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Originally Posted by waynet
I truly do not understand the hatred for unions by some people. They would make us believe that public employees are solely responsible for everything that is wrong with America. Wall street and corporate giants rip us off for countless billions pay nothing and yet it's the unions. I'm not drinking that Kool-aid ever. If workers are not allowed to negotiate they are slaves to that company. Even companies without unions(Pfizer)negotiate. It's a sad day for American labor and The USA in general.
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I am not anti-union and am a retired Teamster myself, and thus I am not for the ending of collective bargaining rights which are the foundation of a union of workers. My comment above was purely political as the Republicans played this a little dirty, which is unusual for them and has, until now, been a fairly standard Democrat tactic in my opinion.
The public sector unions problem has been that they don't want to have any of the problems of the private sector impact them, and people are taking notice. This is because the suffering public is paying for all the wage and benefits of the public employee while having less of these benefits themselves. The last thing the unions need is more animosity from the public directed at them, but that is the path they have chosen.
They should have agreed to givebacks from the beginning and maybe they could have negotiated the retention of their bargaining rights in good faith. The unions could have generated much good will this way. Then, if and when, the economy turned around, and their political backers were again in office, they could have had their benefits restored much easier than is done in the private sector.