The Truth About Labor Unions

I have to admit that I have never worked for a union so I don’t know a whole lot about them but I know J. C. Brown’s recent letter in our home town newspaper is full of bias misinformation.

I would be willing to bet Mr. Brown or any person would not turn down a $ 25 an hour job with full benefits ,that was worked out between a company and a union, in a mutually agreed upon collective-bargaining  agreement. I also believe that if a contract was about to be terminated or completed redone on a partisan political basis, push back is to be expected. Whenever a large angry crowd is assembled to protest ,it does get violent but Wisconsin, and Michigan were rather mild in comparison to the old union scrabbles. The public unions won the fights in Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. I know in order to be a good right-wing Republican these days, you have to check off the boxes and being anti-union is one of them.

I’m going to be generous today and not challenge the statement about OSHA overseeing the worker conditions but is Mr. Brown saying regulations and the federal government is doing a good job?  I  also wonder whether their budget will be cut?

Mr. Brown thinks that decent wages and benefits leads to companies gouging customers. He also believes that exorbitant union wages drive up the price of consumer products out of the reach of poor people. For one thing when did the GOP care about the takers and number two;he's got that completely backwards. Stagnant low wages and high unemployment keep those unsold goods on the shelves.

Let’s talk about the public unions which were catered to by Republican and Democratic politicians in the past. California got hit hard by the 2008 financial crash, and that was not caused by the unions. States have to balance their budget, and I agree some state’s pensions were exorbitant but affordable when they were agreed to. Politicians did not want to lose the public employee union vote, so they never challenged the union contracts before the financial crisis hit them. I disagree that people are against unions because that was not the case when people overturned the efforts by the Ohio GOP to try to do what Wisconsin did.  You are way off on your numbers because of the 14.3 million union jobs, 35% of them are in the public sector, and 11.3% are in the private sector. Do you really want us to believe 14 million union jobs are the driving force behind consumer prices? Oh, by the way, I got my numbers form the 2012 Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I’ve lived in Victoria all my life, and I've. always heard that the good wages and benefits paid by our local plants are due to the threat of a union. Even if that’s not true we can forever thank the unions for the working conditions we have, a forty-hour  workweek  and the eight-hour workday  which was established by Wisconsin unions. You might want to read about Caterpillar’s union busting methods and why a Fortune 500 company like them doesn’t pay their employees accordingly.

I noticed that in J.C. Brown's  Mitt Romney- like praise for corporations, he failed to mention outsourcing. No ,workers are not trying to rob a bank;they just want to do something about income inequality that’s plagued us for the past thirty years. Go to the back of the bus and shut up is no longer a viable option.You see, some of us have noticed the booming stock market and we can see where the Fortune 500 corporation have ~ $2 .5 trillion in reserve,so those 14 million greedy union workers aren’t hurting them a bit.

Let me end by saying that President Obama never said, “ if you’re successful in the world, somebody else did it for you.”What he said is that before patting ourselves on the back, we should be grateful for the others who helped us, like  a teacher, business mentor or this wonderful country, which was made great by the contributions of others.  You don’t have to gloat because if you’re really that great others will notice.

There’s A Difference Between Boasting and Bragging

There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of Texas  pride, and I do but make sure that your statements are based, in fact, and can be verified. Otherwise, you will be characterized as being a political hack  like Governor Rick Perry was in the Republican presidential primaries.

I talking to you, Mack Simons, of Wharton, Texas because your recent letter- to- the -letter was loaded with inaccuracies either by intent or ignorance. I say ignorance because I’m assuming you researched the statements in your letter before you submitted it. It starts with the title “ Washington needs budget advice from Texas.” Are you kidding me? We had to address a $27 billion shortfall in the last budget. You may have liked the idea that taxes were not raised but education and health care were cut in our never-ending  race to the bottom in funding those programs.

I know Governor Perry made a big stink about not taking those evil government stimulus funds, but in reality our governor took those funds to help balance 97% of the 2010 shortfall and had billions left over for Texas’s rainy-day fund. You see we had a $6.6 billion shortfall in 2010, but that was paid for with the $6.4 billion Recovery Act funds.I won’t even mention all the military bases and NASA money, but you can read it for yourself here.

You stated that President Obama rewarded the union stooges when the administration continued the auto bailout started by President George W. Bush. As I the remember the story, no other American industry stepped up to help the auto industry, and our country was about to lose another million jobs from the auto companies and the industries connected to it. I also remember that the union workers took concessions  where eye coverage and dental coverage were lost, and their wages went from an average of $29 to $17 an hour. It only took me a couple of minutes to pull up that information from an old Washington Post article (reprinted by the Huffington Post)to refresh my memory but don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself here. It’s funny how free market conservatives have a problem with those making good union wages.

I’m not even going to try to contradict your concept that Governor Perry was a financial genius. In fact, I don’t understand  his ten-year plan of expanding our criminal-justice  system and then laying off the ones in the Texas Department of Criminal-Justice  Inmate Construction Group to make good a pledge of giving teachers a pay raise. I’ll have to look it up but based on the contents of your letter;I bet there’s more than meet –the- eye to your account of the facts. I guess you know that employed public employee's money consumes just as much as those in private industries. I understand the goal in your mind is zero public and union employees.

Recently only 49 Republicans voted for the  $50 billion relief for the victims of Sandy and 179 Republicans voted against it. The so-called fiscal hawks said there was too much pork in the bill and the others wanted off-sets. Hypocrites, disaster funds have always been bipartisan  but Sandy hit areas where the voters usually vote for Democrats ,so now it’s mostly pork, or it needs to be off-set. No;the fiscal cliff was not about pork, Mr. Simons;it was a bill that didn’t allow higher taxes on 99% of Americans but like Sandy relief, it took the Democrats to see to it that it passed. It’s pretty obvious that only one party is governing, and the other party is always protesting.

I agree that we need to get our fiscal house in order but let's bring all the proposals to the table. Let's not be fixated on ways to cut programs to the poor,Planned Parenthood, austerity measures only because I'm pretty sure conservatives don't think it's right that multi- millionaire hedge fund mangers get to pay their carried interest at capital gains rate of 15%. That's a start and we could go from there and most people agree where the three biggest items in our budget are. Concentrating on the little things like waste and handouts is like trying to balance the family budget by giving up coffee and beer but forgetting the mortgage and car payment or finding ways to work overtime.  

Let the women negotiate a deal

Senators Claire McCaskill and Susan Collins said if we had more women in Congress, we would have a deal right now, because women know how to compromise. I believe that. What we have now is a battle of male egos trotting out their same old talking points hoping that this time, they will stick. The media encourages it because they think that Obama has to give John Boehner enough for him to hang his head high; regardless of what it does to our economy. I'm sorry but elections have consequences and to the “victor goes the spoils” because that's what the American people voted for. We didn't have that in 2009, so the president had to suffer the consequences of obstruction.

I saw a couple letters this morning describing the fiscal cliff as being an easy fix. Nothing could be further from the truth because of the time restraints and the elephant in room that no one wants to discuss. That elephant in the room is the impending debt ceiling crisis. The White House doesn't want to make a deal to get us through this year but then have to fight the opposition again in February over something that is much more crucial; paying our bills that we have already incurred. The two letters centered on taxes and spending but, unless we have some incentives for growth, education, infrastructure, jobs and innovation; we're just spinning our wheels. Republicans want to forget that the Democrats gave in to one trillion dollars in spending cuts in the last fight over increasing the debt ceiling. There's not a lot more that can be had in non-defense discretionary spending. The president said he's not going to have that fight anymore and I don't blame him because the world markets think that we're ridiculous for having that fight. The GOP forgets that they are responsible for some of that debt that we have to pay. That's not to say that they can't fight to cut spending during the budget battles.

It's my opinion with exceptions of course; women are much more honest when it comes to negotiating. They're much more adept in calling a “spade a spade” than men are. At the same time, they don't think having compassion is a weakness. I saw an example of this when Mica Brzezinski practically called Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan a liar ,when he said that the bill he recently signed was not anti- union but more pro worker. It gave the panel more room to call out the governor for trying to sugarcoat his actions. The governor said that the bill would lead to more jobs in Michigan but the 23 states that have right- to -work laws do not prove that. He cited the neighboring state of Indiana, who passed a bill similar to his right- to- work law and that state saw an increase in 30 companies coming to their state. He doesn't see the animosity it will create between the “free riders” and those who pay their union dues. The governor conveniently left out the fact that people like the Koch brothers love non- union states. The people for “Americans for Prosperity” were not out in full force to defend workers' rights.

I can't see why people want us to win the “race to the bottom” that began the year we started outsourcing. I don't think that we have to continue lowering wages and benefits just to keep companies in America but we'll never know unless we have access to all their financial records. Major League Baseball and the NFL were grossly underpaying their players. It seems to me "If owners make representations that they're losing money or that they can't afford a certain term in the collective bargaining agreement, then they're obligated to prove their assertion. “We applaud world-class companies like Caterpillar coming into our community bringing in $12.00 an hour jobs. We're part of the corporations union busting tactics but we're willing accomplices because we need the jobs. There's no easy answer but I still can't see why government should be able to stick its nose in the private sector's labor negotiations.