There is a new idea being pushed by "conservatives". If I've read it once, I've read it ten times in the past week: Allow states to go bankrupt so they can use the courts to "bust" the public sector unions by taking away the benefits that have been bargained for collectively over the years by those evil police, firefighters, garbage workers, inspectors, water treatment plant workers, maintenance workers, etc. They obviously did it by cheating, because past politicians in charge (read: Democrats) were servile to state workers and the only way they managed to stay in office was by trading votes for benefits. Yeah, they have sure nailed that message into everyone's consciousness. Nothing like a little intra-class warfare, as they pit private sector workers, most who already HAVE lost benefits, against those who do still have them.
But, wait-a-minute....
Layoffs last year caused by the recession actually reduced the number and percentage of people who work for unions. From New York Times, 1/21:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that unions lost 612,000 members in 2010, dropping the unionized share of the work force to 11.9% from 12.3% in 2009. That follows a loss of 771,000 workers in 2008, continuing a steady decline from the 1950s, when more than a third of workers belonged to unions...
......
Union membership in the private sector fell from 7.2% to 6.9%, a low point not seen since the infancy of the labor movement in the 1930s. The steepest decline was seen in the construction industry, where unemployment remains around 20%.
Public-employment unions saw a 1.2% decline, mostly from job cuts among state- and local-government workers. Those unions could see further declines this year as states eliminate jobs in an effort to make up multibillion-dollar budget deficit
Yep, the Republicans know what they are doing. Why would any workers ever do ANYTHING when they're told they now have lost something they were promised? Its been shown repeatedly that they slink off and continue to obediently go to work everyday. And, if they don't like it, why we have about a dozen people willing to take their job from them, each of them! Why shouldn't they dutifully go about doing their jobs for the sake of the public? I mean, what else is there? Corporations and small businesses have slowly been doing it to the private sector for decades now. As has been pointed out, in the current Great Recession those who leave good paying jobs, be it a unionized manufacturing plant or a government job counting puff-balls, have to face reality and get paid what they are worth--not something their union bosses shoved up the taxpayer's (or owners) butt.
[I've always found the term "Union Bosses", when spoken by dominant Management interests (i.e. the real "bosses") quite amusing. No one is anyone's "boss" in a true Union, at least not in any Union that is strong and viable. Leaders are elected to lead the group and if they do a crappy job for long enough, as some do, the Union loses strength, support and, most importantly, unity.]
Certainly no one is going to get upset when their Dad or Mom becomes a "boomerang parent" and has to move back in with them because the (presumably Republican) newly elected Governor & Legislature just took away half their pension and any long-term health care? If the state enacts Right-To-Work laws at the same time, why, they'll have taken care of all the poor taxpayers problems, right? At least all the problems business has.
I never forget something from a labor economics class I took ages ago. One theory says there has always been a "Great Pendulum" which swings one way and then the other over time in any Western culture. For several generations Labor (and the resultant middle class) is ascendant before falling to Management, be it Kings or CEOs, who invariably screw things up so bad that Labor becomes ascendant again. But, the only way the process gets started in the first place is with an upheaval. Think knitting looms, industrialization and guilds losing power and then things getting so bad for the common man that Samuel Gompers, the IWW and the Pullman strike come along. Or, on the other end, think Reagen, PATCO and outsourcing.
As far as I can tell, there is rarely any real progress towards the have-nots getting anything from the haves until the have-nots ranks swell considerably and the meme becomes "We're Mad As Hell and We're Not Going To Take It Anymore". First protests, then riots and violence from both sides erupt. Thirty years later, most employees are in a worker's paradise for awhile, until they become complacent again and Management nibbles away at their gains. Who wants to upset the apple cart when it looks like it is full of cheap apples? Or even half full. It isn't until the apples are all hoarded by the orchard owner that change begins.
I think we're years away from such things happening. First it has got to get even worse than it is currently. A majority of the population is still convinced, because they've been told so, that life in the U.S. is better than anywhere else on the planet and this is as good as it gets. The status quo must be maintained! But, let the powers-that-be strip ANOTHER 10% of the population and their families of their promises and we'll be a couple of degrees further along the pendulum's arc.
I once knew an Assistant Business Agent who told me he could pinpoint the exact DAY the pendulum started its reverse swing. He said it only took one incident to show him the Union movement and all of its worker protections were coming to an end. This Agent had a little bucket attached to the front of his desk for cash donations. It was semi-humorously labeled "Dynamite Fund". Anyway, he knew that workers finally had it too good and the movement was on its downhill slide the day one member tossed a twenty in.... and then asked for a receipt.