Posted on 02/17/2011 9:20:41 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
In Egypt, workers are having a revolutionary February. In the United States, by contrast, February is shaping up as the cruelest month workers have known in decades.
The coup de grace that toppled Hosni Mubarak came after tens of thousands of Egyptian workers went on strike beginning last Tuesday. By Friday, when Egypt's military leaders apparently decided that unrest had reached the point where Mubarak had to go, the Egyptians who operate the Suez Canal and their fellow workers in steel, textile and bottling factories; in hospitals, museums and schools; and those who drive buses and trains had left their jobs to protest their conditions of employment and governance. As Jim Hoagland noted in The Post, Egypt was barreling down the path that Poland, East Germany and the Philippines had taken, the path where workers join student protesters in the streets and jointly sweep away an authoritarian regime.
But even as workers were helping topple the regime in Cairo, one state government in particular was moving to topple workers' organizations here in the United States. Last Friday, Scott Walker, Wisconsin's new Republican governor, proposed taking away most collective bargaining rights of public employees. Under his legislation, which has moved so swiftly through the newly Republican state legislature that it might come to a vote Thursday, the unions representing teachers, sanitation workers, doctors and nurses at public hospitals, and a host of other public employees, would lose the right to bargain over health coverage, pensions and other benefits. (To make his proposal more politically palatable, the governor exempted from his hit list the unions representing firefighters and police.) The only thing all other public-sector workers could bargain over would be their base wages, and given the fiscal restraints plaguing the states, that's hardly anything to bargain over at all.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Apples to oranges.
The “Workers” are the ones paying the leeches wages.
I realize Washington Post and Barf Alert might seem a little redundant, (ok, totally redundant) but.......definitely necessary on this one!
You’re right, the MSM aren’t journalists, they’re advocates.
Hey ladies...I think Harold is still single. LOL
And I know that from direct experience having once been a member in the forced-unionist state of Pennsylvania where there is no individual liberty with RIGHT TO WORK laws. Thank goodness for most of the sunbelt where's there's not the restrictive closed shop.
But my revenge was delicious when I led a successful campaign to decertify the corrupt union (but I repeat myself). Once freedom was restored to our workplace, we no longer had to pay the blood money in the form of dues to the union bosses and ridiculous, productivity-robbing union-enforced work regulations were banished. Also gone was the antagonism between management and we workers. We also had a feeling of being invested in the success of the enterprise.
Unions not only kill business profitability, they are responsible for killing individual freedom.
As images of the the hatefulness and brutality of the union rioters in Wisconsin spreads, true American Patriots will rise up and take a principled stand against the thuggery of unionism. From Sam Gompers of the past to Andrew Stern of the present, union leaders have stood on the side of evil.
Spoken like a true Marxist. It’s the WP; whose surprised.
What more does a state worker need to be worried about other than their salary?
They aren’t private citizens. They serve and make their money on the taxpayers of their states. I’m “extreme” enough that I would propose to disallow any state worker from having the right to vote on any state tax proposal. I also wonder why the state should have any role in collecting union dues and giving them to the unions. That’s a direct conflict of interest, isn’t it?
Last year our Criminal Dem governor and Dem Majority Senate and Assembly rammed through their version of an "emergency budget repair bill"
One BILLION dollars in increased taxes and fees plus the illegal shifting of dollars that got us into the mess Scott Walker is trying to fix.
Their timeframe? 24 hours start to finish.
They were ridiculing the author for the comparison to Egypt and were overwhelmingly anti-union.
Brought a tear to my eye...
liberals are truly insane
Get rid of ALL UNIONS. Every single one of them! Period. Paragraph. Chapter. Book.
Unions are inherently evil from root to branch. Taft-Hartley needs some real teeth to gnaw away at liberty-robbing scourge of labor unions. At the very least, RIGHT TO WORK must be the law everywhere. Once that's accomplished, they'll shrivel up and die since the thugocracy of unionism demands coerced membership.
I thought they where protesting being unemployed and cost of food.
Sheesh.
The commie author may as well have written “WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE TO DESTROY THE BOURGEOISE!!!” and just left it at that.
What a disaster WI is...I couldn’t even fathom being an elected official and running away from a vote. Those idiots made their bed but refuse to lie in it.
Bingo
Thanks - I am glad I am not alone in this view of the ‘revolt’.
The workers were roiting over food prices - just like they did in 2008. NO ‘revolt’ then, just riots.
The military wanted this guy gone. Did ANYBODY happen to notice just how fast his health went once he was gone? No more speaches....
Good teachers should be well paid, but they have responsibilities beyond taking care of #1. If they want more money, let them start a business--oh! forgot! They can't get money for that. Money is only for union bosses and orders to boycott and protest.
vaudine
Maybe they will succeed in toppling dictator bammy by accident.
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