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Related: About this forumAttacks on Organized Labor
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http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/attacks-on-organized-labor/
by David Macaray / June 11th, 2014
The on-going assault on Americas labor unions comes in three basic forms: accusing unions of doing economic damage, accusing unions of being corrupt, and blaming public sector unions for gouging American taxpayers by forcing us to underwrite exorbitant pensions. While the first two are almost exclusively the product of Karl Rove-like smear tactics, the third, though wildly exaggerated, has some basis in fact.
So lets do the third one first. Although its true that we taxpayers do, in fact, pay for the wages and benefits of public sector workers, this was never seen as a problem until the number of private sector workers who had had their wages and benefits hollowed-out by their employers reached a critical mass. Before then, no one really thought or cared much about it.
It was only when private sector workersalready whipped into a froth by anti-union propagandarealized their crappy wages, low pensions, and poor working conditions were inferior to those of public sector workers that it became a problem. That and when virtually every state government in the country found itself on the verge of bankruptcy due to bad investments, and went looking for scapegoats.
This antipathy toward the private sector is relatively new. Go back to your high school days and recall when your buddy, Fred, informed his classmates that he hoped to land a job with the DMV. Didnt most of us think he was settling for less? Didnt we think that by taking a DMV job Fred was turning his back on the potential riches, challenges and glamour that came only with a private sector joba job where hard work and talent would take you as far as you wanted to go?
FULL story at link.
David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author (Its Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor), was a former union rep. He can be reached at: dmacaray@earthlink.net. Read other articles by David.
This article was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2014 at 7:35pm and is filed under Labor, Propaganda, Unions.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)It's true that back when most of today's pensioners were beginning their work careers, a job in the public sector was NOT considered a prime job. You usually didn't make as much as in the private sector, but the trade off was that you had more security and pretty good benefits, INCLUDING those pensions. Now that it's time to reward those workers FOR that trade off, the capitalists and their toadies in government want to deny them the benefits they were promised.
And even in the private sector, the stealing of pensions by the owners was, in effect, breaking the contract those companies had with workers who had negotiated away immediate pay for future pensions.
It shows that the promises of the capitalist class and their employees in the bourgeois political class aren't worth a tinker's damn. Workers make society run, so it's PAST time for workers to run society.