On Monday, Travis Hornsby's column was almost as erroneous as it was backward.
First, Walker targeted collective bargaining even after the unions agreed to the concessions, making it an attack on the ideal of unions, not about balancing any budgets (he also lowered taxes on corporations).
Second, Boeing moved its plant in retaliation to workers striking. This is against the law. Get over it. Boeing broke the law and now needs to pay.
Third, the cleaning staff at UF does have a union; it's AFSCME. UF tried to bust it in 2002 by switching everyone to TEAMS from USPS, and there is a lawsuit in the works on this. Along with AFSCME, there is also UFF and GAU on campus.
Aside from these (and a few other) factual errors, Hornsby seems to be stuck in the gross individualism that caused our current economic crisis. Unions are not to blame; it was the individually motivated greed of a small group of rich people. The bankers speculated on everything from agricultural goods to mortgages, and the bubble collapsed. They got bailed out while working families got sold out. Now these companies are sitting on nearly $2 trillion, while 1 in 6 Americans are poor, 45 million are on food stamps, and the median income dropped 2.3 percent last year.
We have this mentality that tells us private sector, non-unionized employees need to be pitted against public sector, largely unionized ones. This is a feeble attempt to divide the middle class so everyone will take cuts - a sort of race to the bottom.
But unions are the vanguard of the middle class. They set the standard non-unionized workers enjoy. Everything from child labor laws, the 40-hour work week, overtime pay and retirement came from the union movement. Instead of lowering the standard of living for everyone, how about elevating everyone?
Jeremiah Tattersall
State Organizer for Fight Back Florida
Delegate to the North Central Florida Central Labor Council
