Who's House? OUR HOUSE!

"Who’s House?  OUR HOUSE!"

Chanted the crowd on June 14^th, 2011.  Prior to arms around the capitol in Madison, WI, a rally led by Mahlon Mitchell (President of Proffessional firefighters of Wisconsin).  People sang loud and proud ‘We will overcome”, while holding hands surrounding the capitol so as to allow no one in.  A response to Governor Scott Walker's disregard for the rights American workers have struggled decades for.  

Collective bargaining makes this country great to live and work in.  It separates us from China and Mexico where cheap goods are made at the expense of human rights.  The People of Wisconsin are mad.  There are better ways to fix a broken budget. 

The voice of the people was to no avail.  “Acting with unusual speed, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the reinstatement of Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial plan to end most collective bargaining for tens of thousands of public workers. jsonline

The court found that the hasty backroom legislation by the Wisconsin GOP did not in fact violate the open meeting law it was accused of.  A shady act committed by the right shortly after last year's elections, while members of the democratic minority were out of state, a strategy used to stall negotiations.  A video of some of wisconsins current state of politics can be seen here.

   

Even Worse…

Leinenkugels, The Milwaukee Brewers, New Glarus, and Stevens Point.  Beer.  This shit just kills me.  Scott Walker's attack on craft breweries. Just five days ago tucked neatly into the governors budget was a provision to make it more difficult for craft breweries to operate in Wisconsin.  The provision will make it illegal for craft breweries to sell directly to liquor stores and restaurants, and preventing them from selling their own products onsite.  The craft brew industry is one that has continued to grow despite the recession in nearly all areas of the country.  This is small business expanding and actually creating jobs.  Scott Walker who calls himself a “champion of small business” wants to treat these breweries as if they were big corporations.  It's only fair I guess since MillerCoors donated $22,675 to his campaign.

 I wonder if he puts ice cubes in his bud light? 

Wisconsin has always been an idyllic place.  It is the home of Richie Cunningham and Eric Foreman.  It provided the setting for “Grease.”  Good, wholesome, hardworking representations of America.  Then there is the Green Bay Packers, the NFL’s third oldest team.  A team owned by the community of Green Bay and named after factory workers who canned (packed) meat.  Named after the people and owned by the people.  It is a shame that this State's good reputation of community is being steamrolled by big business (Koch bros) and greed (Scott Walker).  I really love however, to see the people get mad and I’m damned sure that Wisconsonites will overcome and get the recall they desperately deserve. 

I was recently at an event in which Steven Weinberg, arguably one of America’s brightest scientists, gave a speech on the future of big science.  In the address he stated that “We need to make a teaching career look attractive to our best college graduates.”  I could not agree more.  I mean God forbid we have intelligent people working in government.  You aren’t helping, Scott.

“The role of Government is to help those who cannot help themselves.”

-Abraham Lincoln

The role of government is not to “know what’s best” and rule deceptively.  

REPOST: WHY DO UNIONS EXIST?

In light of recent events in Wisconsin, Michigan, and some 13 states all together I feel it appropriate to echo thoughts I first posted here in the wake of the economic meltdown of 2008.

By Kristopher Hite

 

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

...and on and on, as most people who attended grade-school anytime in the later half of the twentieth century probably know. This classic ballad of the American landscape was written by good old Woody Guthrie. But there is a song, most people probably do not know, that was written by this same brilliant American - the ballad of the Ludlow Massacre.

On April 20th, 1914 twenty men, women, and children were murdered in Ludlow, Colorado by the Colorado National Guard. The men in these families were part of the mine worker's union that were staging a labor strike. This struggle represents the roots of the American labor movement and unfortunately has been forgotten in recent years.



In his penetrating dissection of the 2008 financial meltdown and subsequent corporate power-grab Matt Taibbi makes a subtle point regarding unions and their political decline in recent decades. Taibbi describes how Bill Clinton's administration turned their back on unions simply because the Democrats were sick of loosing the fund-raising game during campaigns. Of course there has been a concerted effort by Republicans to undermine the philosophical concept of a union for the better part of the last century, but this relatively recent change in Democratic attitudes towards unions has further eroded any remaining traction unions held in the minds of the electorate.

Cornell University has an entire college dedicated to the study of industrial/labor relations. Much work here focuses on giving workers the tools they need to use leverage when undertaking collective bargaining. The college helps the research process of unions so they might identify weaknesses in corporations and exploit them in order to gain the basic rights they deserve - health care, decent pay, respect.

This is where, I think, there is a fundamental misunderstanding amongst the general public. What is the purpose of a union?

To guarantee basic rights - health care, decent pay, respect.

This is the reason I am writing about this on Tom Paine's Ghost.

People have been made to believe that unions are filled with fat lazy socialists who don't want to work. This is part of the distorting barrage of information that oozes from broadcast corporations such as the Sinclair Broadcast Group who have their tentacles wrapped around the visual cortices of the American Midwest. Some unions may have behaved improperly and over-stepped their bounds when considering the United Auto Workers Union and others. But this is no reason to disband the concept of unions altogether!

Again. The main purpose of a Union is to guarantee basic rights - health care, decent pay, respect.

Upon recommendation from a friend that attended the college of Industrial Labor Relations I began reading a book titled Global Unions. This book is the distillation of a conference held in February of 2006 regarding the past current and future role of unions on the international stage. Video of each talk given can be found here.

The main point made here, through historical perspectives and contemporary examples, is that in order for unions to be effective, from now on, they need to operate on the same scale as the multinational corporations they serve to balance.

While we approach the anniversary of the Ludlow massacre I feel obligated to breath onto the embers of understanding unions. It will be interesting to see how ideas about unions evolve in the recently bluing state of Colorado. This state has maintained an anti-union err up until very recent history. Traveling to Pueblo, CO in fall of 2008 I heard many first-hand accounts of scabs blocking the efficacy of a steel-workers strike at the Oregon Steel Mill there in the early 2000s.

In honor of Clarence Darrow I feel it appropriate to reignite an understanding and passion for core union precepts; basic rights - health care, decent pay, respect.

P.S. The following interview with Naomi Klein on Democracy Now broadcast last week inspired this REPOST.