What If: The GOP Destroyed The Unions?
What is happening to America? Seriously. The wealthiest two percent of our nation is going to get tax cuts at a point where they will save $70 BILLION dollars each year and conservative governors are stating we have to heel the middle class union workers because they make too much money! Their response to giving the wealthy more money is that it will be an incentive to hire more people. Seventy BILLION dollars. That means, they can hire an additional 2.8 million people each year with a wage of $24,000 ($11.54/hour) and reduce unemployment by 10% on their own. But they are going after Union workers now and pitting middle class people against each other. So what if it really happens?
Loss Of Quality Workers
Believe it or not, Union workers are the middle class. They pay taxes, just like their non-union counterparts, and those taxes go to pay their own wages. Unions comprise of all sorts of workers who are trained to do a specific job. Typically, a union isn't comprised of people who can be replaced easily. For this reason, some of them - like firefighters and police officers - are forbidden to strike. Should the Unions become disbanded and workers lose the bargaining power that they once had, the job will become less appealing. Why put your life in danger for less reward? Sure, the jobs open up to more people, but those people will be less qualified because they are accepting less. No more jobs will be filled, they will just be replaced by other people. The same goes for teachers, but in this case, your children are the ones who are going to suffer since quality teachers will seek employment elsewhere.
The Republican Party Throws Away Any Chance They Had At Winning In 2012
Think this is an impossibility? Currently, Union workers make up about 24 million people in the United States. That is nearly 7% of the entire population of the U.S. If 24 million people banded together (not including the retired union segment of the heartland), and decided to vote for "the other guy who didn't screw them over", then the GOP would be in a lot of trouble. Luckily, this rarely happens that people stick together on an issue, but when it comes to making changes to people's livelihoods, change is something you can REALLY believe in.
You Do The Math!
800,000 Number of Union Police Officers In The United States
260,000 Number of Union Fire Fighters (not volunteers) In The United States
6.2 Million Union Teachers In The United States
16.1 Million Union Trade Workers In The United States
Worker's Revolution
The thought of revolution inspires thoughts of battles and bloodshed of people fighting against tyranny. I don't think, if a worker's revolution occurred, that we would see something like that of our own War of Independence. Rather, I see a mass walkout of people from several unions who have...well, united...in a common cause. Think it couldn't happen here? Worker's riots have happened quite a bit in the United States since before we were a nation. The only difference between then and now was that the ability to organize beyond a certain city was limited by communication. Today, with the internet and social networking, an uprising of union labor can be organized on a scale never imagined. Without the hindrance of collective bargaining, what's to stop the police, fire, teachers, and skilled labor of walking off the job en masse? What's to stop them from creating a "blue flu"? (The act of everyone calling off sick on the same day.)
Anarchy Ensues
If the workers go on strike, what is going to be the shield between total anarchy the rest of us? What type of workers do you think guard most of those prisons? If the police just walked off the job, who is going to protect you? You and your shotgun? There are dozens of fires in the U.S. each day. Who's going to put those out? If you don't, they spread to the next building. If the union worker's don't plow the roads in the winter, transportation comes to a standstill until it melts and you might as well forget the safety workers coming to help you should you get in an accident. Face it. If these unions could all unite and back each other under a common banner, they would throw this nation into turmoil.
Privatization
The ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector (the state or government) to the private sector is called "privatization". We currently do this with some prisons. If the unions are busted, you can see where it isn't a stretch to see cities and states hiring police forces, firemen, and other positions that were previously held by union employees. This is the same fabric of many science fiction films (Robocop, comes to mind) where greedy businessmen take over these functions. Will your house burn to the ground if you forget to pay your "insurance"? Maybe you won't be able to find a police officer to save your family from being robbed because you "aren't on the list" of people they protect...scary stuff, but a privately owned company can make their own rules and set their own wages. This is what we could be heading for in a privately owned world.
