Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Readies National Guard Against Unions

Originally posted by NoHierarchy


That's complete BS and propaganda, but you are entitled to your severely skewed opinion.

For the first time in American history, a majority of union members are government workers rather than private-sector employees, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday.


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It's not as if we haven't seen this coming. When the movement among public-sector workers to unionize began gathering momentum in the 1950s, some critics, including private-sector labor leaders such as George Meany, observed that government is a monopoly not subject to the discipline of the marketplace. Allowing these workers -- many already protected by civil-service law -- to organize and bargain collectively might ultimately give them the power to hold politicians and taxpayers hostage.


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State and local government employers spent an average of $26.25 per hour worked for employee wages
and salaries in September 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries
accounted for 65.5 percent of compensation costs while benefits averaged $13.85 per hour worked and
accounted for the remaining 34.5 percent. (See chart 1.) Wages and salaries for management,
professional, and related occupations, which represent approximately half of all state and local
government employment, averaged $33.17 per hour worked.

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Oh my, what a political hot tater this will be. Can anyone else smell the
political winds here? On the one hand Government Union Workers = (voters),
and on the other JOBS! How many government workers are there nationwide
anyway? How many unemployed people are there (both on and off the books)?
Also taking into account that budget cuts are also on the political agenda, I think
the union workers might have a difficult time this time around. It is a difficult situation
all the way around if you ask me.

reply to post by MMPI2


I'm in a union and I love it. I make really good money, have a good (not great) pension, excellent medical, dental, free eye doctor visits. I get 36 days of vacation a year that rolls over. My schooling was paid in full. The union dues are a write off too. Keep hating though, because I'm living it up recession-proof style. But you're right, unions are bad.

Originally posted by sbc650mike
reply to post by MMPI2

 

I'm in a union and I love it. I make really good money, have a good (not great) pension, excellent medical, dental, free eye doctor visits. I get 36 days of vacation a year that rolls over. My schooling was paid in full. The union dues are a write off too. Keep hating though, because I'm living it up recession-proof style. But you're right, unions are bad.

However you feel about unions, this IS stripping rights away granted to individuals and a threat to use the National Guard against citizens. For a governor who ran on a small government platform, it took him only a month to turn into a Big Government Republican. Hypocracy.

reply to post by Flatfish


The reason you do not find supporters of the Governor out to protest is because we are all working!!! I support him 100%, but you would never see me pulling this crap that the union members are doing. If they decide to hike my taxes because the unions need more benefits, I will not be storming the capitol.

Political posturing by the governor. He is referncing the national guard in order to do two things.

1: It allows the governor to have some control choosing which sections of the new state budgets will be focused on in the media. The implication is that the unions are seen as a legitimate threat to the people that may require military force.

2: The result builds distrust between segments of the population; dividing the issue forces the decisions of the government onto the unions creating the illusion that the problems are from the unions. it's a tactic that has been used in the past to break unions from the US system.

Right now Michigan is undergoing a similar situation under the new Governor Snyder. The budget is less focused on unions at the moment; however, we'll see what the reaction is with it's release this past week. The unions will propably have a large say in the matter and a similar tactic coming from Lansing would not suprise me, should the wisconsin government see a favorable fallout.

Originally posted by Dwigt
reply to post by Flatfish

 

The reason you do not find supporters of the Governor out to protest is because we are all working!!! I support him 100%, but you would never see me pulling this crap that the union members are doing. If they decide to hike my taxes because the unions need more benefits, I will not be storming the capitol.

If you want to know the truth about the Wisconsin budget deficit, check out this thread I just started; www.abovetopsecret.com...

The real reason for raising your taxes is to pay of their cronie corporate and special interest supporters that got them elected and not because of unions. You anti-union people are being suckered, yet again, by the very people you put in office. How they get you people to vote against your own self interest just blows me away.

reply to post by Flatfish

When you use a one sided news article, you get one sided "facts". Yeah, Walker has been in office for a handful of weeks and he is the reason why we are in such bad fiscal shape? I do not disagree that Unions once had their place, but when you are on the other side of their thuggery, you see what they have now become.

I think what they are most concerned about here is the fact that the individual will now have the ability to opt out of the union and not pay their dues.

Originally posted by Dwigt
reply to post by Flatfish

 

When you get one sided news, you get one sided "facts". Yeah, Walker has been in office for a handful of weeks and he is the reason why we are in such bad fiscal shape. I do not agree that Unions once had their place, but when you are on the other side of their thuggery, you see what they have now become.

I think what they are most concerned about here is the fact that the individual will now have the ability to opt out of the union and not pay their dues.

I really haven't heard anything about Wisconsin becoming a right-to-work law state or that this has anything to do with the current situation. Although I can tell you this, as a retired union member coming from a right-to-work law state, namely Texas, the law may exempt a person from paying dues but it does not exempt them from paying their fair share of the cost for representation by the union that is providing the labor to the employer.

In my union, dues only amounted to $3.00 per month which was nothing, local service charge on the other hand was 5% of gross payroll and every worker paid that. That service charge paid for everything from construction and maintenance of our hiring hall to paying a payroll clerk to pass out payroll weekly, to performing all of the clerical work with regards to signing up new employees including verification of citizenship or work authorization from the Immigration Naturalization Service, to annual seniority classification and production of I.D. cards, to dispute representation and arbitration, to representation at contract negotiations and much, much more. Worth every penny too, I might add.

In reality, this is about union busting and nothing more.

reply to post by Flatfish

Part of this bill is to raise the amount that workers have to contribute to their benefit package. Something that many workers have had to deal with over the last couple years. State workers should not be immune to the poor economy. To offset this increased cost, the employees will not be forced to pay their union dues anymore, they can opt out. In some cases, this is reported to actually be a net increase in workers pay.

As a small business owner, I have not been able to give my employee a raise for the last two years and have had to take away a $500/month vehicle allowance. WIth that being said, I have kept him working every day, even when there was little to no work. He has not seen a decrease in his salary outside of the vehicle allowance. I think he is grateful he has a job as many of his peers do not. I did not do any of this because I was a greedy business owner. Over the last two years, I have paid him more than I have made myself.

There are certainly cases of employers taking advantage of their employees as well as corruption on many levels. However, in todays day and age, if you don't like your place of employment, go somewhere else.

These teachers are not striking against some large greedy corporation. In the end, it is the kids who are suffering.

reply to post by Dwigt


Look. The problem with the union members like those we're seeing on this thread is that their beliefs have gone past the point of normal, healthy support of an organization, but have verged into the realm of disturbance in their contact with reality.

These people - and I really do feel sorry for them in many ways - over their years as union members have subjected themselves to an indoctrination that resembles the programming suffered by cult followers.

In fact, exploring the similarity between cults and labor unions would make kind of a really neat research paper for the social scientist or clinical psychologist. I gathered these few cultist characteristics from a quick google search -

Qualities of those prone to Cults and Labor Union influence:

dependency - an intense desire to belong, stemming from a lack of self-confidence
unassertiveness - a reluctance to say no or question authority
gullibility - a tendency to believe what someone says without really thinking about it
low tolerance for uncertainty - a need to have any question answered immediately in black-and-white terms
disillusionment with the status quo - a feeling of marginalization within one's own culture and a desire to see that culture change
naive idealism - a blind belief that everyone should adhere to their concept of morality
desire for spiritual meaning - a need to believe that life has a "higher purpose" - i.e., the notion of cosmic justice consistent with communism

Their unwavering support of these patently criminal "brotherhood" organizations goes far past normal and healthy and into the pathological. Even when confronted with bare and unalterable fact - put right in front of their faces! - they deny and obfuscate, much like the brainwashed cult member holding the paper cup full of cherry cool-aid.

So, it is no wonder to me that these people often react to information that contravenes their world-view in a way that is visceral, illogical and often extremely violent.

I hope that the ongoing and growing rejection of labor unions in the U. S. happens in a way that these peoples' pathologies are contained and not dangerous to the public at large.

reply to post by Dwigt


They're striking because a fraud is being carried out against them by a republican legislature that just, over the last two months, has awarded 140 million in special interest tax breaks to the corporations that helped get them elected, and the are currently attempting to make unions the scapegoat.

They had no budget crisis when governor Walker took office and the proof is contained within the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Report. Just look at the report, it seems like some of you people aren't reading the report. Numbers don't lie.

I've tried several times to post a direct link to the report but it never seems to work, sorry. If you want to know the truth, you'll have to check out the link WITHIN this article; host.madison.com...

Good luck blaming this on the unions.

Originally posted by Flatfish
reply to post by Dwigt

 

They're striking because a fraud is being carried out against them by a republican legislature that just, over the last two months, has awarded 140 million in special interest tax breaks to the corporations that helped get them elected, and the are currently attempting to make unions the scapegoat.

They had no budget crisis when governor Walker took office and the proof is contained within the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Report. Just look at the report, it seems like some of you people aren't reading the report. Numbers don't lie.

I've tried several times to post a direct link to the report but it never seems to work, sorry. If you want to know the truth, you'll have to check out the link WITHIN this article; host.madison.com...

Good luck blaming this on the unions.

You're concerned about Fraud? You know what "numbers don't lie"? International Test Scores.

In 4th grade math, we rank 12th.
In 8th grade math, we rank 28th.
In 12th grade math, we rank 19th.

In 4th grade science, we rank 3rd.
In 8th grade science, we rank 17th.
In 12th grade science, we rank 16th.

Those teachers unions should give back their pay PLUS some.

The schools systematically let kids down. By grade 4, American students only score in the middle of 26 countries reported. By grade 8 they are in the bottom third, and at the finish line, where it really counts, we're near dead last. Its even worse when you notice that some of the superior countries in grade 8 (especially the Asians) were not included in published 12th grade results. They do not need 12 grades. [emphasis mine]
4brevard.com...

reply to post by Califemme


More Union Shenanigans......

It's not every day that an American labor union gets investigated for possible ties to two of the world's most lethal terrorist organizations. But Chicago's Service Employees International Union Local 73 isn't an everyday union. Last September 24, FBI agents raided residences in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan of more than a dozen radical activists in an effort to connect them to the Hamas (Gaza and the West Bank) and FARC (Colombia) guerrilla movements. Two of the occupants were SEIU Local 73 chief steward and executive board member Joe Iosbaker and former local board member-steward Tom Burke. Neither they nor anyone else has been arrested. But as the case unfolds, questions have arisen over the extent of involvement, if any, by the Chicago-based radical network that nurtured President Obama's political ambitions from the Nineties onward.............

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There were people on the assembly line who would report for work at 7:30 AM, unlock their tool boxes, work for thirty minutes or an hour, disappear to the lavatory, smoke and shoot craps until 11:30, work for a half hour, and go to lunch. Returning from lunch, they'd work for a half hour or an hour, disappear to the lavatory, shoot craps and tell fish-stories until 3:30, gather up their tools, lock their tool boxes, and be first in line to punch the time clock at the 4:00 o’clock shift change....................

Whenever the company tried to fire one of the slackers the union immediately came to his defense, threatening a strike, and he’d be reinstated, with back pay. And when the union negotiated a new contract the slackers got the same pay increase as those of us who put in a full day’s work, every day.

What steelworkers have done to the steel industry, autoworkers have done to the auto industry. As Robert J. Dewar, a former Ford Motor Company general foreman tells us in his book, A Savage Factory: An Eyewitness Account of the Auto Industry’s Self-Destruction, “the UAW arsenal easily outgunned management. Production was sabotaged. Critical employees were absent when high production was most needed. Tools mysteriously disappeared. Bad quality was run purposely. The weakest, least desirable employees were protected with the full power of the labor contract. When management and the UAW stood eyeball to eyeball, management always backed down – they had to – productivity and profitability hung in the balance.”


I see a lot of sabotage from the Unions Just today.


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* In Oregon the labor movement is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund two ballot initiative campaigns to raise personal income and business taxes. The unions want tax hikes instead of cuts in the gold-plated medical benefits for state workers.
* In California the Service Employees International Union spent $1 million on a television ad campaign pressing for higher oil, gas, and liquor taxes instead of spending reductions.
* Washington State Democrats, however, have so far resisted the labor movement’s call for higher taxes. In response labor unions are threatening to fund primary campaigns against the Democrats who oppose the tax hikes.

This is not your father’s labor movement. Unions today want higher taxes and bigger government because they are the government.

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Real Change cannot happen without sacrifice.

Originally posted by sonnny1
This is not your father’s labor movement. Unions today want higher taxes and bigger government because they are the government.

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Real Change cannot happen without sacrifice.

edit on 17-2-2011 by sonnny1 because: (no reason given)

I know, right? Today's public sector employees should not have the right to unionize against taxpayers. That's absurd. Now we are about to see if the unions can thug their way into frightening taxpayers to bend to their will, and not make any sacrifices that the rest of the non union world has made. I mean come on, the whole Wisconsin thing is over some pretty petty stuff. It's all just so enlightening into the minds of the unions.

reply to post by Califemme


I agree 100%. What does it say when Government employees decide to take the day off,at the cost of the very people PAYING their outrageous salaries,bonuses,premium health care,massive vacation days,and sick days? Who's paying for these services? We the People.Government Unions are holding "We the People" Hostage.......

Theres a reason theres not a Higher counter protest to these "sick-outs". Its because the people that DONT have all those luxury's cant just drop the ball,like these Union members can do. The afforded Luxury of sick time,Vacation time is just that....Luxury's...... The Piper is calling,and its "We the People".

reply to post by Flatfish


Wrong Wrong Wrong.

After spending several days complaining about Governor Walker’s proposed compensation changes for state employees (as if a 100 percent match on pension contributions and picking up 87 percent of health insurance premiums were raw deals) the union operatives have shifted gears.

“It’s about rights, not pay,” is their new mantra. Organized government employee unions are expressing panic over their would-be inability to negotiate items other than pay. They are specifically troubled at the prospect of no longer being able to dictate work rules, engage in union activities during the work week or participate in negotiated procedures to mitigate their grievances against management.

Union-Negotiated Work Rules for Public Employees Cost Taxpayers Dearly


Taxes

Perhaps no other issue defines the governor’s political statements’ relationship to his actual policies than taxes. In his 2003 State of the State address, Doyle said, “Going forward, my mind will be open to every solution except one. We should not, we must not, and I will not raise taxes.”

Shortly after that speech, Doyle proposed to raise the nursing home bed tax from $32 per month per licensed bed to $116 per month per licensed bed to generate $13.8 million for the state’s general fund. More importantly, he vetoed the legislature’s attempt to freeze local property taxes, despite estimates taxes would go up 5.9%.

Since that inauspicious start, Doyle has increased taxes just about everywhere and on everything. From taxes on iPod downloads to the taxes on garbage, it would be difficult to find a tax that Doyle did not want to increase.

Debating Doyle’s Legacy

Unions are not helping,they are hurting this economy,along with Corporate greed,and Wasteful Government.

These are the reasons why drastic changes need to be put in place. Dont sugarcoat it with fluff.............Government Unions are too powerful. They are holding EVERYONE Hostage.

Originally posted by whaaa
reply to post by Black_Fox

 

Isn't it ironic/hypocritical that Gov. Walker and the legislators can legislate themselves a pay raise but if the people that actually do the work want to bargain collectively; walker threatens to bring out the Guard.

Walker better be careful, the Guard may turn on him because probably they have family in the unions.

I thank God for my union representation AFTRA/SAG because without them I would have no retirement and no healthcare coverage, because the production companies won't provide it.

Don't like the way your company treats you? There is a solution!! Unions..Kickinass for the working class!!

edit on 14-2-2011 by whaaa because: (no reason given)

REPLY: What ever happened to self reliance? I put money away each week for the new tires I'll need next year. Since high school I've saved for and had insurance, and I put money away for retirement, too. Kids used to be taught that at home and in school. Unions do nothing more than hijack our tax dollars to pay people more than their job is worth.

This is an unwise move.
If even a shot is fired it will be the beginning of the end.
Facts are facts.T here is a whole lot more folks supporting the lower classes in this than the uppers.
Also its illegal too use troops in this manner too enforce a political ideology or vote.
So this is it the Civil War that pits rich against poor.
Great just what we need.
Nice work Gop/Corporate Greed. Nice work couldnt share the pie had too take it all. Nice.

You all can sit here and debate and rage back and forth about unions all day long, but you are overlooking the most important fact - this is the FIRST instance of a "martial law" - the mobilization of the National Guard against the citizenry - and it is being imposed by the conservative camp - a Republican governor (WI now, and likely OH next) and his fascist fan boys are the ones imposing this.

The last time this happened was at Kent State University, Ohio, in 1970, by a Republican governor, and we know how well that went.