The Madison hullabaloo is not about 'collective bargaining.' It is a get out the vote, stir the base, and marshal the ground forces for the 2012 President Obama Presidency.
The key issue is destroy New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is the biggest thing to hit that State since the Zeppelin. Governor Christie is the anti-Obama. He speaks plainly and allows deeds to follow his words. Christie is not a 'teaching moment' kind of guy, because he understands the frustrations of hard working people who know exactly what causes economic disaster - a pipe fitter's paycheck can not keep pace with subsidizing other peoples necessities. Taxes are the bubonic plague of our times. Taxes come from political opportunists seeking to broaden their constituencies by having their jobs, food, medicine, schooling, and behavior paid for by working people.
Chris Christie has succeeded where other elected officials have failed,from Barack Obama to Sarah Palin. Both President Obama and Sarah Palin are effective preachers to the choirs. Chris Christie is a mechanic.
In order to destroy the Christie work ethic, the choir masters of both parties need to discredit Governor Walker's work to fix Wisconsin's debt by addressing the role of public employee constituencies that form the base of the Democratic National Committee and the President's agenda - which is playing rope-a-dope ( i.e. Obama's budget) with Congress, while attempting to mirror democratic efforts in the Mid East.
Likewise, the GOP powers that be - the folks who love to blow their own toes off with gusto like John McCain -will allow Walker to 'dangle.'
Anyone who has read even a Classic Comics version of labor history knows that when the United Mine Workers under John L. Lewis eclipsed the American Federation of Labor's power by dint of numbers of members and the dues that came along Big Labor has been more than a player in American life, it was the obstetrician who gave birth to the American middle class and the American Standard of Living. The ALF-CIO was born in 1886 when the Knights of Labor organized the skilled workers of America - skilled tradesmen: meat cutters, carpenters, electricians, engineers, drovers, and teamsters, glaziers and boilermakers. The Congress of Industrial Organization organized the factory, mine and mill workers - often considered unskilled labor.
Both labor forces were pitted against -not their neighbors, but the owners of American Capital - Carnegie, Rockefeller, DuPont, Vanderbilt and Armour. Private capital was forced to bargain -collectively- with labor.
Public salaried and tax-fueled unions came into being in the 1970's. The SEIU was born in 1973,out of the old Chicago Janitor's Union Local 25, when Toronto-based Trotskyite and former aide to George Meaney,Eugene Moats forced out President Tom Ryan and raided the local. Moats called the janitors, not Brothers and Sisters, but Comrades. Soon the union was run, not by union men and women, but by University of Pennsylvania sociologists - Andy Stern and his acolytes. Public labor grew and so did the debt of governments along with the power of numbers and dues -like John L. Lewis. Andy Stern is no John L. Lewis -Lewis was a coal miner and threw the communists out of the CIO. Andy Stern is the polar opposite. Soon government employees clerks, secretaries & etc. were organized and they got their pay from their neighbors - carpenters, auto-workers, machinists & etc.
Taxes fuel debt and the political power of Stern's Unions. The Democratic National Party and at the State levels made alliances with Tax-salaried unions. Interestingly, Moats was ousted for corruption -or charges of corruption.* The media played a big role and agreed to identify Labor universally as SEIU -or Big Labor. The skilled trades went along with that - some power was still some power. (NPR is going after Walker and the critics of Planned Parenthood as well -click my post title)
Andy Stern's PAC Power is not about the American Standard of Living won by the blood and bruises of Real Labor - it is a web that uses Palestinian/Israel misery/Gay Marriage/Green Eco-Nonsense/Race/Gender/ and anything else that wants to be co-opted in the web of power.
Chris Christie succeeded in putting the brakes on this run-away train of propaganda and power.
Wisconsin, Governor Walker, and the circus in Madison are all about 'Get Christie, Loves.'
I admire and respect real, genuine and honest American Labor - private sector, skilled, industrial workers made the American Middle Class. Andy Stern's SEIU model PACS are killing the middle class and American Labor, in my opinion.
FDR realized this and warned against public unions, but seems lost on the power players. John L. Lewis had nothing to do with Marxists, but times change and people ignore history - with the help of Bill Moyers and others.
The cat-calls in Wisconsin are familiar, but Madison is not Henry Ford's Flint, Michigan, or Republic Steel's slaughter of union families in Chicago, 1937 - the cat-calls are against genuine union people and their families, as well as Walker and especially Chris Christie.
*
Service Employees International Union. Eugene P. Moats was ousted from his position as President of the Service Employees International Union Local 25 in August 1996. Moats was charged by the International Union with misappropriation of funds and nepotism. It was alleged that Moats raised his salary without the permission of the Local Board. In addition, he was charged with converting union funds for personal use and bypassing more qualified candidates for well-paying union positions in favor of his family members. Secretary-Treasurer Richard Malkowski and 35 other Local officers were also suspended with pay. The 13,500 member Local, representing janitors and maintenance workers, many of whom are Eastern European immigrants and female, is one of the biggest Locals in Illinois.
Guess Who that might have been the gent bringing charges against Moats?
Janitors Union Chief Under Fire
March 01, 1996|By Stephen Franklin, Tribune Staff Writer.
Zdzislaw Lagodzinski was one of the angriest of the angry Thursday. The dark-haired, broad-shouldered 70-year-old janitor didn't just want the head of union boss Eugene Moats; he wanted his whole body.
"If this were Eastern Europe, we would walk in, put him in a wheelbarrow and take him out of his office," he grumbled in Polish as his co-workers eagerly nodded in agreement.
Lagodzinski makes $5.45 an hour cleaning suburban office buildings. Moats, who is a year older and is president of Service Employees International Union Local 25, makes $250,000 from two union jobs.On Thursday, Moats, one of the state's most influential union leaders had security guards and lawyers to protect him from any form of harm at a hearing on his future.
His reputation among many of the 16,000 Chicago-area janitors in the local already is tarnished, and his 22-year reign as its leader is at stake. Dissident members see him as a symbol of union extravagance and indifference. They say he has padded his payroll with family members and let the local to fall deeply in debt to its parent union. They put the figure at over $600,000. Moats says it is lower.
Thursday's session was to have been the second convened in recent weeks by the international union on internal charges filed by Moats' opponents. When it was abruptly canceled over legal questions raised by Moats without a new date being set, the anger among onlookers stayed at a boiling point.
Some janitors jeered and shouted and tailed Moats as he left yelling, "We are poor people. What are you doing to us?" Moats' supporters growled back, telling the others they are being deceived.
Feelings are strong, the janitors said, because the local has imposed a special dues collection effort to help pay off its debt. "Why take the money from me, those people have it all," said one middle-aged women, referring to Moats and other union leaders.
The squabble is ironic in that the SEIU likes to portray itself as a new, progressive voice for woman and minorities and low-wage workers.
Nearly two-thirds of Local 25 members are from Eastern Europe, mainly Poland. The rest are largely Latino or African-American. Most of its members are women.
The son of a Chicago janitor, Moats was a former aide to AFL-CIO leader George Meany when he was named a union trustee of Local 25 in 1973.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-03-01/news/9608100150_1_janitors-union-leaders-eastern-europe
http://www.thelaborers.net/COIA/magazines/traditional_organized_crime_in_chicago.htm
