Peaceful Assembly as Protest

We watched tens of thousands of young Egyptians assembly peaceable to protest their suppressive regime. Some of us cheered. Some of us wanted policy to be directed at maintenance of the status quo.

We are now watching thousands of frustrated educators peaceably protest policies of the newly elected state government in Wisconsin. American conservatives believe this is inappropriate. They tended to be far more sanguine over the somewhat less peaceable protests against "Obama Care" during the summer of 2009.

Sauce for the Gander
Sorry guys. What's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander. The Wisconsin teachers have made substantial concessions on pensions and health insurance. They drew the line in the sand over their right to collectively bargain.

Public employees serve at the discretion of the taxpayers you say? True. And hard times call for harsh measures. But the Wisconsin teachers' union has already agreed to very hard measures. Its members proved willing to sacrifice for the common good. What they refuse to give up is their right to bargain as a unit, rather than individuals. To strip them of this right, is to insure they have no clout at all at the bargaining table. It is a negation of the concept of public unions. Depriving employees of union protection makes them incredibly vulnerable.

During the early 1980s President Ronald Reagan summarily fired all the striking air traffic controllers. The reason for the strike? Chronic under staffing had make this job incredibly stressful and endangered the public. The result? The experienced workers were replaced by those willing to cross the picket lines and public unions were dealt a crippling blow.

Why are unions necessary?
From the days when the Pinkertons beat and murdered striking workers, the "powers that be" have always been aligned on the side of management. Unions were the only substantial institutions protecting the "small people" in a society devoted to ever increasing profit shared among fewer and fewer individuals. Our national government colluded with the corporations to ship jobs overseas to countries without the standards of workers compensation, insurance, pensions and minimum wages mandated in the U. S. of A. The result? A country that produces nothing. A population that works longer and longer hours for less and less money and an economic polarization in which the top tier do very well indeed and everyone else gets the dregs.

Can the unions survive? The outcome is far from certain. But their loss would be one more nail in the coffin of the American middle class.