Wisconsin!

Basically, as an overview of whats going on in Wisconsin; The labor unions are loosing all their collective bargaining powers over health care and benefits however they are able to keep wages. The state is trying to shrink their powers because the state is more or less broke and needs to make cuts some where. The democrats are protesting this bill and the democratic senators have left the state because the House of Representatives is unable to vote if half of the house is missing. On Friday morning the republican party was able to sway enough republicans to vote for the bill that they were able to vote and pass the bill. The vote was taken at 4 o’clock in the morning in order to avoid protestors whom have been camping out in the courthouse trying everything they can to stop this bill from being passed. Now let’s take a deeper look into what several parties are thinking and standing up for starting out with the governor of Wisconsin. 

Governor Walker decided to take a different approach to helping out and fixing the finical crisis that is currently happening every where, but especially in Wisconsin. Instead of raising taxes (which as we all know hardly ever works) Governor Walker choose to take work rulings away from the unions leaving them with only wages. Also, he is preventing the government unions from making the tax payers pay for all the extra benefits they are currently receiving by making them pay not only half of their pension costs but also about twelve percent of their health care. I really do feel like this is a justifiable way of going about stitching up the rather large financial plan margin. Not everything in life can be free and it really just makes sense that you have to pay for health care in some way, shape or form. 

The protesters of this plan are going crazy trying to stop it from going through. Why? Because many people feel that they have worked really hard and are therefore feel like they are owed compensation for all their hard work especially after retirement. Protesters have raised to almost 40,000 and have basically taken over the State Capital in Madison, Wisconsin. People are literally sleeping in the building to stop the senators from being able to vote for this bill some people have even brought their children with them to camp out. I can see where they are coming from they feel like they are having rights taken from them. Okay yes, they are going to have to be paying a little more for their health care and so on, but shouldn’t you have to pay for what you get? I just feel like they are taking a look at what their tax dollars are going for...which is to the government officials to have even more benefits than the ‘average Joe’ state employees. 

  The media is playing a huge roll in this debacle and even though the media is suppose to remain neutral it has definitely taken one side or the other.  MSNBC’s news section brought to the public by Rachel Maddow and FOXNews’s Glenn Beck are both interesting people to look at in this controversy.  First let’s take a look into The Rachel Maddow show; obviously this show is very much a democrat based program. I felt like in watching clips from the show on what’s going on in the state of Wisconsin the news aspect was really focused on getting the message of both sides out to the public. On the other hand she only had democratic senators come to speak out on what’s going on and why they feel like it is important for them as a group of like senator to leave the state until what they feel as been enough time for Governor Walker to allow for some negotiating on this particular bill. She then goes to to a segment called “The End is Neigh”. This sect was a complete bash at Glenn Beck and his ideas that the end is coming and everyone needs to stock up on food and basically guard their loins. I felt like this little news story on Glenn Beck was slightly unprofessional and unnecessary. Over all I felt that it was a very educational program and informative to both sides of the controversy. Now on to the Glenn Beck show which aires on FOXNews. Honestly I was shocked at the things he was ranting and raving about. It was extremely hard to follow because I couldn’t distinguish the stories from the crisis in Egypt, to Obama being the antichrist, to the actual problem in Wisconsin, to the end of the world closing in on us faster than we had expected. I’m still not sure as to what the stand point is on the bill which has now been passed in Wisconsin; but it is probably safe to say that they are for this bill and getting rid of unions in this highly talked about sate. Overall I felt like he was really just trying to scare the public into thinking what he thought and just going on that alone, although it was difficult to understand anything the was saying because of all the emphasis on frighting the public. Both news stations would of course prefer for the public to stand with them on their views and thoughts of what’s going on in politics, but I continue to feel that as far as telling people what is going on Rachel Maddows did a fairly superior job.  

Part One: America and Unions

To begin, there are two terms that are essential to knowing before starting to look at what Unions have done in the history of the United States. First, collective bargaining is a process in which established unions and management negotiate in order to reach a consensus on working conditions as well as packages of compensation. Basically, negotiating issues with policies that have already been put into effect. Also, what a union actually is. A union is an organized group of people (workers) who work collectively to ensure peoples rights and benefits in the work environment. Typically these union workers work for large companies, representing thousands of employees. 

    History of labor unions:

The first child labor law (1836) said that any child under the age of fifteen would be allowed to be employed unless he or she attended school for 3 months prior to his or her fifteenth birthday. During this time the government was unable to intervene with poor working conditions due to Lassez Faire “hands off”. One of the first unions was The Order of the Knights of Labor, started by Terence V. Powderly in 1869. This union was formed to unionize all American workers. They were responsible for the Alien Contract Labor Law of 1885. This prohibited immigrant laborers to do contracted work. During the 1870’s and 80’s the working conditions were extremely poor and caused many strikes and battles. For example, in Pennsylvania a group called the Molly Maguires burned buildings murdered bosses and other people who they felt like had offended them. Then the Panic of 1873 happened due to a ten percent cut in pay for unorganized railroad workers which caused four eastern rail trunk lines to stop operating for some time. 

The Knights of Labor continued to grow even involving African Americans. In 1886 The Haymarket Square Riot went down where union workers came together to fight for an eight hour work day. Soon to follow in 1886 the AFL (American Federation of Labor) started up. They fought for higher wages and shorter work days. Between 1897and 1903 about half of American families didn’t own property and made below the average cost of living for a family of four. At the turn of the century union workers were low because of very few jobs and extremely low wages. In 1905 Mother Jones started the Industrial Workers Union of the World (IWW). In 1914, after the “Machine Gun Massacre” strikers got the attention of the House Mines and Mining Committee and especially President Woodrow Wilson, which created a truce with owners and to form a grievance committee place at each mine. Soon after tis an act was passed saying that unions were no longer against the law and that strikes, boycotting and picketing were no longer in violation of the federal law. Roosevelt set up the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. This encouraged collective bargaining in unions, set up maximum work hours and minimum wage also, prohibited child labor. This act put almost four million people into industrial jobs. The Supreme Court soon deemed the act unconstitutional and was revised in the Wagner Act. In 1937, Congress of Industrial Organizations emerged led by John L. Lewis they started to unionize industries who were once against being unionized; steel, automobile, textile and public utilities were now unionized. The main goal was to represent workers with collective bargaining and they also introduced the sit-down strike tactic. By 1945 the maximum work week hours was set to forty and the minimum wage was set to forty cents per hour. After World War II wages declined by twelve percent. During the 1950’s people worked under forty hours a week, had an annual vacation of two weeks and had twice the income. After 1965 strong unions began to fragment political parties, embattle the congress and stymie congress’s efforts to heal the nation’s racial, ethnic and urban divisions. During the 1970’s and 80’s women really started to enter the work force and by 1987 almost fifty-five percent of women in the United States were working outside of the house. Today there are every few labor unions still working. In 2005, both the Teamsters and Service Employees union and the United food and Commercial Workers extracted from the union. 

I feel like unions are extremely helpful and necessary to the working world and people who are working normal jobs. I think that sometimes the government looses sight of the specific needs of the American working class. The unions are what bridges the two worlds and creates communication of needs and what is going on. Since the union numbers have drastically declined over the past few years that communication has almost ceased to exist and has caused many problems for the economy as well as the definition of the American middle class. Unions may sound “out-dated” however, sometimes even the oldest ways of doing things can continue to work.  

Something I Already Know.

While doing community service at the Good Will in my home town I learned the process of how clothing is sorted, organized, put out on to the floor and finally what happens to the clothing after being pulled.  Clothes start off in the bag hat donators bring them in. The bags are put immediately into large blue bins and placed at three work stations. Typically two people are at one station working as a team. One sorts through the bags putting non-clothing items into a grocery store buggy. When looking clothing you are searching for certain imperfections such as, extreme fading, holes, stains. If the article of clothing has any of these imperfections it is put into another bin which is considered ‘discard’. Clothing passing inspection is then given to the second person . The second person then sizes the piece of clothing according to a specific sizing chart. After the piece has it’s size label it is given a clothing hanger and put on a rack. The second person keeps up with how many pieces are on the portable clothing rack. When the number of pieces reaches fifty they roll the rack out onto the floor after marking it down in the record book. The people who are working on the floor then work together to get the pieces of clothing out on the racks to be sold. They have to work quickly, being mindful of the customers walking around.