and private - sector unions, though; several minor ones, and two major ones. First, private sector unions draw their wages from for-profit corporations. Public sector unions, however, draw their wages - and thus their union dues - from taxpayer dollars. When a private-sector union pays for Democrats, they do so with the dues paid by the revenue from people - customers - who chose whether or not they would frequent that business. Public sector unions, on the other hand, are spending tax dollars - which you have no choice BUT to pay - to support politicians and legislation which increase the benefits and power of people working at a business that you have no choice BUT to frequent.
Second, private - sector unions, at their worst, can cripple a single business, which simply results in customers choosing a competitor.
Let's take a minute and fantasize about a future in which Best Buy, for example, is unionized. And they get in a contract dispute with the union. The union stages a strike.
You can still get your TV at Target or Wal-Mart.
Now imagine a postal workers' strike.
YOU HAVE NO CHOICE, BY LAW, BUT TO GET YOUR MAIL DELIVERED BY THE U. S. POSTAL SERVICE.
No other carrier is allowed to carry first-class mail; if the postal workers strike, all mail STOPS.
You have no choice but to allow the police to apprehend criminals and deter crime; attempting to do so yourself is "usurping the rights and prerogatives of government" and sends you to jail.
So if the police strike, you are defenseless.
If firemen strike, your home can burn down with no alternatives and no way to stop it.
The second important difference between a public and private sector union is that public sector unions can blackmail the society itself, with the threat of the cessation of vital social services.
Nobody dies if Best Buy can't sell TVs for a day.
But people sure die when cops and firemen strike.
Now, the events in Wisconsin are soon to be mirrored across the country; there's no financial way to avoid it.
The public sector employees' unions, who have for years lobbied and campaigned heavily for ever greater increases in their benefits, pensions, and compensation, have - are - and will threaten to disrupt the function of society itself to protect their "right" to threaten the function of society.
The function of a union is organized blackmail. "Do it our way, or we will shut down your business."
That in and of itself is wrong. Each worker has a right - and as an adult human being, a moral obligation - to make their own decision as to whether their working conditions are acceptable to them or not; if those conditions are not acceptable, each individual worker has a right to leave. There are other jobs. (Just because you don't want to do the kind of jobs illegal immigrants typically perform doesn't mean there aren't any jobs. Your job squeamishness is a choice.)
But blackmailing a company is morally wrong.
It is acceptable, marginally, given that customers of those businesses - who actually and ultimately pay the union workers' wages - have a right to go somewhere else. They aren't required to buy from a particular store; if they don't like the behavior of a union, they can simply refuse to buy products or services from that union.
So it is much worse when the people doing the blackmail are being paid by the people they are threatening. Public sector unions are paid by tax dollars. Let us be clear here: public sector union employees are NOT taxpayers. Claiming that they are is a manipulation.
When your wages are drawn from the public purse, monies you "pay in taxes" are returning to the public purse; no more, no less.
To use the apt phrasing I will openly steal from one of my Facebook friends, "Having them pay taxes is just a shell game. They didn't generate anything, ALL of their income has come off the back of those in the private sector. Saying they pay taxes is like me giving you $5.00 so you can buy a $5.00 sandwich from ME."
But since you are bound by law to use the services of the government - there are no private-sector police, no private-sector fire companies, no private-sector postal carriers - this is a question of morality.
See, for a prison guard's union to threaten to strike and LEAVE NO GUARDS ON THE PRISONS if we - the taxpayers - don't give them more money, is the direct moral and logical equivalent of saying, to a private citizen, "give me your wallet or I will rape and shoot your wife."
It really IS that simple.
Public sector employees' unions should not exist. Period, dot, over. Full stop.
You have a choice as to whether you enter government service. No-one comes to your house with a clipboard and tells you that you will become a policeman, firefighter, public school teacher, postal carrier, or DMV clerk, or you will report to the reclamation chamber for terminal processing; you choose that as a career.
And you do not have a right to "serve the public" by extorting money from that public, with the threat of the destruction of the social fabric, denial of essential (and MANDATORY, lest we forget) services, and possibly injury or death.
Such a "right" cannot exist.
Wisconsin's governor has put a bill (annoying, slow .pdf that is the bill text) in motion that will, among other things, severely reduce the so-called "collective bargaining rights" of the state employees' unions. In other words, to limit their power to do just that.
In more detail, the bill will require state employees to pay HALF the national average private sector contribution towards their own health care; the national average private sector contribution of 5.8% towards their pensions, and eliminate their ability to use "collective bargaining" to set their own benefits. They would retain the ability to collectively bargain over their base pay.
In response, the unions have threatened to walk out; no schools, no cops, no prison guards.
The bill hasn't passed yet. Why? Because rather than vote against the bill, the Democrat members of the state legislature have hidden in the hills, so there won't be enough members for a quorum to vote at all. (Where, might I add, they are still getting paid, even though the Wisconsin State Police are after them.)
What you have here is, under a weak economy and in terrible circumstances that we all are suffering with, people who are paid BY US, who are ostensibly working FOR US, whose benefits in many cases exceed ours by a LOT, threatening to let murderers and rapists into the streets to roam free if we don't do what they want.
Good luck to the media in trying to portray Governor Walker as the villain here. (Oh, and don't worry, they're trying.)
Their logic - or at least the logic of the arguments they're using - is so full of holes it looks like a Swiss cheese factory exploded into a colander.
Picture that.
Haha.
Governor Walker said "it's a tough time, and we're all going to have to tighten our belts a little, even you guys who work for the state."
And the state workers are responding with, well, the title of this article.
Fire 'em all.
There are loads of unemployed people who would be grateful for the jobs, and any state employees who walk out if that bill passes should be barred forever from future employment under our government.
I am infuriated over this; my future brother-in-law is directly affected, as he is a Wisconsin prison guard - who had NO CHOICE but to join the union. He will be the first to go in any layoff, and either way this goes, he will be the one paying the price here.
Jon, if you read this, for what it's worth, I'm on your side, even if I totally disagree with the circumstances of your employment. If there's anything I can do to help, say the word and I'm there.
