Wisconsin Union Battle

What’s really happening in Wisconsin?

The recent protests in the state of Wisconsin, regardless of who’s organizing them, appear to show that hundreds if not thousands of people are very upset, when in fact what it is showing, is that tens or hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions across the state, are more upset than those shown on TV, due to the burdens that special treatment of public sector unions have put on the general public.

Behind the scenes and across this whole nation, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, are finally becoming aware of the fact that public unions, otherwise known as government unions, are raping this nation financially. It’s amazing to me to sit there and listen to liberals scream about the rich man getting breaks, and the rich man taking from the poor, when in fact, liberals have their own group of elitists and special interest groups in this nation. Those people are “unions”.

I have known for years, as most of the people in this country have known for years, that the people in the unions, especially those in public-sector unions, have been unfairly monopolizing and extorting money from the American taxpayer. These unions are different from private unions, such as the UAW, or the AFL CIO, in the sense that public-sector unions do not have competition. Nobody competes with public schools in this nation, accepting in those states where charter schools have been allowed. On a quick side note, charter schools are fought with extreme intensity by state education unions wherever charter schools try to pop up. Nobody competes with Department of Transportation union people in the states. Nobody can compete with the unions formed by those who administer civil services in the states. The list goes on and on, but the reality is, that these people have had many decades of ramping up their salaries and benefits, and while most of us have known that they are over paid and have benefits that none of the rest of us have, we tolerated it for years because, quite simply, we’ve been doing well enough financially to ignore it, and the pain of dealing with their strikes has been too great.

Now I have nothing against the people in these unions as individuals. President Obama, even though he should be keeping his mouth shut at this point, is right when he says these are our neighbors friends family etc. Well… Duh, dipstick. The problem is that these unions represent monolithic monopolies on services which allow for no competition, so when they threaten to strike, we have no alternative but to acquiesce to their demands. Adding to that is the frustration that these people are paid with taxpayer dollars, and yet their union dues go directly into the coffers of unions, who then in turn take your taxpayer dollars and use them for political gains in the local congresses and federal congress, etc…

In other words, you are paying for the furthering of their political agenda whether you like it or not because you have no other entity that you can support with your business. All state and local jurisdictional union employees are paid by tax dollars, and that is your money. That money, as I’ve just stated, is then turned into union dues, and those unions then exercise their power in local and federal political races.

How is that different than a private company you say? It’s different in this way. If I’m not happy with a political position that Ford represents, I can buy from GM. If I’m not happy with something that Safeway or other grocery retailers say politically, I can shop at Albertsons or some other outlet. If I don’t like the way any private company handles their “political or financial power”, then I can shop elsewhere. You can not do that when it comes to public sector union entities.

Now here’s the problem for unions in Wisconsin, and hopefully in the rest of this country, very soon. This nation is waking up to the fact that unions are destroying it. Some union workers, and most union leaders, claim that they are working to “protect the working man”, the working man’s job, middle-class America, and the list goes on and on. This can be proven to be utter hogwash.

There are countless examples across this nation in the last 20 to 30 years or more, where the unions have exercised their power in an extortionist manner in order to overinflate wages, and that job has been shipped overseas. Is that protecting jobs? Hell no. As I just stated, unions have done as much as any other entity in this country to run jobs overseas as anybody else.

When you look at the wages of workers in this country who are directly related to public sector unions, what you’re going to find is not only that they are well in excess of what one might find in a private sector job of comparable worth, but you are also going to find that the only union jobs (including those which are private sector) which still survive today (as opposed to 30 years ago) are those jobs which could not be shipped overseas. UPS. Local grocers unions. SEIU, or service unions related to point of service workers like hotel and restaurant service providers etc. Local trade unions, welders, electricians, construction. General Motors and Ford, as well as Chrysler, only still have unions here because it would be nearly impossible for them to face this nation if they sent all of their manufacturing overseas. And of course, we just bailed their asses out, and through the process most of America found out that people in blue-collar jobs in the United Auto Workers union were making between $45 and $60 an hour when adjusted for their benefits.

There is not one example you can show me on a major scale where unions have improved the quality of a product, or have shown that they can do it were they to compete on an even playing field in a capitalist market. Unions thrive purely on threat of extortion. Unions are a cancer to a capitalist market. They do not any longer protect middle-class America or average workers from being underpaid. In fact they tend to do the opposite, which is inflate the wages and get free benefits, which SOMEONE has to pay for. Guess who? YOU.

Provide a good product. Provide innovation. Do it at a competitive price. If you can do that in a capitalist market, you can survive, and pay good wages which are competitive on a national level with other workers doing the same work. Most unions do not have to do this. A great example is our public education unions across this nation. Without question, they are providing less competent services and education, and graduation rates are falling, while all the while we’re spending more and more money. In states where charter schools have been introduced, performances up in those charter schools, and quite often performances are up in the public schools as well because they must compete or else be shut down. In states with no charter schools, there’s no threat to being shut down.

Public sector Union jobs have no competition. Nobody competes with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Nobody competes with the department of transportation. Nobody competes with your local parks. Nobody competes with your transportation unions. Because of the collective bargaining that these people have been able to extort over the years, every one of those services costs every jurisdiction across this nation more than it should cost. And now America is waking up not only to that fact, that everything that these people have is far better than the average Joe, but that in fact were all paying through the nose for it.

What’s really going on in Wisconsin is a reflection of a new awareness in this country, where Republicans and conservatives are starting to recognize that they might actually have the political will and opportunity to change the fact that these unions are exercising powers which harm this country. What’s going on in Wisconsin is that large groups of people who have been sucking on a government tit for too long are now being threatened with losing that titty.

If you are a government worker in a government job, you need to understand one thing. That is that you are a servant of the people, your job exists primarily because of our tax dollars. You are not McDonald’s, Walmart, Fred Meyers, General Motors, target, or Blockbuster video. You do not compete in a capitalist marketplace, and quite honestly, most of the agencies you work for do not provide services at a level of excellence that justifies your financial compensation, including benefits.

In Wisconsin, what  the governor has asked them to do, is to help pay for some of their benefits. From what I’ve been able to read, and what I’ve heard, he’s asking them to pay half of what the private sector average Joe employee pays for those benefits. He has not stated that he will take away their collective bargaining rights for wages.

Regardless, what is really at issue here, is political power, propped up by taxpayer contributions funneled through employee unions, and overinflated wages and benefits which are bankrupting local and state jurisdictions. And what we are seeing here in Wisconsin is the foot stomping reaction of children in adult bodies who are being taken away from their tit. They don’t like the way things are going in a legitimately elected government, so the childish representatives leave the state, while the childish union organizers and squeaky wheels forge sick notes all the while chanting “Fox LIES!” Hilarious. In a sick, twisted, childish kind of way.

As a matter of fact, their ability to not play by the rules, and not care about the rules, reminds me more of the actions of those in radical Islam than it does of real Americans.

Hey- Unions… Get ready for more of it. America’s coming to take back that which you have extorted, excise some of the cancer that you are, and bring jobs back to this country.