Solidarity

Echoing my thoughts of yesterday I've been thinking more on it. I honestly do think envy and jealousy are the reasons behind much of the support of stripping decent pay and benefits from public employees.

How many times in coversation have you heard "I wish I got what they get" in reference to pay or health care or pensions or vacation.

So, the American way is the path of least resistance. Rather than grouping together and fighting for workers rights as happened in the first half of the 20th century, politicians have fractured the middle class which instead of raising up to the level everyone would like, brings everyone down to an unhappy but "equal" level. (Equal??? Isn't that communist!?)

Workers today need unions badly. Not the clunky old, inefficient for modern problems, unions of yesteryear, but agile, flexible and intelligent unions for the future.

The sad thing is too many people have been brainwashed that unions are what caused American jobs to go to other countries. That is true to a limited extent, but that completely disregards the massive spike in executive pay and bonuses that has been going on for decades. The union mentality of "defend everyone equally at any cost" needs to go. They need to look at things case by case and defend everyone, but understand that some workers are useless.

But American workers need to stop the jealousy at those with decent (and they are only decent because being a public employee has as many pitfalls as perks) pay and benefit packages and start striving to get them for themselves. And if a few million or billionaires have to bring in a bit less money, why is that a bad thing?