Wisconsin-Style Union Battle Moves To Massachusetts

As Ben Smith points out, the Massachusetts collective bargaining battle isn't about cursory reform or political posturing. Rather than indicating a widespread anti-union shift, the Massachusetts House vote breaks down the entrenched ideological battle lines of the public-sector union debate.

The simple fact is that worker costs are crushing local governments in Massachusetts. Municipal worker health costs have grown nearly 11% every year for the past decade. Employee salaries and benefits now consume 75% of the state's local budgets.

This story is the same in cities, counties, and school districts across the U.S., regardless of who controls the statehouse.

Read more: http://tinyurl.com/3gatwqm

Here we go again, saw this coming for a while now.

A mass Rep was on Bill Mahar last night saying the bill he signs will not be near what is up there right now. I will try to find the clip.

It was Gov. Deval Patrick

Here is the website http://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher/episodes#/real-time-with-bill-maher/episodes/0/211-episode/index.html

If anyone wants to join me, I am going to start contacting the Massachusetts state senate members. The article says the senate wont vote on it for another month which gives us ample time to protest:

http://www.malegislature.gov/People/Senate

My husband is a long time union member (not a public union, IBEW) and they will be very involved in protesting. I am sure he will be seen in the picket lines lol

I hope that all the states pass bills limiting collective bargaining with public sector employees; it is a bad idea always has been. I further hope card check type legislation doesn't ever pass and that workers can opt out of Union dues if they don't want to belong. The quicker we remove the Unions and Wall Street out of setting the tone in politics the better. Both single handedly destroyed this country and their tired old rallying cries have finally started to fall on deaf ears as they have been vetted out as being the true pimps of our nation and politics.

tristen303 wrote:I hope that all the states pass bills limiting collective bargaining with public sector employees; it is a bad idea always has been. I further hope card check type legislation doesn't ever pass and that workers can opt out of Union dues if they don't want to belong. The quicker we remove the Unions and Wall Street out of setting the tone in politics the better. Both single handedly destroyed this country and their tired old rallying cries have finally started to fall on deaf ears as they have been vetted out as being the true pimps of our nation and politics.

Let them all work for a slave wage and give them no rights so if you don't like just fire them no matter what the reason Expecially if he is a democrat right?

Collective bargining protects workers. They already said they would take pay cuts. But NOPE not good enough. Repukes don't like unions because they are for the DEMS plain and simple. They are trying whatever they can to win including messing with people voting rights. SORE LOSERS=GOP!

No that is over simplification and a tired excuse about being fired. You get fired because you’re not needed suck at your job or done something wrong or pissed somebody off. Now while yes there are plenty of bad firings that shouldn't happen and those people should be vindicated creating a giant bureaucracy that funds a political party to entrench themselves so far in that they no longer have to even perform is quite different then the days of child labor etc. State pension funds are the most corrupt entities and are aligned with who? your favorite guys Wall Street. Point of fact the Unions you protect destroyed America’s manufacturing base by driving up wages far beyond what a person should earn from just hanging a bumper 8 hours a day to a point where they gave China and India the upper hand. Your party didn't step in because they love those Union dues and with labor going overseas they now had a complete self created issue with a captive audience. Level playing field right? How in the world did the Union and Dem genius every think that raising the cost of labor and benefits in America to a point of being unrealistic wouldnt drive jobs overseas? They knew it would but it fit the process and gave them another economically dependant group that had to vote for them. You use the term slave a slave has no choice which is interesting considering what Unions have done for their workers, no choice in dues, no choice in political party support, no choice in working if they want when a strike is called your right slaves.

Your blanket statement that high union pay forced jobs over seas is also an oversimplification. When the talk of the Chinese starting to get interested in unions broke, all the big companies said that if hourly wage for a Chinese worker went up even 20 cents and hour that it would be cheaper over all to build products here. New Balance shoes are made here and made with union labor and they cost the same or less than name brand shoes made in other countries. It isn't the union, it's big business.

I agree it is more complicated and Im sure my side also saw what would happen and said things like we will go along with all this so long as a company can also build plants overseas (While eveading the EPA and every other law domestically). But none the less the Unions over reached which brought us here.

Its all political is my point its got nothing to do with money. Unions are the foundations of the left just like Oil and big and the Kochs bros are the base of the right.

Break the unions and weaken the dems is what the right wants.

If big business was honest we wouldn't have needed unions to start with.

As Karl Marx said in his book "Capital", a capitalist society is based on buying and selling. The only thing that labor has to sell is their labor itself. If bid business had not entered that agreement and proved their un-trustworthyness (real word?) immediately then unions would have never existed. They would have never been needed.

If any is interested here is a link to an online retailer called union label that sells only American made, union made clothing. The prices are roughly the same as name brand stuff made elsewhere. They sell Carharrt Jeans and things like that.

http://www.unionlabel.com/

Agreed