January 02, 2011 06:03 PM UTC

The need for Labor Unions

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• by: Ellie

Reading the New York Times this morning I was reminded of a conversation, heated one at times, I was in over the holidays.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01…

The four involved had the following political makeup: 1 Dem., 1 Repub., 2 Indy’s.  

The Dem. is a die hard union guy (who admitted never having joined a union) who sees the end of unions as the end of the American way of life.  Plain and simple.

One Indy had been a union member and found it to be corrupt and argued for change such as the United Food Workers voting out Ernie Duran and family if unions are to survive.    

The other two saw teacher tenure as the critical issue that needed to be addressed with the Indy #2 citing Washington, D.C. and the NEA’s successful effort to get rid of a progressive school superintendent Michele Rhee. http://www.time.com/time/magaz…  

I’ll digress here by saying the two (R & I) argued that teachers were underpaid and administrators by and large overpaid.

California’s labor laws and current budget problems came up with a whole other range of arguments but I won’t try to go into those.  Suffice it to say the 3 didn’t sway the lone Dem. union guy and he didn’t sway us.

My position is if unions are going to be part of the future they have to be part of the economic & education solution.  We can no longer afford labor bosses who have a strangle hold over their unions.  

Bill Ritter said his biggest mistake was thinking he could bring labor and business together before he became Governor.

In the end that’s going to be a problem for all of us and our children unless things change.