Tea Party Inspires Pro-Union Action, by Mike Gold Brainiac On Banjo #211

February 28, 2011 Mike Gold 3 Comments

Did you ever like hot dogs? Each time you’ve chomped down on a red hot, did you happen to notice a thumb sticking out of your weenie? No? That’s because of unions.

We trust our kids to union teachers. We don’t pay these folks anything near what they’re worth, we give them no budget to work with, we expect them to pay for some of their own supplies, and we don’t bother to teach our kids manners so that those teachers can do their jobs without taking their lives into their hands.

We trust our security to union police officers. We trust our homes to union firefighters. We trust our lives to union EMS workers. We hire union electricians so that we can avoid electrocution. We hire plumbers to clean out our shit – literally. Union members build the buildings in which we live and work and they build the roads that get us between those points. We trust unions to establish necessary work environments that owners would never pay for that inure to the benefit of all Americans – they are keeping their members’ thumbs out of our hot dogs.

This might come as a surprise but I am not a black-and-white union über alles kind of guy. I’ve even been on the other side of a labor strike. Therefore, in some minds I am politically in the same camp as Michele Bachmann. During one labor action in which I was involved as a negotiator, a long-time Republican and a very conservative fellow explained to me exactly why collective bargaining is what made America great. That surprised me; he was supposed to be anti-union. He was in favor of the concept of collective bargaining because it curtailed some of the most exploitative behavior companies imposed upon workers. By providing a fair wage, a pension and health care we reduce the taxpayers’ chances of paying for what the employers would not.

Of course, the Tea Baggers and their ilk have joined together to put an end to that. That’s enough to make me sick. But the Tea Baggers have done something we haven’t seen in a generation. They have encouraged people all across the country to stand up for their beliefs and their needs and to demand respect and dignity. We’ve seen the Tea Baggers on the streets, we’ve seen them organize, we’ve seen them proselytize. We’ve seen them remind us all that, indeed, the whole world is still watching.

So most recently we’ve seen labor-supporters respond in public to the revocation of the right to collective bargaining in the state of Wisconsin. Yes, I know, the governor is doing what he said he’d do during the campaign. And I also know Mein Kampf was written before the election of 1933.

But in the short period since Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has tried to end collective bargaining in his state, there have been major rallies all across this nation with turn-outs that, in some cases, eclipse anything the Tea Baggers managed to do in those same areas.

The Hard Right has treated teachers, police, firefighters and such like they were lepers. Their signs said that unlike teachers, police, firefighters, they actually work for a living and those greedy deadbeats should take their share of the sacrifice.

Excuse me? Do they stand in front of 30 brats every day who act as though they were in the road company of Lord of the Flies? Do they stand in front of bullets? Do they stand in front of burning buildings trying to figure out how to rescue some frightened little girl’s kitty-cat? No, of course they don’t. They work for a living!

Well, here’s some news for these fools. Unionized workers have done a hell of a lot more than their fair share of givebacks. Far more, given what little they’ve got in the first place. The unionized workers in Wisconsin even agreed to this latest round of kickbacks – but they would not stand for the end to collective bargaining.

According to USA Today, 61% of Americans would oppose a law in their state similar to the Wisconsin bill. 61% of Americans. You know, only 10% of Americans actually belong to a union.

Unions have yet to join us in the 21^st Century. But even though they seem stuck in 1955, a time when union membership peaked at 15%, that puts them a good 120 years closer to reality than the Hard Right.

There’s a real spirit that has taken root all across the planet. We see it in Egypt, we see it in Libya, we see it in the so-called Tea Parties, we see it in pro-labor rallies all across the nation.

Leave it to a British dude to express this very American attitude: We’re not gonna take it. Never did and never will.

The next couple years are going to be real interesting.

Anarcho-syndicalist, fellow-traveler without GPS and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on America’s pop culture channel The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants zap your synapses each and every day at the same venue.