That's the Ticket!

Well, the latest bit of Republispeak was neatly slipped in on “Meet the Press” this morning. In the context of talking about the full-court attempt to strip public employees in Wisconsin of most of their collective bargaining rights, one of the Republican shills came out with this little masterpiece, when he referred to how they want to force public employees to vote every year on whether to keep the union and whether their dues should be collected: “That’s true democracy.”

Nice reframe. I can just picture Jon Lovitz coming up with this one and saying “Yeah… that’s the ticket!” Of course, this is a strategy similar to the “Secret ballot” tactic when they fought against card check, so they’re really just recycling a similar turd in fancy wrapping paper here. They love the idea of forcing union members to jump through as many hoops as possible in order to organize and stay organized, because this gives the anti-union people more opportunities to exert pressure, spew propaganda and scare stories, and otherwise hassle and harass people.

Actually, this is an almost perfect example of what we used to call "Doublespeak," after the George Orwell concept "Doublethink," described in 1984. The Wikipedia article on Doublespeak describes it thus: "Doublespeak is language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs), making the truth less unpleasant, without denying its nature. It may also be deployed as intentional ambiguity, or reversal of meaning (for example, naming a state of war "peace"). In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth, producing a communication bypass."

Calling this assault “true democracy” is kinda like forcing women seeking abortions to look at pictures of aborted fetuses, and calling it “promoting choice.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I think most people who truly see the value of organizing would be glad to go along with this bit of extra hassle, but these corporate-backed storm troopers are counting on being able to spew enough untruths and scare stories to deter enough workers so that they can pick off collective bargaining units one by one. it's been shown to have happened again and again when employees at staunchly anti-union companies have tried to organize.

I have two suggestions. One is to ask these Republican Tea Partiers to agree that they must be reconfirmed each year by a vote equal to a majority of those who voted in the last elections. And while we’re at it, let’s make available at the polling place a list of the actual campaign contributors from whom they have accepted money, and how much. That means the real contributors and their corporate connections, not those vague sounding organizations that front for them. If not enough people give them a vote of confidence, they’ll be automatically subjected to a recall vote. No petition required.

The second suggestion is to find some legal experts who would donate their time and expertise to look for ways that these state-by-state union-busting efforts may violate existing federal laws and/or the state's individual laws and constitutions. State and local public workers don't have much Federal labor protection (read the Wikipedia article on "United States Labor Law" for the sad facts), but tossing what amounts to a repeal of the entire state's public workforce's right to bargain into a ginned-up crisis-driven budget bill may not pass muster in the individual states. At least the challenges would slow down this frontal assault on workers.

I don’t always respect the people running the unions, and I've disagreed at times with some of their strategies and positions, but I sure don’t think the solution is to go back to the days when employers could force people (including children) to work 60 hour weeks in unsafe and inhumane conditions, and when anyone who tried to carry out work actions could be arrested or shot. The “reasonable” people (like the editorial writers at the Chicago Tribune) who say that unions have outlived their usefulness tend to forget those bits of history. One of those easily overlooked pieces of labor history took place in Wisconsin, as a matter of fact. A good reminder is the story of the Bay View Massacre.

Right now, I think the public employees who have offered to give the state legislature everything they say they need are the truly reasonable, ethical, and respectable human beings. The governor and his backers obviously represent something else altogether. I'm kinda thinkin' of another one of Jon Lovitz's characters. The one with horns and a tail.

So while you wait to see how long the good people of Wisconsin can hold out against this corporate coup, kick back and listen to some good old union organizing songs, of which there are plenty, both old and new. One particular favorite of mine, writted by a couple of Australian folksingers, is especially appropriate because it describes the current siutation to a T... "They say we've got problems, and the unions they blame; Well, Franco and Pinochet, they said the same..."

The link to the song (including an mp3 sound file) is here. And the website of one of the authors, Peter Hicks, which includes his CD's on topical issues (like the market crash), is here. Break out the guitar and let's sing some organizing songs.