Workers Save Lives
Workers Save Lives
Posted: 03/25/2015 5:23 pm EDT Updated: 03/25/2015 5:59 pm EDT
Labor unions, particularly those for public sector workers, have become such a popular punching bag that their membership might as well wear Everlast tags. They are such a common scapegoat that they might as well have horns. (A few right wingers probably think they already do.) At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if the Koch brothers bought off a researcher to conclude that labor unions killed the dinosaurs, followed by FOX News devoting hours of coverage to it. If the trend continues, union-bashing may overtake baseball as the national pastime.
And lately, there has been some particularly harsh rhetoric equating unions with murderers. At a conservative conference last month, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker likened labor unions to ISIS. This past December, Rudy Giuliani delivered a crazy comment less publicized than some of his other recent ones when he said the teachers union bears some responsibility for police brutality. His reasoning was that the union's resistance to rightwing education "reform" somehow leads people to a life of crime, at which point they might be more likely to be on the receiving end of police brutality. And there must be some sort of collective unconscious among teachers union bashers, because Eva Moskowitz independently reached a similar conclusion this month, equating black children in the current education system to the victims of police brutality.
These statements are so insane that I don't even want to dignify them with rebuttals, but in the name of educating the public I will. For starters, all the discourse on Wisconsin's municipal worker unions seemed to gloss over two major facts. Namely, multiple analyses found that the state's budget shortfall was mostly due to expenses unrelated to obligations to government workers; and that the workers had already agreed to multiple concessions. Now I'll be the first to tell you that my knowledge of foreign politics is lacking, but I'm pretty sure ISIS has not agreed to many concessions, nor is it in reality not responsible for the various atrocities.
And this equating of the teachers union with police brutality is another logic-defying remark, because the rhetoric on education in this country isn't based on facts. There is little evidence that the anti-union reforms the right gushes over have any success: charter schools do not inherently perform better than traditional public schools, as I discussed before; nor is there evidence that either merit pay or school vouchers improve educational outcomes. And before pointing the finger at the UFT, Giuliani might want to consider all that he's done to perpetuate police brutality, given his kneejerk defense of most incidents during his mayoralty.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/-william-lynch-iii/workers-save-lives_b_6941094.html
