Unions = Evil
By Wink
If you had the option of paying zero for your health insurance, or paying $1200 per month, which would you choose?
This is an important question.
Be pissed at the Wisconsin unions if you wish. But if you answered ‘zero’ to the above question, you agreed with everybody else on the planet.
I am not saying Wisconsin government employees should get free health insurance, but why would you turn it down? Is it evil to WANT to pay zero?
This brings us to the Wisconsin governor. Within weeks of taking office he gave over $60 million in tax breaks to corporations, and then declared a fiscal emergency.
As everyone everywhere knows, there is only one reason for fiscal emergencies – unions. Not bad governing, not bad economies, just unions.
So the governor told the employees union they would have to pay more for their health insurance and make pension concessions.
Amazingly, the Wisconsin unions acceded to all of the financial demands of the new governor. They agreed to pay 12% of the cost of the health insurance (fairly standard nationwide), plus made the requested pension concessions.
Republicans everywhere (and especially at their headquarters, Fox) would have you believe the Wisconsin unions gave up nothing in the negotiations.
This type of lie is standard procedure for Fox conservatives. They repeat it and repeat it and repeat it, and their (admittedly numerous) followers believe it.
What Wisconsin government employees do not want to give up, and what is causing all the protests, is the right to negotiate their benefits in the future.
Again, they gave in to ALL the financial demands of the governor.
It never mattered. The governor’s goal was not to ‘balance a budget,’ it was simply to bust the union. The fiscal mess was just used as a tool to sell the public that government workers are greedy leeches.
The unions don’t want to give up the right to negotiate.
For goodness sake, if you have no right to discuss job conditions, what would prevent an employer from lowering wages, insisting on unpaid overtime, removing sick leave, etc, etc.
Are we simply to count on the ‘good will’ of employers to make sure employees are well compensated and treated fairly?
Are you kidding?
And taking away the right to negotiate? Which rights would you happily forfeit to ‘balance the budget’? Your right to free speech? Your right to own guns?
You WILL give up your speech and guns to balance a governmental budget, right?
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Please note: I think government employees, like the rest of us, should pay something for health insurance. Plus, I don’t think their salaries should be astronomical. It is, after all, taxpayer money.
But this demonizing of unions is just another Republican red herring. Another invented ‘evil’ that must be vanquished.
Brief Quiz: Which of the following do you like?
Paid vacation time off?
Five-day (rather than 7-day) work weeks?
Sick leave?
40 hour weeks?
Overtime pay?
If you answered ‘yes’ to ANY of the above, thank God for unions. None of these would exist without unions. None of it.
The U.S., and the rest of the world, has real problems, but unions are not among them.
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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