Everything in Its Own Time

While the news is showing the protests in Wisconsin, it is important to remember that unions in general continue to lose popularity (and purpose?) in this country. It is important to remember the history of unions in this country in general – particularly, what their purpose was in their heyday. Before the creation of OSHA and various other agencies in state and federal alphabet cities, unions were the only means workers had to protect themselves from dangerous work environments, for one thing. It was a needed and noble purpose, however it is largely one that unions have not had to fill in many years. Fines from the government and negative attention from the media generally prevent the extreme problems workers faced in the late 19th and early to mid-20th centuries. While there are exceptions as there are to every rule, they are few and far between.

To say that unions were demonized in my childhood home would probably be an understatement. As a child raised in the Pittsburgh metropolitan region of Pennsylvania in the 1970′s, I regularly heard about the evils of the unions, usually in the context of steel mills and factories moving out of our area. The unions were “too greedy” and forced the businesses to leave to keep from losing money. Teachers that were unionized were probably just as evil, but we didn’t talk about that because we had a couple public school teachers in our family. But it was regularly pointed out that there were teachers that taught as a job, and then there were (parochial) teachers that treated teaching as a vocation. While it didn’t make much sense to me back then, I was made to understand early on that the teachers at my parochial school were “better” because they were paid less than the public school teachers. They chose lower wages because teaching was a calling (not unlike the priests and nuns), not a career. My father regularly said that if his workplace became unionized, he’d quit – he didn’t want to pay his “hard-earned money” to let union bosses live high on the hog.

Today I’m left thinking that my father and his attitudes about unions were probably just a couple decades ahead of their time. One poll today seems to show that a majority of Americans agree with him in one way or another. The politics of perception are taking center stage in Wisconsin, and the future of unions may very well be at stake once all is said and done. On the political end, it is only a question of time. How long will it take the media (mainstream or otherwise) to focus sincerely on one very important point? While the majority of protesters in Wisconsin now are representing the unions, that does not necessarily mean that they enjoy the support of the majority of the people. The unions are organized, and recruiting thousands to take up signs and show up for marches isn’t difficult. The Tea Party, while vocal, is not organized to the same extent as the unions. (Bluntly, the argument probably should be made that while the unions have the luxury of getting their members out to protest, everyone else is too busy doing what those workers aren’t doing – working.) It’s also fair to suppose that Tea Party members (or anyone else that happens to disagree with the unions) probably don’t have the benefit of doctors willing to write them excuses from work.

While the people’s perception that public service employees make more money than private sector workers, there is another important point to consider. They are called “public service” workers for a reason. Unions for state employees have distorted the meaning of these jobs. No one should be taking a job with the government on any level with the idea that it is a means to get rich. Like my family’s old argument about teachers treating their profession as a vocation as opposed to a career, there was a time when working for the government honestly meant making the choice to serve the people. Hopefully it still does for at least some of the public sector workers out there.

Ed Morrissey summed up the situation probably better than I ever could today. While there are plenty of starry eyed idealists out there wishing it were otherwise, the bottom line is that this battle isn’t about workers or their rights. It is about the bottom line of the politicians.

The Democrats who fled the state didn’t do so to protect workers. They did it to protect their campaign fundraising. If Republicans back down while the public gives them this much support, they won’t get another chance to free workers from forced dues payments and involuntary union membership as a prerequisite for public service.

The time when unions protected workers from employers is over. Now the workers need protection from the unions.