Thursday, November 25, 2010

Or We Could Just Work On Solving The Problem

Brian Fraley, of the misrepresenting MacGuyver Institute, thinks that it is high time that the state does away with collective bargaining rights and to make Wisconsin a right-to-work state. His rationale for these propositions is because government workers supposedly currently outnumber private sector workers.

Fraley, in order to support such an inane proposal, first construct an artificial argument, claiming that it was the public sector unions that forced this reversal in numbers between the private and public sector. The unions diabolical method for achieving this, according to Fraley, is that they vote.

Those bastards!

The truth of it is that the Republicans, his group, has been spending decades systematically weakening the private sector unions through the repeal of worker protection laws and by waging a propaganda war against unions in an effort to make them look like the bad guys. This animosity, combined with their diminished rights, has created such a riff that the majority of wealth in our economy is again being concentrated among the elite few.

The right now apparently feels they have the unions where they want them and are preparing to go for the jugular of the middle class and do away with unions altogether. Again, Fraley's argument for this is based on falsehoods. He makes it seem that all public sector workers are living in the lap of luxury and that is why the economy is doing so poorly.

The fact of the matter is that public sector employees are not doing all that well, salary-wise, especially compared to the private sector. Yes, the public sector does tend to have better fringe benefits, but that is simply because they choose to forgo immediate gratification and keep their eyes on the bigger picture. If one really wanted to take care of the high costs of these benefits, it would be much wiser, fiscally conservative, and socially responsible to simply do something constructive about the cost of health care, which is too damn high.

And if you were wondering where all that money is, if not in the hands of those public sector workers, take a look at the top personnel of the corporations, which are making record profits, but not reinvesting it by hiring anyone.

Instead of constructing straw man arguments in order to attack one part of the population who are just as much victims of the economy as anyone, Fraley and his front group should try to be honest with themselves and us, just this once. If their concern is truly the economy and taxes, they should take a long hard look at how they, by rallying their wagons around Big Business and Big Rx, are actually the problem, and admit that their cure would only push this country closer to a plutocracy. Then again, this might be their goal after all.

Likewise, Fraley's argument about Wisconsin needing to be a right-to-work state is equally bogus. First of all, most unions do have it in place where people can opt out of being in the union.

Secondly, this state is already a right-to-work state. If you don't want to belong to a union, don't take a job in a union shop. It's really that simple. If you want to be a serf for the rest of your life, that is your business. Just don't try to take the rest of us down with you.

3 comments:

  1. faithfully preserving a worker's right to work for less: how thoughtful of them.

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  2. People like you don't understand that businesses don't have to put up with unions and set up shop somewhere else. The fact is that businesses with unions are failing to compete. When a company can move to a place where they don't have to put with thug union leaders and LAZY union members that soak companies without any risk to themselves, they will. Lastly the problem with public employee unions is that the dems get taxpayer money into their coffers through union campaign contributions which is wrong and immoral. I'm fine with public employee unions as long as they are banned from the political process.

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  3. Anonymous 6:32-

    People like you don't understand that in right to work states you have a 34% greater chance to be in poverty, a twice as likely chance to be killed on the job, and and overall lower quality of life. Why not get paid for the work you do?

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