Friends With Benefits: Why Private Sector Workers Should Care About Public Sector Unions

[marmar]

from the Big Think:



Friends With Benefits: Why Private Sector Workers Should Care About Public Sector Unions
Lindsay Beyerstein on March 10, 2011, 7:54 PM


The Republicans are trying to pit private sector workers against public sector workers. It's easy for a struggling private sector worker with low wages and no benefits to resent (public) sector workers with job security, pensions, health care, and more—especially if that worker's state taxes are going up, and her public services are dwindling.

But why do public sector workers get better benefits than private sector workers? Because the public sector is much more heavily unionized than the private sector. Why is that? Because the law makes it virtually impossible to form a union in a private sector workplace these days. So, benefits in the private sector get worse and worse while corporate profits soar. Benefits in the public sector stay relatively good, even in tough economic times because they are organized and they can fight for themselves.

Here's what needs to happen: 1) The Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it a lot easier for workers in the private sector to organize, so that private sector workers can demand their piece of the American Dream; 2) Corporations and rich people need to pay their fair share of taxes so that the public employers can continue to provide decent benefits and wages to their workers—i.e., the people who teach our children, pick up our garbage, purify our water, pave our roads, etc.. Everybody wins. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://bigthink.com/ideas/31581

[HockeyMom]

1. They don't care about anyone but themselves

If they don't care about their own family members (spouse, children, in-laws who are Union public workers) who they know, why would they are about someone they don't know?

"Get a "REAL" job", is what they say. I have been hearing this from my husband to me, our kids, even going back to his in-laws, about Unions and public section jobs. Union is a DIRTY WORD to them.

The only time I ever had a "real job" was when I worked for a corporation 40 years ago. I would not give up working with special needs kids if I got paid NOTHING. I do meaningful work. Making a coproration run and make profits for them isn't meaningful to me, and many other people in this world.

You have to understand, these people are hopeless and it is a waste of breath to argue with them.