Obama should fight against Union-Busting as hard as he fought for tax cuts

President Obama has shown he is capable of a fight. Unfortunately, most of his fire has been aimed at cranky progressives who have pushed back against all of the compromises and caveins with the GOP-Corporate Complex.

Here's a suggestion from this cranky progressive.

What the GOP leaders like Wisconsin's governor are doing to public employees is unambiguously awful. They are trying to dismantle unions, the principles of collective bargaining, and all connected to that....They are using the same strategy that they have successfully waged against workers in the private sector.

This is not a point for interpretation. It's an indisputable fact. There is no middle ground on this.

You either support collective bargaining and the ability of workers to have a mechanism to protect their interests -- or you don't. Reasonable people cannot compromise on this.

You support one side or the other. Even if one disagrees or disapproves of some unions or some aspects of unions, that is not the issue now.

The GOP and their corporate partners have set their sights on killing the very concept of workers' joining together to get a fair deal.

President Obama can and should put his muscle and his mouth firmly on the side of the working and middle class, and call the GOP and the oligarchs out on this in no uncertain terms. Don't be reasonable or detached about it.

Educate the American people about what is at stake. And use his political capital to push back against this War Against Workers in Wisconsin and everywhere else.

.... I'd say he's already one step ahead.

Here's Fox's take on it, just for fun....
http://nation.foxnews.com/wisconsin-protests/2011/02/17/dnc-caught-organizing-wisconsin-protests

And here is Politico's version....
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0211/DNC_playing_role_in_Wisconsin_protests.html?showall

And here is OFA WI's Twitter page...
http://twitter.com/#!/OFA_WI

.... what else ya got?

My post was stating what I would like to see him dob- not assuming he wont.

If he come out against this with both guns, I'll be happy.

But the compromise was to continue with the irresponsible tax cuts for the rich because the republicans were willing to shitcan everything unless they got their way.

If you think sticking it to the rich is more important than helping the middle class, Obama is a crumby president.

And I'm sure at a time when everybody not rich is hurting for money that when their taxes would have gone up they would blame republicans and their rich puppetmasters, and not the president and the democrats who had majorities in both houses.

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Then DEMS could have said- "Our bill only included tax cuts for the middle class- but the GOP filibustered it 7 times."

LOL! Then again, "centrists" would have had to been FOR such a bill for then to ever actaully fight for it.

Or the Cheneys, or the Bushs, or the Waltons.

Funny- Obama rewards the far right with massive tax cuts, then they turn right around and use the same money fund efforts that oppose their benefactor.

LOL! Let me guess- soon I'll be getting emails from the DCCC asking me to donate in order to balance out the all the money the "Koch BRothers" are poutring into the system.

LOL! This is what amounts to long term strategy in the world of "centrism."

I do not get to keep the same percentage of money as the Koch Brothers do. My bill shave done nothing but go UP. My rent goes UP. My "tax cut" does little more than balance things out back to where they were 5 or so years ago.

Compare this to the tax cuts the Koch Brothers got- supplying them with MILLIONS of dollars that they can use to undermine Unions, etc.

Me? I'm lucky if my "tax cut" will even allow me to make extra student loan payments.

Call me back when Obama is ready to give me a "Koch Brothers" style tax cut, where I get to keep most of my cash.

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and union members PARASITES from 600 of the biggest radio stations in the country without a peep of protest.

all the left has to do is start picketing the right wing radio stations that get walker's back. there's one around every corner. or at least complaining to their local sponsors.

Because I have heard "the left" on the Ed Show, Hartman and posters here on DU going after Limbaugh.

If you exepct "the left" to respond to Rush, then you certainly also expect "centrists" to do so as well. Right?

If "the left" has been lax in going after Rush, then surely the "centrist" leaders have not dropped the ball. Right?

Show us some examples of "centrists" going after Rush in ways that the those lazy folks on left have not.

LOL! "The left" is not picketing radio shows right now- they are protesting against bigger fish.

Hopefully some "centrists" will get their backs soon.

guy in the party.

for most of the 20 years he and the radio monopoly he is point man for the GOP has been doing all major messaging, stopping single payer, public option, giving us bush and iraq and wall street deregulation, and on and on and basically for most of that the left has walked by those giant soapboxes that have been calling liberals thieves and traitors. maybe once in a while picking out a racist quote while those 1000 coordinated radio stations were allowed to create an alternate reality in which global warming denial gets 50% of the seats at the table.

NGU.

It's pretty clear where Obama stands.

I don't know what point there is to expect that he'd change?

http://agonist.org/stiffed

Well, then there's no point in continuing the discussion, then? You have your mind made up?

"You either support collective bargaining and the ability of workers to have a mechanism to protect their interests -- or you don't. Reasonable people cannot compromise on this."

You can support that and be against union monopolies, and oppose unions that punish workers if they want to be in a different union (or not join a union at all). Oh, and FWIW, the Wisconsin proposal allows unions to organize and bargain about their wages, something the noise has obscured...... I'd gather that's because anything less than *requiring* workers to join unions is met with resistance by unions, as is ceding any form of power.

"collective bargaining and the ability of workers to have a mechanism to protect their interests" isn't only, always, about the existing unions.

I specifically acknowledged that there is always room for disagreement or disapproval of some specific aspects of unions.

However, there is no middle ground on what the Repugs are trying to do, which is to undermine the very foundations of worker representation.

I do not agree with that interpretation.

Worker representation is not being threatened. Unions, as constructed in the United States, are.

I am arguing that these are two very different things.

There are "unions" in Cuba. There were "unions" in the USSR. They represent the interests of themselves first, the government second, and then the workers. US unions tend to take out the second step, but they are still about themselves first, and workers second.

Just because something calls itself a "union" does not make it a valid form of workers representation.

I am not disregarding your point about "specific aspects", I am challenging the idea that unions in the US are equivalent to worker representation.

They have become "Union representation", not "worker representation".

protecting the rights of workers against the massive advantages held by the wealthy and powerful. If you come up with a better way to represent workers within our system, please let me know.

We live in an imperfect world, and all institutions are imperfect, regardless of ideology.

It is similar to business and capitalism. One can dislike and oppose certain businesses and aspects of our economic system without being opposed to the basic principles of free enterprise.

:eyes:

Don't care much for unions, do you?

NGU.

:D

The rest of the gang has arrived already: union monopolies, wretched but unfire-able teachers, featherbedding public employees, dirty hippies, etc.

After all they take public money, so they are inherently on welfare.

Haven't seen that one yet.

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=monopoly

I don't care for institutional abuse of power.

That's not a monopoly.

And for pragmatic reasons it is not productive to have an a la carte system of competing representatives. That sort of defeast the purpose.

The current bill proposes annual re-certification, annual voting. This, needless to say, does not make the existing unions happy, because they lose their customer lock-in, and other organizers can step in with competing alternatives...

Oh, and the whole point of competing representation is to give workers choices, rather than locking them into representation they may or may not agree with.... because, after all wasn't that supposed to be the point?

Representing the needs of the workers?

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That makes about as much sense as what you wrote

He's doing better.

This doesn't "seem" like anything.

It IS an assault on unions and, in a larger senser, an assault on workers rights by the GOP and their corporate masters.

Let's start calling a spade a spade, and draw a clear line here between us and a GOP that is unambiguously attacking workers and the middle class.

"Some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin, where they're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions,"

Anyone reading the statement in it's entirety will gather that he's basing his response on second hand information at the time of the interview. We'd be more helpful to each other if we didn't spend all our time trying to read into words.

It is not an ambiguous situation, and there are no extenuating qualifiers for trying to decimate the position of public-employees and their union.

or that's what it seems to be to me:)

MADISON, WIS. – President Obama thrust himself and his political operation this week into Wisconsin’s broiling budget battle, mobilizing opposition Thursday to a Republican bill that would curb public-worker benefits while planning similar action in other state capitals.

Obama accused Scott Walker, the state’s new Republican governor, of unleashing an “assault” on unions in pushing emergency legislation that would nullify collective-bargaining agreements that affect most public employees, including teachers.

The president’s political machine worked in close coordination Thursday with state and national union officials to mobilize thousands of protesters to gather in Madison and to plan similar demonstrations in other state capitals.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x614107

doesn't want to appear to be partisan. When has he fought, really fought for the rest of us? :shrug:

cuts for the wealthy...his latest budget wipes it out after it terminates......don't you want him fighting hard for the union? Are you actually anti-union?

I meant bringing out the same kind of hammers he used to whip Democrats into line on his "compromise" with the GOP.

Obama has shown that he and his team are more than capable of playing hardball. My point was that now, he has the opportunity -- and the responsibility -- to be as visibly tough against GOP Union Busting Reactionaries as he was against Democrats who disagreed with him on tax cuts and no-option health care reform.

n/t