Lies Our Leaders Tell Us: Unions Are The Enemy

There is a problem in our country that has been brewing for a while, and it's all wrapped up in things I've talked about before. Corporations have, through their own media outlets and through the politicians they've paid for, convinced us that out lives are better off with lower taxes for all, that lower taxes means more take-home pay while lower corporate taxes stimulates job growth, and that cutting spending on 'unnecessary' programs like schools where teachers are paid disproportionately to the difficulty of their job are the ways to accomplish this miracle of personal savings. We've seen the messages that the Tea Party organizers and Republican law makers have told us, that we deserve to keep more of our hard-earned money, that we should be able to save more of our own money, and that we know how to spend our money better than the government.

The only part of any of that that is true is that we deserve the money we work so hard to make. We don't, however, save anything when taxes are cut because all those frivolous government programs that Republicans are so quick to identify as wasteful help to keep our cost of living down. The fact is that the government spends our money better than most of us do. When so many people were duped into subprime mortgages and spending money on houses they couldn't afford to own, that means that there are a whole lot of people out there who don't know how to invest their money wisely. That's okay, most of us aren't financial geniuses, I am certainly not. That's one reason why those subsidies that go to green energy research, to grants for students, toward investments in future growth, those are all important and those are all things that the Tea Party driven Republicans seek to cut.

But right now probably the biggest fight is over the idea of unions. Politicians tell us that public worker unions are responsible for so much of state deficits across this country. Well, in fact, in Wisconsin, the governor's corporate tax cut is exactly what's caused the deficit in that state. Moreover, cutting collective bargaining rights for workers has no fiscal impact and he's said that himself. Even further, according to Forbes magazine, a conservative publication owned by one-time Republican Presidential Nomination contestant Steve Forbes, Wisconsin state employees actually pay for their entire pension and health benefits themselves, the only thing the taxpayer money is used for is to pay their salaries.

So, the discussion still goes on with conservatives trying to convince the public that somehow public workers' unions are to blame for the fiscal problems of their states. The rhetoric, however, stands firm even as the legitimate conservative press picks it apart with actual facts, since what it is really based on is the 'public employees have such a sweet deal'. People in interviews have actually been saying that, as though the public employees are criminals who are steeling from taxpayers, or that they are somehow corrupt because they are making more than the many unemployed workers in this country.

Their wages haven't changed so much since before the economy melted, though, and neither have their benefits. Most of those union contracts only become problematic when, like now, governments seek to renegotiate so the employees get less. And no, they don't have the only hard jobs in this country, and no they aren't work any more or less than other workers with comparable skills and jobs in comparable industries. So the question isn't why do they have so much and such a sweet deal, the question is, why do so many other people have so much LESS? Why is it that we are settling for fewer and fewer benefits while corporations are posting record profits? Why is it that we are letting them tell us that requiring corporations to pay wages that aren't just decent but that might actually be good along with benefit packages that provide real security for people would kill business and force them to move more jobs overseas when they're not creating jobs to begin with?

Even more than that, why have we as a nation settled for a situation where the average American salary has only seen a 2% growth over the last twenty years for those making less than $250,000 while that growth in income has skyrocketed for those above that line? Why have we allowed ourselves to be convinced that somehow wage adjustments for cost of living equal an actual benefit rather than the bare minimum when factoring inflation into our cost of living? A raise for inflation isn't a raise or a bonus, it's not a reward for hard work.

Unions are the ones who fight for against all those things. They're the ones who helped bring about a set work week so that we aren't expected to slave away for sixty, seventy or eighty hour weeks without any benefits and without overtime. They are the ones who fight for safe work environments and family leave for new parents and for those caring for sick relatives. So why would we fight against unions? How is busting the unions in the public interest when raising tax rates on corporations making billions of dollars in profits every year, who are posting record profits every quarter? And honestly, is anyone implying that teachers have easy jobs? Cause on FOX News they constantly bring up the fact that teachers only work 9 months a year...oh except for all the workshops they have to do to keep up their licenses, the conferences they have to attend, and the fact that every teacher I've ever known has had a second job during the summer and on weekends during the year. Are they really saying that the job of a CEO at a major corporation is harder than the job of a high school teacher in a poor inner city school? Really?

The governor of Wisconsin, along with Republicans across this country, say that state workers should be making their share of the sacrifices. Well...I don't see CEO's of banks losing their jobs, and they're the ones who got us into this mess. I don't see rich people making any sacrifices at all, as Charlie Sheen takes private jets to the Caribbean to party it up with teenage hookers. I don't see Congressmen living at all within the kind of salary that an average American makes. They have money budgeted to them for travel to and from their home district as well as to pay staff and for their office supplies and everything except for their own living expenses while in Washington. So why do Congressmen make more than $150k a year? They're public workers too, and they get government health care and pensions just like the Wisconsin state workers.

But who are the people who have the ability to bring these issues to legislators, who have the political power to be able to make the voices of workers heard? Unions. That's why people unionized to begin with. The only way people who don't have the money of the Koch brothers can make their voices heard in a democracy now dominated by corporate money is by pooling their money and man power, and that's what a union is.

So really, the discussion should be shifted away from why are these workers making so much money and why the rest of us aren't. Why aren't we all in unions? The unions have had such huge power in certain industries, so why aren't all private and public employees unionized? Because corporations know that if they can bust up unions they can pay workers less, cut jobs and benefits without repercussions, and make more money doing it. So why are we fighting the union employees in Wisconsin when we really should be organizing unions for labor people all across this country. The Tea Party, which has been bought and paid for by the Koch brothers and designed by Karl Rove, want to play the 'take our country back' game and point to anyone who thinks people should be paid a fair wage and that poor children shouldn't have to starve because oil companies want a tax break, we the rest of us can play that game too. We want our country back from the corporations that have been convincing people too ignorant or uneducated to recognize that they've been bought into servitude and the politicians that have been their corporate shills.