foolsguinea | (no subject)

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I've been trying to figure out what I think about this giant civil-servant union action. I believe that labor organization is good for the economy in a pragmatic sense. I think the governor is handling this whole thing in an antagonistic way because he's anti-union rather than because it had to be antagonistic. I think teacher's unions do ask too much sometimes, and get it--such as in tenure rules.

I can't say I'm completely on the union's side. Sometimes the union asks too much. But I won't take the union-busters' side.

I'd gotten as far as thinking that it's unhelpful for those who don't have financial security & good benefits to try to take them away from civil servants. But the combination of these two images helped me break through to this:

The striking teachers & state employees are in the wrong, not for demanding compensation for themselves, but for a sin of omission. What we're seeing here is the classic problem of craft unions: "We represent this group of people; if you're not in our group, oh well." The USA has an uneasy relationship with labor unions because we've always had craft unions arguing for their class within their industry. We need advocates for everyone's health care, everyone's financial security. We need something more like industrial unionism--no, rather, something that like communism agitates for the general populace.

That is a gross oversimplification of the problem. We demand a lot from teachers, a lot of them have master's degrees, and they expect a certain level of compensation and security. But job security in that business is not automatically nor easily deserved. But my qualms have to do with making sure educators are doing the job. Why get more offended at a public-sector worker, who does his job, demanding more from taxpayers, than at a private-sector worker, who does his job, demanding more from his employer?

Anyway, the political situation is a mess, & the fact that unions went the craft-union route in this country means that most likely they will be demolished. So I'm back to this: Because they didn't really stand for everybody, in the end the craft unions will come to ruin, & the poor working class will cackle over their destruction.