Sacramento Press / Union Busting: Opinion #WIunion

Sacramento Press / Union Busting: Opinion

Union Busting: Opinion

by Chuck McIntyre, published on March 2, 2011 at 2:05PM

Storyline: Union Busting: Opinion

Community Tags: business culture economic policy labor politics public policy unions

As the Wisconsin protests have continued and spread to Indiana and Ohio, with solidarity rallies held in Sacramento and elsewhere, the strategy of Republican Governors becomes clear: cripple public unions. If there was ever any doubt about this goal, it was dispelled by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s conversation with a newspaper editor (impersonating billionaire conservative campaign contributor David Koch) in which Walker discusses their anti-union strategy. This conservative effort has important implications for the Sacramento area.

Not coincidentally, the effort follows a long decline of unions. In 1945, according to the Department of Labor, unions represented 34% of private employees, 10% of workers in the public sector. This is now reversed: 7% of private, 36% of public workers – the overall number of union workers declining from one in every three in 1945 to one in every eight today. Crippling public employee unions, in the guise of balancing state government budgets, could well put the finishing touches on unions.

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