The Sleeping Giant

I'm getting screwed so you should too.

That's the split and divide mentality backers of Senate Bill 5 in Ohio and similar union busting measures around the nation are counting on. Since most Americans bosses decide their workers pay and benefits and just 11.9 percent of  workers are unionized, why should non-union workers care if  unionized public workers lose their voice?

It's the taxpayers versus those greedy union workers as if the union workers aren't taxpayers and they're  really living large on the modest pay and benefits most receive. The truth is public workers are actually under compensated compared to their private sector counterparts.

Public workers average $49, 072 in wages compared to $55,132 for comparable private sector workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute. For total compensation, public workers make $69,108 compared to $71,109 for comparable private sector workers. http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/debunking_the_myth_of_the_overcompensated_public_employee

But this is in an America where there are five unemployed workers for every job. Where wages have stagnated for a decade. Where food and gas prices are skyrocketing and pensions are a quaint thing of the past for many workers.

So the idea of public workers making decent wages and benefits is resented by some. Throw in the lie that public unions are busting local and state budgets - the reality is deficits are due to corporate welfare, tax cuts for the rich and The Great Recession, not government overspending - and you have a recipe for class resentment.

Not the deserved resentment of the 90 percent of American households earning an average of $31,244 and wondering why the richest 1 percent who average $1,137 milllion just got a tax cut. Or those who resent Wall Street profits increasing 720 percent while unemployment goes up 102 percent and American's home equity decreases 35 percent. Or those bothered by the average CEO earning 185 times more than their workers. http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph#

No, the kind of class resentment politcal leaders - many of whom get to vote themselves pay raises - are counting on is the kind of resentment that pits neighbor against neighbor. The kind of illogical and unproductive belief that if I'm suffering and your not that we both must suffer. Instead of believing that rather than resenting one another we need to work together to prosper.

When people are hurting as badly as they are, it must have seemed like a winning strategy to pit them against each other and the Republican midterm landslide set the table. But not everybody is buying it.

After 30 years of tax cuts for the superrich and corporations that shipped jobs over the border and overseas while making record profits, people who normally suffered in silence are speaking out. I heard their voices Saturday at a town meeting in Norwalk, Ohio hosted by Republican State Rep. Terry Boose, a supporter of SB 5.

I give Boose credit for standing on a stage and taking the heat from some 200 angry workers for over two hours. But his disingenuous rhetoric didn't help matters.

Boose said, "there's nothing in the the bill that says it will cut anybody's wages" and SB 5 " was not set up to bash unions." That was like urinating down the backs of the audience and telling them it was spring rain.

SB 5 says "health care benefits, pension pick-ups, privatization of services, workforce levels and other provisions" are not subject to collective bargaining. It criminalizes the right to strike and lets local governments decide on union contracts rather than neutral mediators in binding arbitration.

"Collective bargaining will become collective begging," Sandusky firefighter Adam Butler told Boose who said it would be a conflict of interest for teachers to be elected to schoolboards. Yet Boose saw no conflict with school boards deciding whether to choose a union's best contract offer or the school board's best offer.

And if teachers lose seniority rights and are at the mercy of school boards for merit pay, "It's going to come down to 'isims," Norwalk resident Bill Foltz told me. "Nepotism and favoritism."

With Republican Gov. John Kasich this week announcing a budget that cuts state funding to local governments by 25 percent, local and state workers will soon be asked to make major concessions and privatization of their jobs is likely on the horizon with Kasich already planning to privatize five Ohio prisons.

So technically Boose is right that SB 5 probably won't cut union salaries. But if contributions for benefits and pensions are drastically hiked it's effectively a pay cut like what Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is forcing Wisconsin state workers to do after handing out $137 million in corporate tax cuts.

Boose said SB 5 was necesary due to "new economic realities" but they don't include making the rich and corporations pay their fair share. Unlike some in the audience, I told Boose I didn't want to see him or other legislators take a pay cut anymore than I wanted to see union workers take one. But when I asked him whether he would support raising taxes on Ohioans earning $250,000 or more, or reinstituting Ohio's corporate income tax or creating a windfall profits tax for Ohio's wealthiest corporations, Boose cut me off.

Boose said he wasn't in favor of raising taxes and that corporations pay taxes. I reminded him that Exxon-Mobil paid no federal income taxes in 2009 despite earning a record $45 billion in profits http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/06/exxon-tax/

But while Boose wasn't in favor of raising taxes he said he supports taxpayers footing the bill for school vouchers which could be used to send students to parochial or charter schools. Charter schools usually aren't unionized and can cherry pick the best students while not having to provide English as a Second Language or special education classes. Despite the advantage, charter schools perform no better than public schools http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0629/Study-On-average-charter-schools-do-no-better-than-public-schools

Boose, who admitted SB 5 wouldn't solve Ohio's $8 billion projected shortfall, said it would provide more transparency. But he also said he would consider privatization - although not of Ohio roads - which would eliminate transparency since private companies records aren't public information.

The Republican playbook is to restrict government's ability to raise revenue with tax caps and tax cuts, then use the deficits their policies created as an excuse to dismantle government. But the audience wasn't falling for the "we're broke and we all need to tighten our belts" through "shared sacrifice" argument.

"I would've hoped Wall Street would not run this country into the ground, but they did!" teacher Vince Marsala told Boose. "The system is not broke. This will break it. I'm a father of three children and if you ruin their education it's on you, not me."

Of course none of the emotional pleas will sway Boose and with SB 5 passed in the State Senate and the Republicans holding a majority in the House of Representatives, SB 5 will likely become law soon. But a ballot initiative could overturn it.

And SB 5 and other union busting legislation have been a long overdue wakeup call to working people who are realizing we're not powerless and their is strength in numbers. So Boose got one thank-you from the audience.

"Gutting unions, that's what's going on in the state of Ohio," David J. Childers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1194 president, told Boose. "Thanks you for waking up the sleeping giant."