This Cadillac ad neatly encapsulates everything that's wrong with us as Americans. Cadillac was always an evil symbol, especially in its heyday. It always stood for conspicuous consumption, for new money, for flashy clothes and pinky rings and showing off. Now it wants to stand for a reward for people who think life outside of work should not exist. Whether it's George W. Bush calling a woman who has to work three jobs to feed her family "uniquely American", or calling the long-term unemployed "takers", we have this idea that unless you're spending every waking minute either doing work or thinking about work, you are some kind of slacker.

I just got back from a three-day oncology meeting in Boston, where I spent a lot of time with one of my European colleagues. She's about to take off for two weeks in the Seychelles. She'll take three, perhaps four trips like this in 2014, because where she lives, people get vacation time. Lots of it. Six weeks to start. They don't take their laptops with them and they don't check their e-mail, and when they get back they don't have to pay in blood for having taken time off. They don't work weekends, either. They have two people on the same project that in the US there's only one assigned. On weekends they have fun. They don't spend their weekends running the errands or doing the housework they couldn't do during the week. Working yourself to death in Europe makes you a chump, not a hero. And despite the myth perpetrated by Cadillac, it doesn't make you a hero here either. You're still just another number, just another mindless cog in a vast machine. If you drop dead of a heart attack at your desk, they'll have someone in to replace you by the end of the week.

The group in which I work is still in the throes of a reorganization that's been in process for over a year. None of us knows what our title will be when it all shakes out, or to whom we'll be reporting. We're all told we can apply to jobs that will be posted, but it looks like it's all kabuki theatre -- that people have already been chosen for those jobs.

In Europe, it's not unusual to get a year of paid maternity leave. But here in America, the myth is that we're "crazy hardworking believers" and that's why we do it. We do it for pools and Cadillacs, or so they tell us, when the reality is that we do it so we can delude ourselves that management has any idea who we are and that we can't be replaced tomorrow with some other drone. We do our job better than anyone else? So what? They'll live without it if it'll save a few bucks, or get them a younger or prettier version, or can send it overseas and not have to think about it.

I could post this three-minute rant by George Carlin every single day:



Charles and David Koch don't work any harder than you do. Neither does Donald Trump. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg does, but you can bet he won't be when he's sixty. But we've internalized this idea that we have to Work Hard. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. Until we drop dead.

All of which brings us to Daniel Murphy.

Daniel Murphy, for those who aren't familiar with him, is the second baseman for the New York Mets. Murphy isn't a natural. He works hard to learn how to field his position. He's got a decent bat and a mediocre but improving glove. He's not Derek Jeter, or Big Papi, or some other big-name ballplayer who can do whatever he wants. But here's what we now know Daniel Murphy is: He's a mensch. He's also persona non grata on New York sports talk radio.

What is Daniel Murphy's crime?

He missed the first two games of the season after his wife gave birth by C-section on Opening Day.

Mike Francesa: "You see the birth and you get back." Craig Carton: "Assuming your wife is fine and assuming the baby is fine...you get your ass back to the team and you play baseball." Boomer Esiason: "I would have said 'C-section before opening day."

Daniel Murphy: "It's going to be tough for her to get up to New York for a month. I can only speak from my experience -- a father seeing his wife -- she was completely finished. I mean, she was done. She had surgery and she was wiped. Having me there helped a lot, and vice versa, to take some of the load off. ... It felt, for us, like the right decision to make."

And good for him.

It isn't often that baseball makes it into the chick-o-rama into which Melissa Harris-Perry's weekend show sometimes devolves. But this story sure as hell did, and the fact that Chris Hayes is taking some time off following the birth of his SECOND child put it smack into MSNBC's radar.

It's good that we're having this discussion. It's good that Boomer Esiason apologized, but the fact that so many male sports announcers feel that your team (i.e. your JOB) should always come before your family, is troubling. But they're not alone. They're just a microcosm of what all of us who experience transitions in our personal lives go through.

And of course, since I'm rather self-involved these days (hopefully understandably so), I started thinking about the "widow brain fog" that seems to happen to about 95% of people of both sexes who lose a spouse. No matter how prepared you are, no matter how "done" you may have felt at times in your marriage, no matter if your life is "easier" without having to deal with someone who's angry and depressed and lashing out at you, losing the person with whom you've spent half your life tears a chunk out of your soul. You are not the same. You may FEEL the same for a while, but after the numbness wears off and the grief kicks in; the realization that this person Will Never Come Home, that Opening Day has come and gone and he is not here, that there's a Game of Thrones marathon leading up to the premiere of Season 4 and he isn't here to watch it or share Season 4 with you, that you are going to grow old alone -- well, it changes you. And you do not run on all cylinders. You dream every night that he is still here and wake up every day feeling like you've been hit with a sledgehammer. You're exhausted all the time. You're an intruder in your own life. But most of all you realize that time is short and life is fleeting. And you want to be able to smell the roses. The average duration of bereavement leave in this country is three days. From what I've been able to gather, it's not much better in Europe. If you need more time, you have to burn your vacation time -- IF you can get permission to do it. OR, you can look into a leave of absence, which is what I did, and I'm sure my experience is typical. If you are, say, suicidal and under the care of a mental health professional, or even better -- hospitalized or on suicide watch, you can get a disability leave. This protects your job and keeps you on company-paid health insurance. If your manager agrees, you can take a personal leave for a pre-defined period of time. It is unpaid, your job is NOT protected, you are on COBRA for health insurance (which decreases the duration of COBRA coverage if you leave your job), and if you are not ready to come back on the pre-defined day, you are assumed to have resigned voluntarily.

All things considered, I'm doing better than most people in my position. But I'm definitely not firing on all cylinders. If I could take four weeks off, say, with assurance of my job being there when I got back and continuation of health insurance, even if it was not paid, I would probably be doing a lot better. But I can't, and I'm not. One thing I'd like to do for activism in my retirement years is advocate for better bereavement leave or other accommodation for loss of a spouse or child. Because NO ONE can "suck it up and deal" after just three days.

Daniel Murphy is protected by the Players Union, so he will not suffer any consequences other than shitty remarks by talk radio rabble-rousers. But most Americans are not. Most of us are expected to show up every day, be tethered all the time, and show our dedication so we can delude ourselves that we have "job security." We give a whole lot of lip service to families in this country, but where the almighty dollar is concerned, we don't have a shit about families -- or people, for that matter.

Labels: American workers, Baseball, family values, New York Mets

First they came for the poor...then they came for the middle class....

It's clear to anyone who is actually conscious and has any grey matter at all in his/her cranium that over the last thirty years there has been a systematic attempt by the corporate/government Axis of Evil to eliminate the middle class that made this country vibrant during the second half of the twentieth century. Wage stagnation, the decline of unions, offshoring in a constant race for the lowest possible wage that can be paid, have all contributed to a shrinking middle class. Far too many people have refused to see this, instead blaming illegal immigrants, minorities, or dirty sluts who won't keep their legs closed and then want an abortion, as the source of the trouble. But in the aftermath of the destruction of well-known brands by vulture capitalists, the housing bubble, and people being required to train their own low-paid replacements before being fired, it's becoming more difficult to ignore the elephant in the room.

On this day following the doubling of student loan rates, which has made the U.S. government and the banks with which it works to establish student loan programs nothing more than loan sharks, we're now seeing the corporate masters raiding the pockets of those college grads for whom retail and food service jobs are the only employment they can find. Now it seems that for hourly workers, a paycheck and even direct deposit is too costly for the companies they work for. Instead they're getting fee-based debit cards that involve high fees to -- you guessed it -- banks. NYT, yesterday:

A growing number of American workers are confronting a frustrating predicament on payday: to get their wages, they must first pay a fee.

For these largely hourly workers, paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards.

These fees can take such a big bite out of paychecks that some employees end up making less than the minimum wage once the charges are taken into account, according to interviews with consumer lawyers, employees, and state and federal regulators.

Devonte Yates, 21, who earns $7.25 an hour working a drive-through station at a McDonald’s in Milwaukee, says he spends $40 to $50 a month on fees associated with his JPMorgan Chase payroll card. v “It’s pretty bad,” he said. “There’s a fee for literally everything you do.”

Certain transactions with the Chase pay card are free, according to a fee schedule.

Many employees say they have no choice but to use the cards: some companies no longer offer common payroll options like ordinary checks or direct deposit.

At companies where there is a choice, it is often more in theory than in practice, according to interviews with employees, state regulators and consumer advocates. Employees say they are often automatically enrolled in the payroll card programs and confronted with a pile of paperwork if they want to opt out.

It's one thing to require to make employees contribute to the cost of health care, life insurance, and dental coverage. These are at least deductions that benefit the employee. But to work in tandem with megabanks to squeeze a few dollars out of low-paid workers is just beyond the pale.

How long will it take until people wake up and realize what is happening to them and stop blaming those with even less? Will it take until there IS no one with less because EVERYONE is left scrambling for scraps?

Labels: American workers, banksters, corporatism, greed, loan sharks

I know I've developed a habit of being a bit late to the party these days, but once again, work is eating my life and something has to be put on the back burner. But this week we've seen a great deal of hue and cry about Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer, the new poster child for corporate assholery, and her demand that telecommuting employees show up at the office. What's bothersome is that this has become less a debate about the relative merits of telecommuting for employer and employee, and more a debate about child care and "family-friendly" policies.

Marissa Meyer was hired while pregnant, given a $60 million initial compensation package, gave birth, took two weeks off, and now has a nursery right next to her office. When you're the queen, you can do that. The presence of this nursery has turned the whole debate about whether simply sitting in a cubicle for 40 hours a week makes you somehow more productive than someone working at home, and turned it into a debate about child care. And it shouldn't be.

I work for a giant multinational corporation. My department feels more like a smaller company than part of a giant conglomerate. Right now we're in a conventional cube farm with offices around the perimeter, but in a few months we'll be moving to a spanking new office, with an "open floor plan" that everyone dreads, particularly managers, who are used to being able to close their office doors. The reason for this is the same as what we've been hearing from Marissa Meyer's e-mails to employees, about collaboration and informal brainstorming. To me this means more chitchatting and more need to plug in my earbuds, which kind of defeats the purpose. But at least for now I'm able to telecommute on days when, say, the plumber is coming or Maggie has to go to the vet. I could even, if I want to, have a regular work-at-home day, except I like keeping it flexible. So far, at least, no one in upper management is taking a page from Marissa Meyer's book and ending the partial-telecommuting option. There is one rule, however, about telecommuting where I work: If you have young children, you must have child care for them on the days you work at home. Too much sound of children asking for milk on a conference call and you could find yourself losing your telecommuting privilege, which is as it should be. You can't focus on your work and take care of a baby or toddler.

When I work from home, I start work about the time I would leave the house and work until I would usually get home. Right now this is about 1-1/2 hours of additional time I'm able to give the company every day. It saves gasoline (a huge plus about telecommuting and something the Big Brothers of corporate America conveniently forget), reduces the amount of greenhouse gases I spew into the atmosphere, and because I often focus better at home, I'm more productive. This is something you can't do if you're taking care of a toddler at the same time.

That's why it's so disheartening to see this debate about telecommuting turned into a debate about child care. Yes, there's a need for more child care in this country, but "family-friendly" means more than just child care. It means flexibility to deal with a sick parent or spouse; something most workplaces don't have. I was fortunate enough to be able to work remotely for two weeks in September when my mother became so desperately ill. I worked from 6 AM to noon, attended all my teleconferences, dealt with Mom stuff in the afternoon, and put in two more hours each night, thus putting in my eight hours (still a shorter day than usual). In the absence of my supervisor giving me permission to do this, I would have had to take family leave, which is both unpaid and does not guarantee your job when you return (unlike maternity leave, which does). Bereavement leave is three days; five if you have to travel for a funeral. Again, I was lucky that my relationship with my mother was difficult enough that I wasn't gobsmacked with grief, but I did have to burn vacation days during the time in December when I was spending my days at my mother's house, sorting through hundreds of sweaters and T-shirts and drawers full of costume jewelry. Family consists of many members, not just children. There are parents, spouses, partners; often nieces and nephews in whose lives we may be involved. But the only part of the integration of family life and work life that seems to matter is child care.

Telecommuting is about working in a different location. It isn't about being able to watch "Blues Clues" with your three-year-old. It isn't about driving your ten-year-old to soccer practice and then to the doctor. Of course you're going to have times when you take an hour or so off to do something you need to do. But too many people forget that telecommuting isn't a day off, it's supposed to be simply working in a different location, one with fewer distractions. Marissa Meyer may be doing a stealth staff cut by her termination of telecommuting, or she may just be trying to prove that she has balls as big as a male CEO. But let's not muddy the issue by turning this into a debate about child care, because telecommuting is about work and child care is not.

Labels: American workers, corporate assholes, telecommuting

Light-to-no blogging this week, I'm afraid. On a deadline and not getting anywhere fast.

Labels: American workers, blogging

Yes, Amazon.com is really convenient and you can buy just about anything there and the Kindle is really cool. But can good progressives continue to buy from them after reading this:

Elmer Goris spent a year working in Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse, where books, CDs and various other products are packed and shipped to customers who order from the world's largest online retailer.

The 34-year-old Allentown resident, who has worked in warehouses for more than 10 years, said he quit in July because he was frustrated with the heat and demands that he work mandatory overtime. Working conditions at the warehouse got worse earlier this year, especially during summer heat waves when heat in the warehouse soared above 100 degrees, he said.

He got light-headed, he said, and his legs cramped, symptoms he never experienced in previous warehouse jobs. One hot day, Goris said, he saw a co-worker pass out at the water fountain. On other hot days, he saw paramedics bring people out of the warehouse in wheelchairs and on stretchers.

[snip]

Over the past two months, The Morning Call interviewed 20 current and former warehouse workers who showed pay stubs, tax forms or other proof of employment. They offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it's like to work in the Amazon warehouse, where temperatures soar on hot summer days, production rates are difficult to achieve and the permanent jobs sought by many temporary workers hired by an outside agency are tough to get.

Only one of the employees interviewed described it as a good place to work.

Workers said they were forced to endure brutal heat inside the sprawling warehouse and were pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain. Employees were frequently reprimanded regarding their productivity and threatened with termination, workers said. The consequences of not meeting work expectations were regularly on display, as employees lost their jobs and got escorted out of the warehouse. Such sights encouraged some workers to conceal pain and push through injury lest they get fired as well, workers said.

During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.

Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse sounds like a Republican dream facility -- low-paid workers in unhealthy conditions. Just like the women who worked in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, before those pesky unions and "job-killing workplace safety regulations" were adopted. And yet this is what the American workplace is becoming once again -- a place where desperate people go to be mistreated day after day after day, with no hope of advancement, no hope of ever achieving the American Dream, living lives that are nasty, brutal, and short as they try desperately to survive....because if they don't, other equally desperate people will line up to do it.

You want to talk about class warfare? This is where it is -- in places like Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse, where the Thirty Years War against the middle class and the working poor is coming to fruition.

Labels: amazon.com, American workers, corporatism, greed, right-wing economic terrorism, worker protections

A musical interlude for LABOR day:









Ten things for which you can thank organized labor:

1. The creation of the middle class in America

2. Employer sponsored health insurance

3. Your pension

4. Forty hour work weeks

5. The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

6. Paid sick leave

7. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

8. Workers’ Compensation

9. Vacation leave

10. Child labor laws

Enjoy your Labor Day. And let's tip our hat to the people who actually create value in this country (hint: It's not stockbrokers).

UPDATE: Want to know why I didn't feel inspired to write today? Because what else is there to say after Driftglass has spoken?

Labels: American workers, organized labor

From David Frum, of all people:

Any questions?

Of course the Republican candidates would answer his questions with more tax cuts to "unleash freedom" for corporations. Yesterday I read a column by the hacktacular Dana Milbank which contained the following piece of idiocy:

The private sector has stabilized, profits have returned, productivity is high, American competitiveness has improved, and large sums of money have accumulated on corporate balance sheets.

The most efficient way to produce jobs, then, is to give the private sector incentives to spend its big pile of cash on new hires. That’s why Obama, last week, was at a community college in Northern Virginia touting little-known policies such as “Skills for America’s Future” and the “Workforce Investment Act.”

Corporations are profitable again. Banks are ridiculously profitable again. All are sitting on what Milbank calls "piles of cash." Milbank makes the mistake of thinking that our nation's employment problem is that we lack the skills corporatins are looking for.

Two anecdotes:

1) Mr. Brilliant recently beat out dozens of other candidates for a job. That's the good news. The bad news is that the company for which he interviewed subsequently laid off a good chunk of its workforce so no offer was made. Back to square one.

2) The husband of a colleague of mine was let go from his job six months before he was supposed to fully vest in the retirement plan. He is in his late forties.

Both of these men are highly skilled people. Mr. B has been out of work for nearly six months. There have been interviews, but no offers. Sometimes it's been that they love him over the phone and the minute they take a look at his over-50 self, his candidacy for the job is over.

Don't tell me that there aren't skilled people in this country. Don't tell me there aren't people who can learn on the job. I got my current job right before the economy went into the crapper. My department was being rebuilt from scratch, and I don't delude myself for one minute that it's because of my great skills in the area in which my department focuses. At that point, I had a pulse and could put two sentences together and I think at that point it was enough. Six months later I was thrown into a coordinating role for the most difficult projects in the division, and nearly three years later I know an awful lot about cancer. I learned everything on the job. Hire smart people, and give them a bit of breathing room to grow, and they will work their guts out for you (which is why you don't see me blog lately -- I am trying to figure out how I will be able to stay awake for 48 hours straight to get my project to testing on time this Monday).

It's not about "incentives" or tax cuts. It's about greed and the destruction of the middle class The people running businesses in the government and in the chattering classes simply do not understand, or understand full well and don't give a rat's ass, that it is not stockpiles of cash that create jobs, nor is it the goodness of company owners and executives. Demand creates jobs. When people can afford to buy your products, or products that contain what you make, or require your service to be created, demand increases and so does hiring. I don't know why this concept is such a difficult one for our political and chattering classes to understand.

Labels: American workers, corporatism, greed, We Are So Screwed

A stimulus that seems to finally be showing signs of breaking up the job drought logjam just a wee, tiny bit. A health care reform bill that isn't great, but ought to be a start towards more affordable health care for all. These are things that were labeled "liberal overreach" by conservatives and other reactionaries, and the media.

So what, then, do you say about investigating women who have miscarriages, or forcing them to listen to rants by Christofascist zombies before they can get an abortion, or about threatening to strip opposition state Senators of their seats so you can stack it with members of your own party and elmininate even the ILLUSION of choice that we currently have? What do you say about the gutting of education, or health care programs for the poor, of cuts in funding for meals for housebound seniors? If what we're seeing from the Republicans isn't overreach, what is?

In Wisconsin, it seems to be regarded as overreach, because there is the biggest case of buyer's remorse up there since the first unfortunate sap in the late 1960's bought the first Chevy Vega off the assembly line:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to strip public employee unions of most of their collective bargaining rights appears to be so unpopular, that a Rasmussen poll now finds that almost 60% of likely Wisconsin voters disapprove of his job performance.

That finding shows just how quickly Walker -- who was elected to his first term last November with 52% of the vote -- has sunk just in his first two months in office. And it comes one day after Rasmussen released results from the same poll, all of which showed public opinion firmly on the side of the unions in the labor rights battle that has deadlocked the state capitol for the past few weeks.

In the poll, 57% of respondents said they disapprove of Walker's job performance -- including 48% who say they strongly disapprove. Meanwhile, only 43% said they approve of the job Walker is doing.

Not surprisingly, respondents who said they belong to a public union sided heavily against Walker, with roughly eight in ten giving him negative marks on job performance. Yet not only were public sector union members opposed to Walker, but a majority of private sector union members also disapproved of the governor by a 53% to 43% margin.

Also interesting to note -- the overwhelming opposition from people with children in Wisconsin public schools. Sixty-seven percent of people in that demographic disapprove of Walker, including 54% who strongly disapprove.

Could it possibly that people are looking up from beating people just like themselves to a pulp and are stopping to look up the ladder at the guy lifting the twenties out of their back pockets? Ratings for cable news indicate that this just might be so:

Yesterday, another milestone was reached. The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC drew 39,000 more viewers in the key advertising demographic of 25-54 year olds. Beck did manage to draw more total viewers, but even that statistic is revealing. It shows that Beck’s audience is comprised of only 21% of the young demo. That compares to Maddow’s 31%.

This is further evidence of Beck’s accelerating collapse. Last week it was reported that Beck declined 32% (25-54) and 26% (total viewers) year-to-year for the month of February. And that’s on top of a January year-to-year drop of 50% (25-54) and 40% (total viewers).

The public is obviously tiring of this manic-paranoid’s freak show. As a result, many staunch conservatives are becoming bolder with regard to their criticisms of Beck. And some are even recognizing that Beck may be just the tip of the iceberg and that anyone who hitches their wagon to Beck is equally deserving of ridicule and revulsion. That applies particularly to Beck’s primary benefactors, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch, but also to those who work with and/or defend Beck. They will all learn that this stench is unremitting.

As for Maddow, this is just one day, so it will take some time to see if her strength continues. Pessimists will whine that Maddow’s primetime scheduling gives her an advantage, but the fact is that this is the first time she has outdrawn Beck and that makes it significant. For now she deserves to celebrate and I congratulate her.

Me too.

Labels: American workers, liberalism

For the state workers of Wisconsin:


Billy Bragg's version of this always reminds me of the OLD "Majority Report" show:

Labels: American workers, union-busting, Wisconsin 2011

For the edification of those not from New Jersey: Here in the Garden State, we take our pizza seriously. This state, which IS the home of The Sopranos, may be the pizza capital of the world. I don't know how we do it, but this state manages to have a pizzeria on practically every corner. My town is an exception, but that's only because our "downtown" consists of a 1/3-empty strip mall where the local pizza guy packed up and left to go to upstate New York only because the rent was too damn high.

Just an example: In Westwood, New Jersey, within a two-block radius, you have Lisa's Pizza, Pompilio's, and Tony D's. A new pizzeria just opened nearby. For a while last summer, you could have started with a thin-crust pie at the Mountain House (now closed), crossed the street for ta cheesy slice at Tony D's, then crossed a parking lot to Banchetto Feast for an individual gourmet pie. And that's without even going to that 2-block radius. Go up the main drag to Hillsdale, and you have even more.

It's fun to poke fun at places real and imagined that think they know how to make pizza, which here in New Jersey means any place outside the New York metropolitan area. I've had Chapel Hill pizza, for example, and while it's passable pizza, it lacks the chewiness of crust that gives real Sopranos-country pizza its, well, pizza-ness.

But today I'm announcing that the greatest pizzeria in the history of pizza is located in Madison, Wisconsin (via Yellow Dog):

People have been calling in pizza orders to Ian's on State St all week from the around the country to have them delivered to protesters in the the Capitol rotunda. Today, it reached critical mass. I read this from a local Facebook friend (who I also saw today at the Square):

"Ian's Pizza on State has shut down operations to the public and is now only taking donation orders for pizza's for the protesters. They have received pizza order donations from across the US, Eygpt, Europe - all around the world - to support the protesters. Unbelievable!"

They apparently already have enough orders to deliver to the Rotunda to keep them busy all night. Keep in mind that this is a Saturday night, already one of their busiest.

Via, via, via a bunch of people here in Madison.

If you want to support the efforts of Ian's Pizza to keep those fighting for workers fed, read here, then pick up addresses for sending checks here follow the instructions here.

Seriously, dude...Mac and cheese pizza? Really?

UPDATE: More....

And the Facebook page...

Labels: American workers, food

Here in New Jersey, where property taxes on even a modest house often run upwards of $8,000 a year, Chris Christie's jihad against public sector workers has been met with either applause or crickets. If my own community is any indication, New Jerseyans care only about youth sports and nothing else. They don't put together than when the snow is plowed, it's a public worker who does it. Or when the potholes are fixed, it's a public worker who does it. They support their community's schools and praise THEIR children's teachers, but want OTHER communities' teachers to get screwed. Perhaps it's that there are so many Wall Street workers in the state, or the reality that so many governors have been stiffing the public pension fund for so many years that the problem may well be intractable. But where I live, these workers are silently taking it. And as a result, Chris Christie is touted more as the GOP Flavor-of-the-Month for 2012:


...despite that most of his budget-cutting is so far just bluster, as the state's bond rating has just been cut.

Not so in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands of state workers, perhaps inspired by the sight of large numbers of people amassing to force change, have gathered in front of, and in many cases, even IN, the state house, to protest the radical move by Wisconsin's teabagger governor Scott Walker to summarily remove the state workers' right to collective bargaining.

Unions make convenient punching bags. My own experiences with being a union member have hardly been edifying. I spent an entire summer after high school on a picket line in front of the Elm Street A&P (now a Trader Joe's) in order to preserve my ability to work summers there while in college. When my job at Standard & Poor's was a Newspaper Guild job, and my boss wanted to promote me to a non-union job, the shop steward blocked the promotion, despite the fact that I would be replaced by someone in the union. There are unions, and there are unions. In some cases, like mine, you are simply working for another level of management just trying to protect its own interests and not caring one whit for yours. But when you see things like Republican state senators trying to gut child labor laws and a Republican outgoing president rushing through a rule to make it more difficult for the government to regulate toxic substances that adversely affect workers on the job, you know what ultimately all this demonization of public workers is about. It's not ultimately about saving taxpayer money, it's about making sure that not one worker anywhere in the country has any say against an onslaught of corporate exploitation and greed. If workers have to develop life-threatening illnesses so people have microwave popcorn to eat while watching streaming movies, so be it.

Rachel Maddow talked with Russ Feingold last night about the demonization of public sector workers:

If you're lucky enough to still have a job; if you're paid well, maybe you just got promoted, you feel pretty secure -- if you think that you aren't expendable and jettisoning you onto the scrap heap of 99-ers isn't something that can happen if it means getting the company through the giant maw of Wall Street greed through another quarter, guess again. And the next time you demonize a public sector worker, go read about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then come back and tell me that unions have been an unmitigated evil.

Labels: activism, American workers