Demonstration, Olympia, Washington, April 8, 2011

This event took place between the Washington State Capitol and the Temple of Justice (home of the State Supreme Court). The protest is designed to remind the Legislature and the Governor not to cut budgets on the backs of workers, and that attacking the rights of workers to bargain collectively needs to stop.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Labor
• Washington State
• Wisconsin
• Union
• Government Worker
• Economy
• Protest
• Demostration
• Olympia

[fakeconsultant]

@DwightSimpson @DwightSimpson it took me a while to find a good chart, and i can't put links in these comments, but if you google the phrase "defense department, green book" you'll find the budget document for the military.

they include a chart (table 7-3) that lays out all government spending from 1945 to 2015, and as it turns out we've been spending about the same 1/3 of gdp on all government expenditures (state, federal, and local) since 1975.

[fakeconsultant]

@DwightSimpson more on fdr and negotiations:

ever hear of a labor union in private industry negotiating with a board of directors?

ever ask your board of directors for a raise?

nope.

you deal with your boss, or, if you're a union, the ceo.

same with any other "government negotiation" (for example, treaties): the president negotiates, then the senate gets to "advise and consent".

why should labor agreements be any different?

[fakeconsultant]

@DwightSimpson you know what?

fdr wasn't perfect.

for example, he wanted to impose total wage and price controls; he also wanted to impose a strict regulation of what farmers could grow and where.

both programs were tossed out at the supreme court, which is its own story.

washington state workers traded with the legislature: they gave up the right to strike to gain the right to negotiate, and if you want to undo that deal, you're going to once again see "negotiation by strike threat"

[fakeconsultant]

@DwightSimpson i did check my records. and it turns out about 155,000,000 are in the labor force (thanks, bls!). how you came to the conclusion that 50% of workers are government workers is beyond me, but it's way,. way, off.

the federal omb reports that today about 4.4 million work for the federal government; that includes military and civilian workers. that's about a million fewer than in 1962, by the way.

the states do not have 60,000,000 more workers, i promise.

[fakeconsultant]

@DwightSimpson so let's start with the firefighters. the washington dnr's blog "ear to the ground" has a story from february that describes a grant program to help small fire districts buy the new wildfire shelters that many cannot now afford. if they can't all afford them, you can use simple logic to deduce that some fire departments, within any single state, have safety equipment that others don't--and that is not determined by the presence or absence of unions..

.

[DwightSimpson]

@fakeconsultant We are not going back to anytime in the past when there was a need for unions. We are looking at the future.

FDR said "“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress.”

[DwightSimpson]

@fakeconsultant Check your records. The average State worker for comparable work earns more than his or her counterpart in private industry, plus they receive far better perks.

Do the math:  Roughly 300,000,000 people in this country. 45% are working. That means 135,000,000 people are working. 50% of those work for the government. That means that 67,500,000 of the people NOW work in private industry who support, in one form or another, the remaining 232,500,000. IT DOESN'T PENCIL OUT

[DwightSimpson]

@fakeconsultant Every state that I'm aware of that is not unionized provides the same high quality safety equipment for their firefighters. That is just another battle that has been won. Now, we no longer need the unions who are nothing more than a legal money laundering scheme for the politicians, mostly Democrats who are on the take. The end result is that taxpayers are way overpaying for services. There are many people who would like to firefighters and work for 70% of the price.

[fakeconsultant]

@DwightSimpson how does "busting the unions" help anyone?

would going back to a time when we had no child labor laws be better? or when there were no weekends? when a 60-hour week was considered "lazy"?

do you really think overtime pay is evil?

all of that came from unions fighting management--and if you support free markets, why wouldn't you want workers to earn whatever the market will pay them?

[fakeconsultant]

@DwightSimpson and that's not all.

The Girlfriend is a nurse who works for the state, and she took a pay cut last year, and it looks like there might be another this year. the state does not pay better than the private sector, and the benefits are not so great s to make up the difference.

when that happens to a private business...that business goes into decline, because all the good workers leave.

state government is our business, and "downhill spiral" is no way to run a business.