Quebec and Wisconsin: How Times Have Changed
When we look to Wisconsin, we note that the inversion is not entirely symmetrical. Although the public sector unions function like medieval palatinates, autonomous power centers whose primary motive is to retain their privileges while interfering in matters of state, they have the backing of a significant corps of activist members who are themselves not averse to breaking the law when it suits them. So in a sense these unions do represent their members’ interests, as well as defending the perquisites of their own controlling hierarchies.
Nonetheless, things have changed dramatically. Public sector unions have now becomes adjuncts of one or another political party, raising money for their benefactors and electioneering on their behalf: in Quebec and the ROC (Rest of Canada), the affiliation is with the socialist-leaning, anti-Israel parties; in the U.S., they have become strong contributing factors to the Democrats, if not a wing of the party itself. The thuggish spectacle of these unions and their collaborators in Madison, Wisconsin, disrupting the public square, occupying the state Capitol, issuing death threats against fiscally responsible legislators and holding the law in contempt is only a sign that they have outlived their usefulness and have become, not genuine defenders of workers’ rights, but a destabilizing menace to the public weal.
All human institutions naturally deteriorate in the course of time and conclude by abusing the mission they had initially espoused. And at such times, courage and hard thinking are needed to ensure renewal of original purpose and a return to founding principle. This is certainly true of the teachers’ unions in the U.S., once necessary and beneficial, which have degenerated to such an extent that their core function is no longer to improve the pedagogical milieu while providing a decent living, but to exploit the taxpayer, to expand their entitlements and exemptions, and to preserve the conditions under which not merit but mediocrity increasingly flourishes. This is why their power needs to be curtailed and their organizing principles rethought.
Unions—and today we refer chiefly to public sector unions—were not meant to be political mini-parties manipulating campaign funds or adopting foreign policy initiatives. They were not designed to be power blocs profiting at the expense of society at large. And they were certainly not commissioned to serve as a presidential militia or a revolutionary vanguard determined to unleash, as Liz Blaine puts it, “a multi-pronged attack to undermine America’s democratic process and its financial and economic stability using class and race warfare.” As Roger Kimball writes, the real issue is not “whether public employees should have the right to bargain collectively, but whether public employees should be answerable to the people or to the party they helped elect.” These unions have now become the bane of public life and it is time that government—that is, decent, sensible and trustworthy government—acts to rein in their profligacy, their wayward independence and their autocratic methods.
Such a responsible administration, at whatever level it exercises its mandate, would not follow the draconian route adopted by the Quebec government of yore. It would work within the framework of legality since it has the tools at its disposal to rectify the flagrant abuse of union power. Unlike the Quebec government, it has reason and right on its side. Of course, there will always be the local versions of Yvon Charbonneau to contend with, such as the Democratic senators in Wisconsin who fled the scene in order to stymie debate, Secretary of State Doug La Follette who put off signing the government bill into law and District Attorney Ismael Ozanne and Judge Maryann Sumi who issued restraining orders based on a technicality. We see similar tactics currently at work in Indiana where House Democrats have staged an exodus to prevent a quorum.
Even so, despite the sound and fury, the illegal flight of legislators, the massive propaganda onslaughts and public dissidence, all that is needed is the mettle, resolve and integrity that Governor Scott Walker has shown thus far to carry out the long-deferred reformation of syndicalist policy.
“And at such times, courage and hard thinking are needed to ensure renewal of original purpose and a return to founding principle.”
Corrections implemented:
“And at such times, courage and hard drinking are needed to ensure renewal of original purpose and a return to founding principle.”
“I was forced to rely on loans and to take on extra jobs just to keep afloat, for several years putting in a 15-hour-a-day work schedule. It was only thanks to the teachers’ union that I and those in my position were eventually able to extricate ourselves from these sweatshop conditions and actually concentrate on teaching rather than surviving, though we had barely contrived to raise our living standard above the subsistence level.”
Excuse me, but why on earth were you working at a job like that in the first place?
….I’d (…for one…) chalk-up his determination to wanting work as a Teacher to that old fashioned, archaic, now alien, anachronistic characteristic once called….Personal Dedication.
Don’t smirk and affect “cool”, or “cynicism”…..that’s gotten us nowhere, no-WHERE…. man……just look around you at what we’ve got entrenched by those now “dedicated” to the renewal of the British attitude of “I’m All Right, Jack”.
[...for details, see the movie of that title.]
Great question, Pineapple!. Young but serious entrepeneurs, scientists and engineers, work 15 hours a day for little compensation while getting started. Some fail repeatedly and some never get beyond the startup phase in which they have little disposable income for all their frustrated lives.
Teachers, though, get to whine and bellyache and strut their superior altruism until they get more of the public tit.
David, though I love his writing dearly, is like Roger Simon in that both fail to see that it’s not events that have substantively altered as they aged, but that they have simply matured to a more conservative mindset. Bettter said, more realistic, more knowledgeable, more deliberative, and less enamored of “camaraderie”, “solidarity” and “common fronts”.
To be “liberal” and full of “heart’ while young, and to be “conservative” and full of “wisdom” while old is the oldest and widest known of human traits.
Those of us whom events made old while young had to suffer the calumnies of the progressive Davids and Rogers in our youths. Now we (gladly) suffer their born again conservative voices and pray there are youths that listen.
Nonetheless the inequity stings, and one wishes the yammering youths of the 1960s & 70s would muster an appalled mea culpa for their past positions that brought us to our now sorry end.
Sorry, I meant NUMERIAN.
The “French Solution” was and remains to give them the thirty miles on either side of the St Lawrence and five miles East of the Ottawa they brought to Confederation and wish them well. The Indians and Eskimo population to the North hate them…that was British territory anyway. The area around Labrador can just be given back to Newfoundland.
With improved transportation through New York an alternative to the St Lawrence and the Gaspe would be established and the resources of the North would return to the rightful owners.
Marxists state employees marching in the street demanding confiscatory taxes on wealth is not good for investor confidence.
Toyota makes millions in California every day, but is shutting down its factory here. Why? To escape having to deal with Berkley educated green-marxist state employees.
Dear Numerian
Good question. The answer is: I loved teaching, apart from the fact that the irredentist Parti Quebecois, which saw to the flight of capital from Quebec to Ontario and Alberta, meant that there were few jobs available anyway.
David
If I wish to take up X as a living, I reconcile myself to working for what the people who desire X consider it to be worth. If I want more, I negotiate in good faith with the people who desire it.
On the other hand, if I collude with other practitioners of X to drive up our remuneration on the threat of mass retaliation, and if we pressure free agents who have no patience with such collusions, I would be a racketeer and a criminal, fit to be treated no better than a burglar caught in the den after midnight with the owner’s safe in hand.
Whatever “usefulness” and “good” the unions ever provided were obtained by criminal methods. Workers have been and are treated deplorably and unjustly, but the second they unionize, they have EARNED every abuse and maltreatment an employer can send their way.
If Solway won’t say it, I will: collective bargaining is a vile protection racket by its nature, made doubly nauseous by the swinishness and infantile, levelling envy of its bullying practitioners. It’s fatuous to say “Well, the unions served a good purpose once, but now…” etc. The world needed the Pinkertons then, and it needs them now.
yes
as many of the writers here are reformed leftists it is interesting to see that they (some of them seem to fall back to the default position …socialism) still think there is some good in the evil that is socialism.
obama is going to show everyone that there is no fixing evil ..it is still just evil.
Le Craquere:
“The world needed the Pinkertons then, and it needs them now.”
So, you endorse massacres of workers and their families?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
http://libcom.org/library/us-thibodaux-massacre-1887
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattimer_massacre
Nice…easy to say until it happens to you or your sons and daughters.
What people like you fail to understand is that it was in very large part thanks to the likes of the Pinkertons and henry Ford’s Goon Squad that SENT workers INTO the arms of the Marxists and the Mafia.
You must be one very highly edumacated person to say something so effin’ stoopid.
Do you think you advance any cause,(even your own), by such shallow idiocy?
Maybe I should send some of my former waterfront associates around to YOUR house or place of work…that okay by you,champ?
And if it isn’t, then how is that different from what you advocate?
Conservatism isn’t about PR cover for your being a violent and selfish punk-ass.
Learn the difference ace.
“Endorse massacres of workers and their families”? Never! Heaven forbid. However, I must point out that the kerfuffles you cited all involved unionized employees: no workers were involved or harmed.
Actual workers WERE involved, however, in the events leading up to all four of your little case studies: each time, the unrest began with assaults by unionized employees upon those workers who’d decided they were okay with the wages offered, and wished to put in an honest day’s work for them, rather than pressure or intimidate extra money out of anyone. The latter’s fates at the hands of the union seem uninteresting to union-friendly chroniclers–perhaps to you as well? Do you honestly think that the dead at Haymarket Square or Ludlow compared to what the unions involved committed and incited against the non-unionized? The Pinkertons and Ford security forces were dealing with murderers, and the cheerleaders of murder.
Which brings me to your “former waterfront associates.” I must concede, I wouldn’t much care to be roughed up or killed at their hands. However, it seems almost unfair to protest at their readiness to do so, or your readiness to see it happen. Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. Unions gotta assault and terrorize.
As for the differences between my stance and yours, it’s the difference between an armed burglar in your living room stealing your TV, and you on the stairs with a shotgun. Both of you are armed. Neither of you is feeling very peaceable. The difference is, it’s your damned house and your damned TV. I admit, I wouldn’t fault you for unloading on the burglar. If that makes me a “violent and selfish punk-ass” in your eyes … oh, well. Shall have to learn to live with that.
the absurdity of putting the home-owner and the thief in his house on the same playing field shows why you don’t get the issue.
when is black mail appropriate ?
there is one honest answer and the socialist answer.
my response to the above question is never. if you think that there is a point where it is ok to black mail then you may be a socialist.
Le Craquere:
“The latter’s fates at the hands of the union seem uninteresting to union-friendly chroniclers–perhaps to you as well? Do you honestly think that the dead at Haymarket Square or Ludlow compared to what the unions involved committed and incited against the non-unionized?”
Facts are dreadful things when your head is planted firmly up your behind, hotshot.
11 children dead at the hands of the Colorado National Guard, who were functioning as state-subsidized Pinkertons for the mine-owners, and you’re trying to claim that these children assaulted picket-line crossers?
Like I said…nice. Attitudes like yours are precisely WHY the unions wield the power that they do. You’re nauseating.
“The Ludlow Massacre resulted in the violent deaths of 19 people[1] during an attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914. The deaths occurred after a day-long fight between strikers and the Guard. Two women and eleven children were asphyxiated and burned to death. Three union leaders and two strikers were killed by gunfire, along with one child, one passer-by, and one National Guardsman”
From the Lattimer Massacre:
“Sheriff Martin and 73 deputies were arrested and put on trial.[9][10] At trial, the defendants claimed that the marchers had refused to obey an order to disperse and were charging toward the sheriff and his deputies.[18] But medical evidence that nearly all the strikers had been shot in the back proved this to be a lie.[10][18] Nonetheless, the sheriff and his deputies were acquitted.”
Uh-huh…you gotta remember that the striking worker poses the greatest threat to an armed goon when the striker is running away. The Company Policy states that you should shoot the striker in the back.
That about right, le Craquere? You’re okay with burning children in the tent they call teir home and shooting unarmed men in the back?
How about shooting children in the back?
You don’t happen to work for the ATF or the FBI, do you? I hear that they have actively recruited people with that skill-set in the past.
“Which brings me to your “former waterfront associates.” I must concede, I wouldn’t much care to be roughed up or killed at their hands.”
Thought so…you’re a punk-ass. Taps and no taps-back! So you keep your Pinkertons and Goon Squads away from other people, and I’ll keep my Mr. Tire Iron from visisting your Mr. Kneecap…get me?
Here’s a tip…don’t try to refute, just STFU. You do the cause more harm than good every time you hit “submit”.
Dear Bilgeman:
You were good enough to quote my previous question:
“The latter’s fates at the hands of the union seem uninteresting to union-friendly chroniclers–perhaps to you as well? Do you honestly think that the dead at Haymarket Square or Ludlow compared to what the unions involved committed and incited against the non-unionized?”
Your response’s studied obliqueness to the two questions implies that your answers are “You bet” and “I’ll pretend you didn’t ask that.” In light of this, your selective shock at the deaths of innocents and defenseless people is contemptible. (I won’t say “surprising.”)
If those women and children had been the families of strikebreakers, they’d have been targeted and killed on purpose, not as casualties of the (union-instigated) chaos. Inconveniently for you, some of us have actually been acquainted with unions and their members: they’ve FORGOTTEN more about such atrocities than their bosses ever knew, they celebrate the ones they inflict, and no unsympathetic labor chronicler will spoil the party by making much of it. All of which makes you, sir, about as convincing and palatable as Hamas weeping crocodile tears over the accidental deaths of Arab children.
But I do appreciate your final tip, and I sympathize wholeheartedly. If I were you, I’d be wanting my interlocutor to “STFU” right about now, too.
Love, moi.
P.S.: By the way, I’m a little confused over your argumentative calculus … to not qualify as a “punk-ass,” I would have to LIKE getting worked over by your gangster buddies? Appears that someone was reading “Tiger Beat” under the desk back when his teacher was explaining social mores.
In the absence of coherent & substantive reasons for her stay, the Democrat judge Sumi should be ignored. Challenge her legal basis, there is none, and do it publicly and often. Both she and her son are Democrats, the law and proper procedure mean nothing to these gangsters.
On this and other matters and cases, who died and made the courts the supreme ruler of the land, the only arbiter?
she also has very strong afl-cio and seiu ties
she is a fraud
the entire dem existence in wisconsin is a fraud (fleebaggers)
walker is doing well
that was a tortured screed David. next time I will opt for waterboarding!
The unions, in their current incarnation, are nothing more than legal mafia hierarchies, sucking the money out of their members to prop up their political goon of choice.
They have long outlived their usefulness and must be dealt with as one would deal with street thugs-busting them until they crack.
…not unlike any marxist / progressive enterprise.
regards
Mr. Solway:
“When I first began teaching at a community college in Montreal, my salary was so anorexic it scarcely made ends meet. Hell, it scarcely made beginnings meet”
Then why on Earth did you continue working for them?
Look, back in the 1980′s, my old outfit, the Seafarers International Union, (which has a “colorful” history in Canada), won rights to man the US government Fast Sealift Ships…SL-7′s, as they are known on the waterfrot.
These ships are huge, and they are fast, (one of the class holds the record for transatlantic freightship crossing), which measns their engines are also huge,..120k shaft horsepower.
The pay on thses rust-buckets was so low, and the workload was so great that calling out jobs when one was crewing up was the fastest way to clear out an SIU union hall yet devised, (saved for arson).
This went on for over ten years, until the government and the union finally got the message, and increased the pay to what the other grey-hulled rust-buckets paid, (which itself is no great amount).
The point is, if suckers will work for so little, then there will never be any incentive for the employer or the union to pay more.
“Still we persisted, ready to go the limit, until we assembled one morning, placards in hand, to learn that we had been betrayed by a sister union, the large and influential Centrale de l’enseignement du Québec (CEQ). This was essentially the Francophone teachers union, headed by one Yvon Charbonneau, a long-time Marxist, also denounced as “seriously anti-Semitic” by the Canada Free Press—which had nothing to do with his caving in but augured poorly for the future.”
Classic ComIntern ploy, and why Marxists should be rooted out of unions without mercy.
The scam was to agitate and propagandize to cause the strike so that the Red union could then turn fink and break the other unions’ rice bowls. The entire aim of this was not for the benefit of the workers, but rather to infiltrate the workforce with Communists and entrench their pro-Soviet activities inside the workplace.
Once the target had been penetrated, do you think that the workers’ concerns would be addressed?
Not on your life.
” Public sector unions have now becomes adjuncts of one or another political party, raising money for their benefactors and electioneering on their behalf: in Quebec and the ROC (Rest of Canada), the affiliation is with the socialist-leaning, anti-Israel parties; in the U.S., they have become strong contributing factors to the Democrats, if not a wing of the party itself.”
You don’t say…and all by design, chum.
“And they were certainly not commissioned to serve as a presidential militia or a revolutionary vanguard determined to unleash, as Liz Blaine puts it, “a multi-pronged attack to undermine America’s democratic process and its financial and economic stability using class and race warfare.””
That’s where you are wrong. That is EXACTLY what they were designed to do. You should look at European labor history, both theoretical and as applied.
Why do you think that the first thing a union will do will be to seek recognition as the EXCLUSIVE bargaining entity for the bargaining unit?
They need to establish a monopoly, and have the power to compel the newly-hired to accept membership, (pay the vig to), in their organization.
If you wish to break the unions, look no further than the fraud and corruption involved in their internal elections…and follow the convictions of their leadership for financial improprieties.
Because of the Closed-Shop system, and the freedom from having to “sell” their program and record to the newly-hired employee, there can exist a professional Labor Bureaucrat class, who do not rise from the rank and file, but who rather are hired and rewarded for their loyalty to the union leadership
And for all too many, those who are not Marxists are corrupt.
Unions can and do serve a useful purpose. They do need to be restricted to that purpose, namely representing their own members on job-related issues. The way to do that is to make union membership voluntary, so that should the union stray from its original purpose, it will shrink. A right-to-work law will apply the appropriate restriction, and may be sufficient to confine even public-sector unions to their original purpose.
I have observed two private-sector unions operating in a right-to-work environment (Texas). Those unions represented their workers to the company management, and stayed out of state politics.
too bad this idea makes sense, would be easy to implement, and is a fair solution
however, public sector unions have hijacked the “union” moniker, care nothing about their members (except their dues), care nothing about work (only collecting), and, like all statist endeavors, seek to destroy the middle class
I’m rooting really hard for the Democrat to win the supreme court seat next week. The new union laws will become invalidated. Then when Obamacare kicks in with medicaid mandates in two years it will be like the three way stand off in The Good The Bad and The Ugly between the taxpayers, public employees and health benficiaries. You could almost pay to watch a fight like that.
David, if you were being underpaid and under appreciated when you were starting out then there were too many qualified people chasing too few teaching jobs. You should have quit and done something else that would be more valued by some other employer. Or, if you were just on the low end of the earning curve in your career, as we all have been, then you should have worked hard to out perform as much of your competition as possible, like the rest of us did.
The question isn’t whether employees should be entitled to bargain collectively, upside down, holding their breath or any other way they like. Of course, they should. The question is: how can you reconcile the notion of a free people with your notion that the government is entitled to force employers to put up with insurrection by its employees? You can’t.
Watching the angry, hateful thug-teachers in Wisconsin was the best possible case for private and charter schools. Why would you want your children in their classrooms unless you are a fan of Karl Marx. Selfish bastards all.
The problem with PUBLIC employee unions is that those paying the bills simply hve no say-so in contract negotiations and those who’re supposed to be representing those responsible for the bills, are easily subject to being corrupted by the unions, who spend tens of millions helping their ‘friends” on the other side of the negotiating table get elected. In short, the system is simply a money-laundering scheme for mostly Democrats in which tax money is funneled to them through the unions via members’ dues.
I predict a huge hike in privatization of many government services over the coming years.
I had to take a union job once, it was a total fiasco. Working conditions were not at all healthy either.
What little I was paid had a significant portion skimmed off by the union leaving me with not enough to live on. Rather than go through all the author did I quit and found a job I could live on.
The union people were agast that I was quitting and actively hostile when I told them the reason why.
Unions have become far worse than what they were designed to replace.
And as much as I hate to say it, the union people were massively ignorant and thugs to a man when it had anything to do with the unions “interests”.
Integrity and morals (besides real life requirements) would not allow me to stay at that job.
Unions – private sector ones are bad enough but public sector unions IMO are the absolute worst idea all the way around.
This is exactly what are founding fathers tried to prevent. They knew it was only a matter of time before the people would become corrupt. That is why they tried to set up checks and balances to hold back corruption. Just read the Federalist Papers and you will see the wisdom and careful thought they put into setting up our government.
As I commented recently elsewhere (also regarding a constitutional matter).
A truism: “It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.”
Yes, our founding fathers did their best. But we may need some tweaks, or even rewriting to “explain to the idiots” in the future. I seriously hope we don’t have to start all over again.
Your wealth is the difference between the value of what you produce and the value of what you consume. The public sector labor collectives are now consuming far more than they are producing. Have you noticed that the sucking sound has become a constant noise rising in decibel level to produce a consuming cacophony? This has become a very basic problem for the employers of the public sector.