The Union is in Peril!
No, this isn't the country I'm talking about. It's going kinda as it has been. We're talking about the labor union.
The NFL is the current sport in labor talks; considering they have a mediator and only three weeks until a lockout may occur, it's going rather well.
About seven to ten states have Republican legislators that wish to destroy collective bargaining, if not the right to strike. Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Ohio are at the forefront. In Wisconsin, it came quickly, as did the response from the Democratis in the legislature; lacking a majority but being able to deny a quorum, they fled the state.
Which gets us to the description of what's going on. This is literally the nuclear option for unions. You can see now why the Senate has rules for cloture - this mess occurs when you really can't do such a thing. And that is a very bad thing, because unions help with more than wages. There are also workplace conditions, health care and other benefits, and grievance procedures that come out of these deliberations that give workers some *stability*. Say what you want about not being able to fire a union worker; that person is not on an unemployment line. Once you can fire people at will, you have more people that are unable to guarantee they can afford to live. They stop spending money, and there goes your economic model.
"But, it's just the public sector!" For now, maybe, and that's because they can justify that with a budgetary crisis. My job would be next. Until I make enough to sock money away - and $23,000 is not nearly enough for that - I can't afford to be unemployed for any length of time. I need the forty hours of work I do a week to keep living in a place and reasonably fed. I use the school's internet (and nearby open routers). I don't have cable. We aren't given that much, really, and we have to ask for it. The power to ask for it comes from collective bargaining.
And no one likes it when people have power these days, do they?
The NFL is the current sport in labor talks; considering they have a mediator and only three weeks until a lockout may occur, it's going rather well.
About seven to ten states have Republican legislators that wish to destroy collective bargaining, if not the right to strike. Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Ohio are at the forefront. In Wisconsin, it came quickly, as did the response from the Democratis in the legislature; lacking a majority but being able to deny a quorum, they fled the state.
Which gets us to the description of what's going on. This is literally the nuclear option for unions. You can see now why the Senate has rules for cloture - this mess occurs when you really can't do such a thing. And that is a very bad thing, because unions help with more than wages. There are also workplace conditions, health care and other benefits, and grievance procedures that come out of these deliberations that give workers some *stability*. Say what you want about not being able to fire a union worker; that person is not on an unemployment line. Once you can fire people at will, you have more people that are unable to guarantee they can afford to live. They stop spending money, and there goes your economic model.
"But, it's just the public sector!" For now, maybe, and that's because they can justify that with a budgetary crisis. My job would be next. Until I make enough to sock money away - and $23,000 is not nearly enough for that - I can't afford to be unemployed for any length of time. I need the forty hours of work I do a week to keep living in a place and reasonably fed. I use the school's internet (and nearby open routers). I don't have cable. We aren't given that much, really, and we have to ask for it. The power to ask for it comes from collective bargaining.
And no one likes it when people have power these days, do they?