Thursday, April 28, 2011

An Interesting Development on the Collective Bargaining Front

I think that it is without question that the current GOP is no friend to Labor.  I also think that suggesting that the fiscal problems since the crash of '08 is because of the benefits packages of state and local workers, as opposed to the open, and sadly legal, theft on Wall Street, is scurrilous.  But what do you do, if you are in the Labor Movement now, when a Democratic controlled legislative body overwhelmingly votes to restrict collective bargaining in a Navy blue state?  If we follow the current and coming events in Massachusetts, then I suppose we will get an answer.

UPDATE:  Let me add that I found this story over at Think Progress.  I just re-read the post, and I noticed (unless I missed it) that the story does not note that the Massachusetts House is controlled by Democrats.  Now, it's very possible that because it is Massachusetts, most people would know that it's a Navy blue state.  However, I think that it might be important to remind folks of who controls that legislative body.  It will become more interesting still, if other Democratic controlled legislatures will follow suit.  If that is the case, then the overall meme will have to be re-examined and modified.

1 comment:

TC said...

Cool. Unlike the private sector, public sector employees already get a vote in their "management" when they go to the polls and participate in the democratic process. Applying the adversarial labor/management system to public service/government is a bastardization of intent of labor relations.

Want to see another big labor story? The federal government is suing Boeing to prevent it from opening up a new plant in SC, even though the new plant doesn't replace any union jobs in Washington. Boeing is adding jobs in Washington and SC -- or was trying to.