One point I’m happy to see people — specifically Ezra Klein and Kevin Drum — making is that unions are held to an absurdly high standard that no other institution is held to.  When I was a door-to-door organizer for the AFL-CIO, or just in casual conversations with friends, I’ve been disheartened by how quick people are to dismiss unions as being corrupt or write them off because of one bad experience someone they know had with their union.  Of course the labor movement has warts, but, as Drum points out, so does every institution comprised of, you know, human beings.

The analogy I use on this point is police.  Everyone recognizes that abuse of authority by police officers is a widespread problem, whether it’s Rodney King level brutality or just someone throwing his weight around and showing a little too much attitude while writing a speeding ticket.  But almost nobody would use this as an excuse to do away with having police.  I contend that the labor movement plays as important a role in protecting our economic security as police forces do in protecting our physical security.  Obviously, not everyone agrees on this point, but the fact that there are and have been corrupt union leaders doesn’t settle the argument.

-AR

First, it’s important to emphasize what isn’t happening in Wisconsin.  This is not, as Governor Scott Walker and his allies would have people believe, simply a matter of dealing with a budget deficit and asking state employees to give back during tough times.  The unions have offered to make concessions to deal with the state’s budget crisis, as they were prepared to do before Walker even took office, and the offer has been rejected.  While employee benefits are obviously more difficult to pay during tough economic times, public employees and their unions are not the cause of the budget crises states are in.  States without collective bargain powering for state workers are in the same or worse financial straits as states with collective bargaining.  If Governor Walker’s concern really were balancing the budget, he wouldn’t have just wrecked the state’s financial situation for the coming years by pushing through corporate tax cuts.  No, this is part of well-funded right-wing effort to crush organized labor, which remains the most effective counterweight to corporate influence over government.

Conservative claims that public sector employees are overpaid or doing better than private sector counterparts simply aren’t true.  The sad thing is that, to the extent that public employees do have it better than private sector workers, this is more a sign of how much pay and benefits have deteriorated in the private sector than a sign of “sweetheart deals” negotiated by public sector unions.  As the percentage of the private sector workforce belonging to unions continues to decline, fewer and fewer private sector workers have access to the wages and benefits that unions deliver.  If public employees have not suffered rollbacks in benefits the same way private sector employees has, this is as it should be.  The policy of our government should be that workers are entitled to a certain level of dignity, and that your labor should give you the ability to provide for your family, visit a doctor when necessary, stay home when your sick, go on vacation every now and then, and be financially secure in retirement.   And if there’s no political will to pass laws mandating a living wage or paid sick leave in the private sector, then government should at least do what it can to set standards for how workers should be treated through the treatment of its own workers.  (The most disturbing reports from the competing protests in Madison were of pro-Walker protesters carrying signs saying “Your Gravy Train is over– Welcome to the recession.”  It’s a sad sign that anyone would react to widespread economic misery by seeking to drag down those who have been spared rather than lift up those who are suffering.)

Opponents of unions are quick to dismiss them as special interests.  And of course that’s true.  Unions’ primary responsibility is the welfare of their members.  But we all should be thankful that unions are as powerful a special interest as they are and lament that unions aren’t as powerful as they once were.  Of all the institutions with the resources and interest to influence the government, none shares the broad interests of the majority of  Americans to the degree that organized labor does.  Every federal law dealing with quality of life in the workplace:  the 40 hour workweek, the minimum wage, health and safety regulations, etc., owes its existence to the support of organized labor.  Even though labor is not as strong as it once was, its hard to imagine either health care reform or financial regulation making it through Congress without organized labor pushing back against the insurance industry and the Chamber of Commerce.

And this is why the attack on labor is something that should terrify all progressives.  Labor is the muscle behind the progressive movement.  With its roots in organizing and its emphasis on solidarity and strength in numbers, no one understands the importance of coalition building better than organized labor.  For instance, in the 1960s the UAW, at the height of its power, provided critical support to other factions of the growing progressive movement.  In the past decade, labor has sought common ground with environmentalists and changed its immigration policy, two areas in which labor had been in conflict with other branches of the progressive movement.  And that’s the reason the right wing is so interested in how Wisconsin closes its budget deficit.

We’re a long may from a perfect democracy where each citizen has an equal say in how we are governed.  As long as special interests are going to have massive influence over our government, we need to make sure the special interests that answer to millions of nurses, firefighters, teachers, etc., have the same say as the special interests that answer to twelve guys in a boardroom.

-AR

Those of you who saw that one movie where Keanu Reeves plays Thomas Jefferson during the constitutional ratification debates will really appreciate Lee’s quote from the movie: the constitution was “designed to be a little bit harsh.”

- AS

In case you ever wished you were privy to the snarky political chats that regularly occur between your inveterate editors AR and AS, this is your dream come true. What follows is our liveblog of tonight’s debate.

We join our hopefuls halfway through the proceedings:

AR:     So I was listening on the drive home, but I’m confused on a couple things. Was Jerry Brown governor before? How does Meg Whitman feel about public employee unions? They need to be clearer on these things.

AS:      Yes,  he was governor before.  He is so funny.  And yes, she blows.  The nice thing about Jerry Brown is that he actually knows how the government and court systems work.

AR:     Oh, details. Schwarzenegger didn’t know any of that stuff, and, uh. . .

Q:    Ms. Whitman, fact-checking organizations have concluded that your ads are misleading, or even worse.  How can voters trust you to communicate honestly with them about the state’s problems when you’re willing to distort the truth to win a campaign?

AR:    Oh, snap!

MW:    Governor Brown opposed Prop. 13.  He said it was a fraud.

AS:     Proposition 13 was a fraud.

AR:     No, Prop 13 has nothing to do with the crisis in California. It is solely the fault of pensioners.  Who needs tax revenues?

AS:     Yeah, damn unions.

AS:      She keeps calling college students children.

AS:     Ohh,  immigration!!

AR:     I’ll let you handle this one.

AS:     So far, so good.  Secure communities is a disaster and doesn’t actually deport dangerous criminals.

JB:    Any time one of these illegal people*, uh, undocumented workers, commits a crime, they will be     deported.

AS:    Boo.

AR:      I’m guessing Whitman’s softened her “I hate Mexicans more than Poizner” stance since she won the primary.

AS:      We’re about to find out

MW:    I wouldn’t support a path to citizenship.  We have got to get our arms around what is a very large illegal immigrations problem. . . first, we have to secure our borders.

AS:     Meg Whitman: Adios, Hispanic Votes!

MW:    We have not given those border patrol agents the resources that they need.

AR:     Doesn’t she know border patrol agents are public employees?!?

MW:    We have got to get rid of these sanctuary cities, San Francisco being, of course, the worst.

AS:     Adios, San Francisco!  Adios, Los Angeles!

AR:     San Francisco is always the worst.

AS:     Although Silicon Valley is apparently the brainchild of the universe.

MW:    I was not for Prop. 187. . .

AS:     Although … she forgot to vote against it …

MW:    If we can hold employees accountable for hiring documented workers. .  .

AS:     Wait, hiring documented workers?  Woops.

MW:    We have to stop the magnet.  Most illegal immigrants, I believe, come here for the jobs.

AR:     I thought we didn’t have any jobs here?  Pretty weak magnet.

AS:     Yeah, so why are they coming? I’m confused.

Q:    Ms. Whitman, you’ve broken the record for spending by a self-financed candidate.  Please address the criticism that you are trying to buy the office of governor.

AR:     “Beholden to the public sector unions” in 3. . . 2. . .1. . .

MW:    Well, I have invested a lot of money in this campaign, and the reason is I’m up against some very significant forces.  In the last five years, the public employee unions and unions throughout California have spent over $300 million on politics in California.  So I’m up against a pretty big set of entrenched interests.

AR:       Yes!

AS:     And they’re up against … you!

MW:    But you know what, I think Californians are smart.  I don’t think you can buy elections.

AR:     But I’m sure as hell gonna try!

AS:     That’s where she’s wrong. Californians are dumb. We just elected Arnold Schwarzenegger.

MW:    That independence allows me to go to California, break glass, and really change how things are done there.

AS:      Break glass? Is that feminist??

AR:      Jerry Brown is bat shit crazy, and everyone in California knows it.  No one’s going to buy that he ain’t gonna do his own thing, no matter how much money he gets from anyone.

MW:    You can’t go to Sacremento and boil the ocean. . .

AS:     Boil the ocean? That’ll happen once we lift all the environmental restrictions on big business — zing!

AS:    Dude is like a million years old.  He looks like Dr. Zoidberg.

JB:    Now, look, unions, yeah, they have their problems*, but what about business over here? [Recounts how Wall Street/corporations nearly destroyed our country.]

AR:      Yeah! Fuck business! Go unions!

JB:    But I have to say something about our teachers, the people who clean bedpans in hospitals, our policemen, our firefighters, they’re the people who really have embarked on public service as a calling. . . I cherish and appreciate the work that they do.

AR:     Solllllllllidarity forever

JB:    We tried this business of  the inexperienced private sector person with the spine of steel, and they get flummoxed by the shark infested waters of Sacremento.

AR:    Soooo. . . spine of steel. . . good or bad?

AS:     These metaphors are getting confusing.

AR:     Fucking sharks, man

AS:     Flummoxing

MW:    The fact that Jerry Brown is trying to distance himself from the labor unions is amazing to me.

AS:    She has sarcasm DOWN.  May as well be doing a slow clap.

MW:    Putting Jerry Brown in charge of negotiating with the labor unions is like putting Count Dracula in charge of the blood bank.

AS:    Whatever, Dracula doesn’t need a blood bank.  For godssakes, he has teeth.

MW:    I want to empanel a grand jury so that if people are ripping off the state of California, they will go to jail.

AS:    What the hell does she know about grand juries?

AR:    Right, cause California has so much room in its jails.

JB:    I have the spine and the wisdom, and, at my age, the independence to do what’s right.

AR:     Oooh, that’s a good point. Old people are independent.  Also known as, cranky.

AS:     Did you hear that part about the death penalty?  Eerie. She was like, “we gotta start killing people before we have to build another jail to hold ‘em all.”

AR:    Yeah, that was frightening.  But she is for conservative judges who won’t legislate from the bench. That’s an innovative idea.

AS:     Yeah, they’ll follow all parts of the Constitution. That should help.

JB:    When you benefit directly from water, you gotta pay.

AR:    Oh no, is this about riparian rights?

AS:     They’re really ending on a high point.  I’m already confused.

JB:    We have to ensure clean drinking water.  There are kids in the Central Valley with birth defects.

AS:    Wait, there are people in the Central Valley??!!

MW:    Turning our backs on water is turning our backs on jobs.

AS:    Never turn your back on water.

MW:    So, that’s my stand on water.

AR:     Only Jesus can stand on water.

AS:     There are like 5 people who are really invested in this part of the debate.

MW:    If we are going to change the direction of the state, we are going to have to do it very differently.

AR:     Very differently. . . by electing someone with a lot of their own wealth and no political experience who believes government should be run more like a business.

MW:    I am a big believer in the power of many.

AR:    Sounds like a union organizer!

AS:     She sounds like Obama.  She’s just stealing his punchlines but using them for evil.  Eeeevvviiilll!

JB:    In the very neighborhood [in Oakland] where my wife and I lived, there were nine murders within five blocks.  But I didn’t have a guard.  I didn’t have a driver.  I walked the streets.

AR:    Jerry Brown: badass!

JB:    So that’s one major difference, know-how and experience.

AR:    That’s two major differences.

JB:    I’d like to see those with the biggest belts tuck them in first.

AR:     Do you tuck in a belt?  They really are bad with metaphors.

AS:     I can kill a man using only my two hands, a small twig, and a belt. Scratch that, two belts.

-AR & AS

*  While LTMF fully endorses Jerry Brown for governor, we do not endorse every word that comes out of his mouth.

Goldstein argues that, by focusing narrowly on a story where unions are the villains and charter schools the heroes, the film misses the ways in which unions are engaged in reform, the limitations of charter schools, and the types of reforms that are not directly related to education but are necessary to fix our schools.  For instance, Goldstein points out that Finland, which is considered to have the world’s best school system, has a teaching force the is over 95% unionized, but also an extensive social welfare system that ensures the needs of all children are met outside the classroom and that parents can be more involved in their children’s lives.  (Goldstein addresses the importance of parental involvement in greater detail in a post on her blog).

Whether one ultimately comes down on the side of teachers’ unions or the anti-union crowd, Goldstein at least shows that the debate is more complicated than it’s portrayed.  Goldstein discusses Stephen Brill’s famous New Yorker piece on the “rubber rooms” in the New York public schools.  Brill’s piece discussed the New York public schools’ practice (since abandoned) of placing teachers who had been accused of misconduct or incompetence, but were entitled by their union contract to full pay pending a hearing before an arbitrator, together in a room where they simply hung around during the school day.  Brill’s piece generated significant controversy, and justifiably so.  But as Goldstein points out, the teachers placed in rubber rooms represent one twentieth of one percent of New York’s 80,000 public school teachers.  A meaningful conversation about tenure must also include the thousands, perhaps millions, of talented, dedicated teachers who never would have entered or remained in the profession with the security that tenure, and unions in general, provide.

-AR

The action of the Central Falls school board is the most extreme manifestation of the growing trend toward scapegoating teachers generally and teachers’ unions specifically for the problems of failing schools.  It is generally easy to predict from the demographics of a school district how successful it will be on certain measures.  Central Falls is a good example:  according the Associated Press, “More children live in poverty in Central Falls, a city of just 1 square mile, than anywhere else in Rhode Island. Until recently, one of the city’s few growth industries was a quasi-public jail.”  The school also a high percentage of students who speak English as a second language.  Yet it’s an article of faith that the reason schools fail is that unions make it impossible to fire bad teachers.

There seems to be a belief that we can eliminate the flaws in the system supposedly caused by teachers’ unions without getting rid of the benefits the unions provide.  The benefits of good pay and job stability provided by unions are most important in the most difficult and stressful positions.  Put another way, it’s unclear to me, after we fire all the teachers in struggling schools, how we attract people into these high-stress, difficult jobs without the wages and job security teachers’ unions protect.

While my general support for unions no doubt motivates my defense of teachers’ unions, there’s a broader public policy concern at play.  Somewhere along the line, we decided that improving schools was the only anti-poverty measure we are willing to consider.  This decision has led us to reverse the relationship between poverty and education quality:  we believe that improving schools will eliminate poverty, rather than that attacking poverty is the only way to improve failing schools.  Since we have decided, against all evidence, that poverty is not the problem with our failing schools, the problem must be that our lazy, union-protected teachers just aren’t trying hard enough.  Bust the unions, and we don’t have to lift a finger to create jobs in the inner city, improve public housing, or reform our criminal justice system.

There is thus a cruel irony in the rhetoric used against teachers’ unions.  Teachers are assailed for putting their own self-interest ahead of that of students.  But they are the only ones being asked to sacrifice anything in this equation.  Because we unwilling to spend any additional public resources on attacking the root causes of poverty, we demand more from those who have already decided to dedicate their lives to the difficult task of teaching our most disadvantaged children.

-AR

Lying To Make Friends, and several Nobel Prize winning economists, respond:  No

It’s the second most beautiful place in America!

It has the best baseball stadium!

Just one small city outside Pittsburgh is the birthplace of Arnold Palmer, Rolling Rock, the banana split, professional football, and my father, and is the childhood home of Mr. Rogers!

Thirteen out of 43 Super Bowls have been won by either the Pittsburgh Steelers or a starting quarterback from Western PA!

It is the birthplace of both the AFL and the CIO!

And, perhaps more important than the 6 Super Bowls, 5 World Series, and 3 Stanley Cups, during World War II the Pittsburgh area produced more steel than Germany and Japan combined, thus saving the free world from fascism!

-AR

-AR

-AR