The Union Future
by David Brooks
DEC. 18, 2014
This is really quite an amazing column.
The title and first paragraph lead one to believe that Mr. Brooks, of all people, is intent on starting a serious conversation on how to address the horrific income and wealth inequality in the US, and the possible role of Labor Unions in that process.
But then, very quickly, Mr. Brooks reverts to character and concentrates on lambasting public sector unions, one of the favorite targets of some of the more odious GOP Governors. The little snipe, almost as an aside, at the Teachers Unions is just a warm up. He then has the audacity to blame the Police Unions for the racial tensions, which are really the remnants pervasive racism in the Us in general.
Unions, just as any other large organization, needs to be controlled so as not to abuse their power. But this kind of baseless and one-sides bashing of Unions is not only silly, it is downlight disgusting. There is a strong correlation between the decline of Labor Unions and the ever increasing wealth and income disparity between the 10% and the 90%.
The US VW subsidiary took the initiative to implement the labor representation in management boards customary in Germany. The GOP dominated state government in Tennessee prevented that - it would set a bad precedence which might actually improve the lives of middle class workers again.
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