States Aim to Strangle Unions by Their Blue Collars

By Elspeth Reeve
Atlantic Wire
January 04, 2011

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/States-Aim-to-Strangle-Unions-by-Their-Blue-Collars-6429

Time to party like it's 1981. States are running out of
money, so where do they turn to save some cash? Union
busting! "State officials from both parties are
wrestling with ways to curb the salaries and pensions
of government employees," The New York Times' Steven
Greenhouse reports, because those expenses take up a
pretty big chunk of state budgets. New York Gov. Andrew
Cuomo, a Democrat, will likely call for freezing state
worker salaries for one year. And California Gov. Jerry
Brown says he'll review government workers' benefits.
But Republican governors want to go further to weaken
unions in the long term. GOP lawmakers in ten states
intend to introduce bills that would make union dues
optional, instead of mandatory, for members.
Wisconsin's governor wants to bar state workers from
forming unions altogether. Ohio's governor is launching
the biggest assault on unions, Greenhouse reports,
seeking to outlaw strikes by school teachers, prevent
child care and home care workers from unionizing, and
end a rule that mandates nonunion construction workers
on public contracts be paid union-scale wages. State
officials say that unions have disproportionate power,
which they want to shift back to taxpayers. But unions
say lawmakers care less about the budget than about
limiting union power. Here's a sample of the online
portion of the debate:

    * A Most Excellent Scapegoat!  "High unemployment,
    sluggish growth...who's to blame?" asks Gawker's
    Hamilton Nolan. "The unions, of course. The unions
    are the enemies of the working man. The working
    class must destroy unions for their own good.
    Unions are the perfect scapegoat: an organization
    that benefits a relatively small number of actual
    members, which a mass of disgruntled outsiders can
    be easily convinced to blame for their own
    problems." Nolan continues, "blaming unions for
    unemployment is a brilliant stroke of political
    jujitsu, because it appeals to the very people that
    would naturally be allies of organized labor: the
    working class. ... Public employees have jobs like
    everyone else. ... No one is claiming that unions
    are perfect; but if we're going to start destroying
    imperfect things, the statehouse would be a more
    beneficial place to start than the union hall."

    * This Is the Dawn of a New Class War, The Wall
    Street Journal's William McGurn argues--one between
    government worker unions and private sector unions.
    It seems like they should be best pals, McGurn
    says, but there's an increasing contrast between
    them. Private sector union workers "increasingly
    pay for more of their own health care, and they
    have defined contribution pension plans such as
    401(k)s." That means they need their companies to
    succeed. By contrast, public sector unions use
    their clout to get politicians elected, and as
    payback, "these unions are rewarded with contracts
    whose pension and health-care provisions now
    threaten many municipalities and states with
    bankruptcy. In response to the crisis, government
    unions demand more and higher taxes. Which of
    course makes people who have money less inclined to
    look to those states to make the investments that
    create jobs for, say, iron workers, electricians
    and construction workers."

    * Wait a Second, Nolan continues in response to
    McGrun. He's not convinced by this renewed claim of
    union culpability:

    So: municipalities and states that entered into
    pension and benefit agreements with their
    employees, and then, through horrifically poor
    financial planning combined with the overall
    collapse of the global economy due to Wall Street's
    insatiable appetite for handing out subprime loans,
    found themselves unable to honor those agreements.
    This means that public sector unions themselves--
    not the elected officials who fucked up the states'
    finances--are bad. Therefore, private sector union
    workers who are natural allies of public sector
    unions should turn against them, until they are
    destroyed. This will benefit you, common working
    man. We promise!

    * This Is Getting Old, The Indypendent's Mark
    Brenner writes. "Dumping on public sector workers
    is so 'common sense' these days that even a few
    fellow unionists are piling on," Brenner writes,
    noting that the head of one New York building trade
    has signed on to a group working to limit public
    sector union pay. It's a sign of the spread of the
    meme that "the deficit is the greatest threat the
    country faces," and public unions are "taking over
    government and running it into the ground with
    supposedly outsized pay and benefit packages. ...
    Today plenty of public sector unions are hiding
    from the resentment the right is whipping up. But
    if the past 30 years have taught us anything, it's
    that keeping your head down doesn't stop the
    bleeding."

    * Their Benefits Are Good Enough; It's Time to
    Sacrifice, Adam Vogt argues at Crosscut.

    I am not saying that unions have no place in our
    society. ... But government employees have it
    pretty good these days: high wages, extensive
    benefits, the near-impossibility of being fired, to
    name just a few pluses they enjoy. ...  With more
    news coming out each day about devastating budget
    challenges at the federal, state and local level,
    it's time for public employees and their union
    benefactors to make some concessions. What many
    people don't yet realize is that these budget
    troubles were brought on in large part through
    repeated giveaways to public employees... Whether
    it's chipping in more for health care costs or
    forgoing a few workdays per year, sacrifice is the
    only way out of this fiscal mess. For the sake of
    our economic future, public employees' unions need
    to adapt to this reality.

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