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Californians' Negative View of Organized Labor Grows, Field Poll Says

6
Rightwingconspirator12/13/2013 1:49:11 pm PST

re: #5 Absalom, Absalom, Obdicut

The prison guard union in California is a huge, highly public union that progressives hate because it’s an anti-progressive force. They are a pariah union, and they are, as noted by one of the cites articles, a main reason why unions are dropping in popularity.

The conflation of problems with other unions with the problems with the prison guard union makes it very difficult to extract useful data about people’s opinions about unions. Anyone writing about unions or labor in California should be careful to distinguish the two.

I don’t agree with this. I don’t think that the same things were pointed out, nor were they addressed in the same fashion, nor were the same solutions offered.

Language like this detracts from reasonable argument.

We have, in the US, a major problem of under-unionization. Where we do have unions, we have a problem of union specialization and characterization. Reducing that to ‘the union monster’ is silly. Comparing unions—who have achieved massive, massive gains for the American people, unions who created the weekend, the eight hour day, the concept of overtime, who got rid of company stores, etc. etc.—to the Tea Party, is beyond silly.

Since the guards union is a pariah, can you show me any links of that having an impact on contract negotiations? Or the pro Union organizations calling them out on this stuff? I’d love to see it.

Do you have issue with the term Tea Party monster as well? The reasonable argument resides on level ground. That kind of term is wielded very often at even the moderate /centrist right here on the board. Seems fair game.

However for the sake of hewing to substance, shall we toss both “monsters” term for a moment? Look at what broadly precipitated the changes that Jerry Brown pushed and the legislature passed. The bigger picture of many unions with fixed benefits, a great recession and a resulting severe budgetary problem paying the pension bills for all the CALPERS retirees.

Only a small portion of that can be laid at the guards union. They are not the only public sector union in California that got some outrageous and often enough unaffordable terms.

This makes a fair case-

For more than half of my 38 years in the news business, I’ve been a member of a union, though I’m not currently. And my late father was a proud Teamster for decades.

In other words, don’t count me among those who vilify organized labor, which in many parts of the country offers the best hope for hanging on to a place in the middle class. And when it comes to public employee unions, no, they shouldn’t have to trade pensions for 401(k)s, though a hybrid wouldn’t be so bad. We’re going to have enough of a disaster on our hands when non-union retirees end up flat broke and on the dole, especially if Social Security gets trimmed.

If you were waiting for a “but,” here it comes.

It’s time for public employee unions to wake up and take a look around. Government services are shrinking, cities are crumbling, and they’re enjoying pay and benefit packages that many in the private sector would kill for. They need to give a little back. Yeah, I know, some of them already have. But it’s time for a little more.

The actions of the Governor and legislature reflect the reality above.