Commentary: The fight that labor has to win to protect the middle class

Jass Stewart is a city councilor at large in Brockton. He can be reached at Jass@JassStewart.com

Commentary: The fight that labor has to win to protect the middle class

To close the gaping hole in Wisconsin’s state budget, Gov. Scott Walker decided to pick a fight.

“With whom?” you ask.

Well, it’s not with corporations that ship jobs overseas. Nor is it with the state’s wealthiest – who continue to enjoy huge tax cuts. And it’s certainly not with high-flying speculators whose greed helped tank the global economy.

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Texas, Louisiana, and North Carolina – all non-collective bargaining states – are among the 11 states facing budget shortfalls greater than or equal to 20 percent. South Carolina, another non-collective bargaining state, suffers a shortfall of 17.4 percent. And last, Nevada – where state employees have no collective bargaining rights, but local workers do – has the largest budget shortfall in the country, at 45.2 percent

Conversely, in some places where state workers are unionized – take New Mexico, Montana and Massachusetts as examples – the deficits are significantly smaller, less than 10 percent.

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