Whenever concerns are raised about the widening disparities of income and wealth in this country, there are warnings from the right about igniting class warfare. I suppose that there's a little truth in that, but the likelihood of marching hedge fund managers to the guillotine or forcing plutocrats into exile in Shanghai is pretty small.
In actuality, at this time the most virulent class hatreds are between strata of the working/middle class. And these are not fomented by liberals. Until a few decades ago, those ill-paid and ill-treated by employers could hope to emulate their better-off fellows in union jobs by organizing and bargaining collectively for better pay and better treatment. But now that the tide of unionization has gone out, there is little of this hope. What remains is a lot of bitter envy.
Abuses of power by unions--burdensome work rules, pensions that bankrupt companies, protection of incompetent workers--are constantly pointed to. Examples are not hard to find. When I was was growing up, the folks in my extended family were probably the only Republican factory workers in Toledo. And there were stories about Uncle Freddy going to work with a knife in his waistband to protect himself against against union thugs. But any individual or institution with power is quite likely to eventually abuse it. Examples are not hard to find. A employer of much size at all will have greater power than its individual employees. We cannot strip them of the countervailing power that organizing gives them.
What public employees in Ohio should sacrifice to help alleviate the state's fiscal distress can certainly be negotiated. But those who recently gained political power would seek to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights even in the best of times. Do not let them use the present crisis to persuade us to let them do it.
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