Pension Envy

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Pension Envy

Tuesday 11 January 2011

by: Dave Johnson | Campaign for America's Future | Op-Ed

Pension Envy

Comments

[santacruzsurf]

In my job I deal with a union. I never myself have been in a union, but as part of management I see how much unions can kill productivity

[stevie_jane]

The meme of unions being the baddies is so full of shit and harmful I can't even deal with it.

Companies and higher-ups hate unions because they really do long for the days when they could fire anyone for no reason, force people to work in unsafe conditions and pay their workforce a pittance because they felt it was their fucking right to do so. SO MUCH HATE for these bastards who want to exploit and piss on their workers. SO MUCH.

Every idiot who buys into the rhetoric of how good (too good!) unions have it needs to think about how much effort and strife was put into getting rights for workers in the first place. Stripping away benefits doesn't do anyone good unless they're the ones raking it in running a company who wants another way to make their workers worse off.

[romp]

I wish people knew their family history (any history!) better. It wasn't long ago that being maimed at work would have meant the family would go hungry.

People in the US truly have had the concepts of basic rights and the common good disappear. My family members who make minimum wage truly believe there is no value other than profit. No other option exists in their minds. And they think it's a bummer but also think it's a fact of life, a law of physics.

[azetburcaptain]

I blame Reagan for this. I was surprised to see it still persist, but there we have it.

Happy workers are better, more productive workers. I don't understand how people haven't figured this out yet: if we improve workers' conditions we have better products. Better products mean more sales and money, and more money means better economics.

[romp]

I hadn't realized that some anti-union sentiment might be coming from jealousy. Rather than be angry that they've lost financial security and health care. Sadly, it makes sense.

[akisawana]

I know plenty of people who think unions are the devil's workforce, but most of them are comfortably middle-class. They're not stupid people, they can usually cite something other than "MY TV SAID THEY'RE EVIL," but they tend to be along the lines of "Jimmy Hoffa." None of those people ever worked a union job, whereas my experience with unions has been more along the lines of "came through for my brother when he was a bagger at the grocery store" than "being paid to play cards in the break room."

[kyra_neko_rei]

What's really scary is that for someone to be angry that someone else has more, and want to drag them down to join themselves, they have to have accepted their own lesser lot as what they deserve, and reasonably fair. The fact that the discourse of "down with unions" from the non-union working class has replaced "we want unions too!" is downright chilling.

One way to deny people something is to convince them they don't deserve it, and that appears to be what's being done---subtly.