Workers get the shaft in Wisconsin

[pbrower2a]

  MADISON, Wis. -- Spelling more trouble for organized labor in the U.S., Republican legislators in the Wisconsin state Senate approved a right-to-work bill here on Wednesday, sending the measure to a GOP-controlled Assembly where it's also expected to pass. Republican leaders chose to fast-track the bill in what's known as an extraordinary legislative session, allowing for less debate than usual.

Debate over the bill drew thousands of protesters to the state Capitol on Tuesday and Wednesday, reminiscent of the passionate labor demonstrations surrounding Act 10 in 2011. But as with that earlier legislation, which stripped most collective bargaining rights from public-sector employees, vocal opposition from the state's unions wasn't enough to stop the right-to-work bill in its tracks.

Legislators are expected to take up the measure early next week in the state Assembly, where Republicans enjoy a comfortable majority. The office of Gov. Scott Walker (R) has already said he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.

The fight in Madison is just the latest indication of how state Republican leaders, often controlling both the statehouse and the governor's mansion in their respective states, are managing to enact laws that weaken the clout of organized labor. If the Wisconsin measure is approved, the Badger State will become the 25th right-to-work state in the country, following two other Midwestern states, Michigan and Indiana, that passed such laws in 2012.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/25/wisconsin-right-to-work-bill_n_6752750.html

[pbrower2a]

Because Republicans love 'samll government!'

They want a return to the Gilded Age ethos in the North and the Plantation ethos in the South -- government that facilitates the will of economic elites and has the power to crush all opposition to such.

The only good thing about the GOP is that it has yet to form private, politicized militias to do the dirty work.

[pbrower2a]

That's the people's champion at work!

No, the champion of the Master Class.

[pbrower2a]

Please do tell how workers get the shaft by getting the right to choose whether or not they want to be in a union per a work contract? This is one thing Dems have gone too far to the left on and it is absolutely nuts to say that this is a major issue. It's a choice issue. People should not be mandated to joining a union or association and should never be bullied into paying dues or fees against their conscience. This is coming from a grandson of a NJ Teamster.

Collective bargaining allows workers a chance to avoid being exploited in a negotiation in which the employer has the ability to seek out the bargaining weaknesses of an employee to drive his wages as low as possible. The corporation has a personnel bureaucracy that can examine the worker's life and make an investigation of a worker's life even to such family situations as having a child.

The argument for a pay cut could go like this:

Congratulations, Martin! Your wife just had a baby. Now we understand very well how much you need a job, and to that end we are going to make sure that it exists by giving you a 10% pay cut necessary for creating a more solid financial position for this company -- and we think that it would be wise, on behalf of everyone you care for, to do some unpaid overtime... and of course make a cash contribution to our group, Citizens for Sweatshops.

Collective bargaining protects against this. Business executives who have never known hardship in their lives find it easy to exploit their subordinates if there is no constraint upon their greed.

If workers have no stake in a plutocratic oligarchy and no means of changing the system by electoral means, then they might as well be militant Marxists.