I went out to a Teamster rally night before last. The rally was held to show private sector union support for the Vote No On Issue Two campaign in Ohio. No on Two is a citizen veto of Governor Kasich’s attempt to destroy public sector unions. The words I heard most often were “respect” and “vote”. I am at the point in the No On Two campaign where I always end up with these things, where I am obsessed with it and wondering why I ever got involved, because I am a bad loser and will hate to lose very much, so the rally came at a good time for me personally. Understand that wasn’t why they held it, because I was getting sad, but it is true that I found it heartening and inspiring.
Everyone in that room knew that the one and only objective of this sophisticated and coordinated multi-state demonization campaign is to destroy unions for good, with public sector workers targeted first in what is a broader war.
The part of the war on workers that has been the most baffling and disturbing to me is the complete disconnect between my personal, local, daily experience with union members and the contempt and vitriol I hear directed toward them every day in the political discourse and by commercial media. The 2nd largest private sector employer here is a union shop, and the union members that work there make a product that is so revered locally it is pictured on the town welcome sign. I visit a public elementary school down the road at least once a month in the course of my work. It has just never occurred to me to consider the union-member teachers who work there lazy and stupid and coddled.
It is now acceptable for an elected official in Michigan to say this about them:
“I think so,” Meekof said. “It’s an opportunity to let teachers get farther away from union goons. That should give them a better chance to break away from the mediocrity. That should make things better for our schools and our children.”
We have a national cable channel where it is possible, on any given day, to hear multi-millionaire media personalities lie about union workers. This is now just business as usual. Goons. Mediocrity. Thugs. Violent. On the Democratic side, all I seem to hear is hand-wringing over income inequality as it relates to tax policy or the safety net. I’m hearing this in a country where 40% of wage-earning households qualify for food stamps. I’m hearing this in a country where conservatives have made a campaign slogan out of crowing about how 47% of wage earners don’t contribute. Wage earners. People who work. 47% of wage earners don’t contribute to this country? WTF? This is now a winning campaign slogan?
Is there some connection between devaluing and demeaning the work that people do and the stagnant or declining wages they are paid to do that work? Is there a difference between workers who organize and win a seat at the table and workers who don’t? Is there any connection between the decline in organized labor and massive income inequality? Is there any connection between ridiculously high salaries and bonuses at the tippy-top and stagnant or declining wages at the bottom and middle? Talking about tax policy and shoring up the safety net is great, but there’s a multi-state attack on wages going on right now, and all union workers are targeted. While I think it’s fabulous that we want to provide them with food stamps or tax subsidies once they’re all making 9 dollars an hour, I think I’d rather protect their right to bargain and organize so we aren’t all making 9 dollars an hour.
I’ll leave you with what I consider a hopeful, local anecdote. Jim is a police officer and he’s a conservative. He is married to Mary, who works here with me. He had a Bush/Cheney sticker on his truck well past the 2004 election and he once gave me two Limbaugh books he bought at a yard sale as a gag gift. He’s also a good cop and a good husband and a good father.
As I was walking out of the law office yesterday I saw this planted out front:
I figured the local Democrats or a union group had stuck it there, but then I took a closer look. The sign has an FOP endorsement. The local Democrats and union groups bought signs from a Teamsters local. This isn’t one of ours. Jim put the sign up. We don’t ordinarily display political signs at the law office, but I’m going to break my own rule and leave it up. This is the first time in the 15 years I’ve known Jim that we are on the same side.
harlana
with regard to your friend’s change of heart, i guess the right’s brainwashing is not working like it used to, that’s a great sign – these people have been brainwashed, plain and simple, for years and now they are finally waking up
and good on you for fighting the good fight!
also, too, THIS:
JCT
+1, kay — your posts always raise my spirits.
At the NYC university where I work all of the engineering staff is union (1199). We are in an outer borough and these guys are *profoundly* conservative. Last week I went down to discuss a duct problem in my lab and found about 5 of the guys sitting around and to my shock they weren’t whining about the Yankees, but were instead talking about Ohio! I didn’t twit them by pointing out that they all would have voted for Kasich, but they were basically talking about the hell they would raise if Cuomo tried this sort of crap.
Combined with the eye-opening experience we had earlier this week when our trailer needed a new wheel bearing in Springfield, Ohio (it was replaced by two guys in a roadside shack with impenetrable S. Ohio/Kentucky accents who spent 2 hours discussing their dislike of all Republicans going back to the first Bush…), and I am starting to get hopeful that the idiot Republicans pulled the tiger’s tail once too often…
Charlotte
My son is a police officer, and while he has always voted democrat (mostly) and clearly understands the importance of unions, many, if not most, of his fellow officers have been firmly in the Republican camp–until now. I think there is some hope that the Republicans are increasingly alienating much of their traditional base–and, no, I don’t mean the Tea Party types. They’re not really the Republican base any more than the professional left is the base of the Democratic party.
Napoleon
Yeah but next chance he can Jim will vote republican.
amk
jim’s conversion reminds me of “first, they came for the communists…”, only he seems to have realized it just in time. How could any working class member could even contemplate of being a repub beats me.
kay
@harlana:
just to be clear, harlana, I don’t think he’s changed, broadly. It’s an issue campaign.
MeDrewNotYou
One of the really sad things is that much of the country, if not most, would consider $9/hr to be not too bad of a job. To be fair, though, it is a living wage… As long as you don’t mind camping under the stars and dumpster diving.
bkny
sorry to be skeptical, but i doubt this is a transformative moment. he’s seeing the firefighters being demonized and realizes that he’s either with THEM or against THEM (and their pensions). other unionized people, not so much.
Xecky Gilchrist
It is astonishing how the demonization of the non-rich has accelerated recently. It went from “welfare recipients = bums” to “public employees = pretty much the same thing as welfare recipients” overnight, I don’t doubt that that progression was planned anyway, but it seems to have gone faster than it had been conceived to. Maybe the Affordable Care Act spooked the robber barons into stepping it up?
RSA
Best of luck, Kay. It sounds as though you’re doing a great job.
Good (rhetorical) question. It seems clear to me that today’s ruling economic class considers itself an aristocracy, minus any sense of noblesse oblige.
Dr. Squid
If I extended union behavior from the teachers union in my school district, I’d think they were goons too. That was an affluent district where the teachers made way above the median (they were topping out at $85k in 1992 dollars) and went on strike for two months when I was in 7th grade. At least I didn’t have to hear those right-wing jagaloons gloat about Reagan being elected, as the strike started the day before Election Day 1980.
Dr. Squid
@Xecky Gilchrist: The Lucky Duckies op-ed was what, 8 years ago? It’s just a natural progression for them to demonize parasitic wage-earners.
jman
I don’t think it is possible to change tribal identification. He might be no on 2 but he is still a republican. It’s like the eagle and the snake.
Cat Lady
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I’ve been thinking a lot about this. The ACA is the foot in the door which is why I haven’t understood my “progressive” betters squawking about how Obama sold us all out, because the ACA is the first step to freeing us all from a life of wage slavery in search of health benefits. The 99% Tumblr is a lot about health care costs sinking people. If the oligarchs weren’t such reactionary selfish dicks, they’d support universal health care in their own self interest – it would release the steam building up under the Occupy movement, before we’re forced to chop all their heads off.
Davis X. Machina
@Cat Lady: The Great Leap Forward comes after the Roberts Court throws out the ACA, or at least the mandate.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Except when he’s my enemy.
RalfW
I clicked thru to the Frat. Order of Police Ohio site. Wow. They seem fired up to fight for union rights. Shows how totally out of touch the right wing is that they’ve put what should be a natural constituency for them up against the wall.
More and more I get the sense (whether it’s Hispanic farm workers fleeing Alabama as crops rot, or cops and firefighters being told they can’t get care as 9/11 responder, etc) that the GOP who put these things forward have no idea what the ramifications of their votes or policies will be.
They are so far up their ideological asses that they don’t even bother to have a political or policy analyst look things over and, y’know, see if there could be ripples or impacts that these moron “that otta work” dart-throwers crap out as legislation. (hello, Madison? hello, recalls?)
Yes we should indeed be concerned about the concerted 50-state effort of the ALEC crew. But they seem only to fashion the frontal strategy, with no notion that their effort at dominion may provoke a backlash far greater than anticipated.
Reminds me of Delay and the K-street project. They thought they were so smart and ruthless that they’d buy endless GOP power. They got booted and disgraced instead.
Davis X. Machina
@RalfW: Delay may personally have fallen, and the 2006 elections settled some hash, but his ilk control the House, and with their ideological allies — nominal Democrats — the Senate That’s a strange ‘booted and disgraced’.
Yutsano
@Cat Lady:
This was exactly the plant of Otto von Bismarck 150 years ago. Which is why Germany has the longest existing universal health care plan in existence. And up until the Kaiser it actually worked quite well in quelling a lot of Communist energy in the German republics.
JenJen
Thanks for this heartfelt post, Kay.
To help warm your spirits a bit more, “No On Issue 2” signs are popping up all over my Cincinnati neighborhood, including the one that’s firmly planted in my own yard.
James
I admire your work, Kay, thanks for all you do, and I wish every success for No on Two.
But sigh. The sight of union rallies where the participants are all wearing identical T-shirts, and ugly ones at that, is so 1980’s. I don’t complain about this as the fashion police (though few people actually look that good in a t-shirt.)
It’s time that unions pay some attention to the optics. The most successful demonstrations in our nation’s history, the participants took care to dress well. Suits. Their Sunday-go-to-meetin clothes. Look here: civil rights demonstrations – Google Search
I’m a lifelong union member and supporter, but the sight of these rallies where ugly, loud T-shirts is just cringeworthy. And ineffective.
Thoughtcrime
Kay, do you see the growing “OWS”/”We Are the 99” movement having an effect on support for “No On 2”?
Kat
Kay, cheer up. The talk is changing, on the street and in the media. And the Ohio Supreme Court’s UNANIMOUS decision to allow a ballot vote on the redistricting program (“gee, we put a rider not allowing a vote somewhere, so poof, all your rights are gone”), so we are not screwed yet. We are pushing back.
kay
Hi James,
I disagree on the suits thing. The yellow shirts you see are grocery store workers. They should not have to wear a suit.
Too, and maybe I was unclear, they’re in a union hall. This is their ‘house’. They’re not outside protesting.
The teacher’s union rep is a young man and he wore a suit., but he was their guest.
I was a guest too, and I wore a suit, but that’s what I wear at work.
kay
Thought crime
I have no idea. There were union people at the OWS rally I went to, but that’s all I know.
I have not spoken to anyone on Issue 2 who mentioned OWS.
James
Kay,
It’s not a matter of “have to.” It’s a matter of dignity and optics. The identical T-shirt thing isn’t that conducive to gaining public support for one’s cause.
kay
I get that, James but I just think it would be odd in 2011 to have everyone in a suit.
A lot of people who do desk work don’t even wear suits.
I do agree that people look terrible in T-shirts.
If it were up to me adults would dress more like adults and less like toddlers, generally, but that seems to be a minority opinion.
Judas Escargot
@Cat Lady:
True, but even more pragmatically: Universal Health Care is also a socialization of risk (ie the risk that one of your employees will get sick and not someone else’s). And those oligarchs are all for socializing risk in most other cases.
I’ve really started to think that it’s all about personal hated projected downwards from the top, and not much else. There’s no real business reason for mortgage holders to prefer foreclosures over modifications, either (low auction prices lose the bank money in this market). They just seem to enjoy kicking people out of their homes.
It’s almost as if the weenies in the 1% (or who immediately serve those 1%) simply enjoy having the power to inflict pain.
James
@Kay,
I can see how you thought so, but I wasn’t really advocating that the union members all wear suits, and nothing but suits. Just that they pay some attention to the optics of all wearing identical hideous T-shirts. Regular street clothes would be better.
There is a case to be made, however, with demonstrable evidence, that even such loonies as CPAC attract a large contingent of favorable press coverage and attention because they take care to be well-dressed and professional while spouting their heinous views. Optics is something that the GOP does well, and it works for them. Ignoring that fact is not very wise.
debbie
@kay:
I’m by no means in the trenches like you are, but are we seeing the same thing? I don’t even think it will be close.
I was listening to a couple of local reporters discussing the “Great-Granny-gate” and apparently, more than a few insiders think the pro-2 people ran that ad in order to get lots of free exposure for their cause. While they’ve gotten lots of attention, I’m not hearing anything about it being the kind of attention they wanted.
Early voting hasn’t been quashed like Kasich hoped; in fact they’ve extended hours to accommodate working schedules.
I’m feeling more optimistic than I have about pretty much anything in Ohio.
Exurban Mom
As an Ohioan, I feel cautiously optimistic on this one. Lots of NO on 2 signs in my area, only one Yes on 2 sign seen thus far…and I’m out and about a lot, planting signs for my own personal campaign for office.
I’m in a largely Red county, but there’s lots of union folks in these parts, especially folks who are retired on union pensions. I think that Kasich’s heavy-handed ways are going to bite him in the ass on pretty much everything he tries from now on. He has completely lost any credibility on anything, and his “that cop was an idiot” rant has been viral for months, so the cops must hate him.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
The guy represents a district in Ottawa County (West Michigan), very Dutch and very Calvinist. It’s never not been acceptable to drop turds like that in that county.
kay
James, I did misunderstand you and read your suggestion too literally.
I’m touchy because I feel as if they get attacked all the time so I’m in knee-jerk defense mode.
Optics are important and they had street clothes on under the t shirts, so it’s not like they would have needed to change.
Kathleen
@debbie: I noticed that “Great Granny Gate” has been either the lead or second story on Channels 5 and 9 in Cincinnati, which, frankly, has shocked me, so they must be getting alot of feedback. It may be one of the best things that has happened for the campaign.