Mark Janus Seeks the Right to Work

In so many ways, Mark Janus is a very fortunate man. He works for a state agency in Illinois—the same state that has nearly bankrupted itself gifting employees like Mr. Janus with plump, well-fed pensions.

But that's not enough. Our poor, put-upon Mr. Janus has his knickers in a twist because he has to pay $45 a month in union dues for his membership in AFSCME.

As a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, Mr. Janus feels he should keep everything he makes. He feels he shouldn't have to pay taxes and fees and especially union dues, which is certainly interesting given the talking points his political party of choice likes to trot out.

Mark Janus should get his sewage treated, meat inspected, roads repaired and libraries stocked and staffed (not to mention his union representation) for free, but god forbid the poor, the disabled and the elderly get help with, well, just about anything.

Because that would make them freeloaders.

But conservatives like Mr. Janus aren't. 

Got it?

In the words of Mr. Janus' lawyer, “AFSCME takes political positions that he doesn't support and advocates for more spending and higher taxes.”

I would like to invite Mr. Janus to work in the private sector, where after airing his complaint he would be told that thanks to the miracle of At Will employment, he was free to leave. 

Of course, Mr. Janus would never leave his public-sector job because that would mean giving up his union-negotiated salary, union-negotiated benefits and that oh-so-sweet union-negotiated pension.

Yes, Mr. Janus wants his cake and a big, giant fork.

And to be honest, so do I.

I can only dream of not paying taxes to the circus headed by Donald Trump and what I call Republicants because they stand for nothing I believe in and everything I don't. But if I want to enjoy the benefits of living in America, taxes must be paid.

Of course, this is much, much bigger than Mr. Janus and his wallet-busting union dues. It's about defunding unions and consequently, Democrats. It's about the tragically mis-labeled Right to Work statute.

Because in the addled logic of right-wingers like Mr. Janus, Democrats and unions are the enemy. Even as they provide a secure and comfortable living for him.

One party rule is clearly the best path forward because even as Mr. Janus rails against the effects of prolonged one-party rule in Illinois, Republicans controlling everything forever would somehow be different.

This because businessmen would be running things.

Perhaps you know how great things were the last time wealthy businessmen were in control. The salad days of the late nineteenth-century. The Industrial Revolution.

Employment was so abundant men worked six days a week, for ten, eleven and twelve hours a day. And not just men. No sir. Those free-thinking, egalitarian businessmen opened up their factories to everyone. Even kids.

And thanks to their generous wages, upward mobility was never more prevalent. Frugal, industrious folk could save enough cash to have stew—with meat—once a week. Or dream of a visit to a cobbler and a new pair of shoes. Or buy a coffin for ma when she died during childbirth.

Yes, life was grand.

Then those goddamn Democrats and their confounded unions screwed everything up.

Thanks to their unswerving dedication to make life better for everyone (i.e. even people who didn't possess millions of dollars), people could not work seventy hours a week and still have a shot at living quarters that included light, fresh air, indoor plumbing and electricity.

They could even afford to see doctors before they died at forty-five of black lung or tuberculosis or dysentery.

But as the best and the brightest conservative minds have pointed out, this sucked.

It sucked because unlike you and me, the folks organizing labor and effectively fighting the offal in the executive wing for a fair share of corporate profits needed money to live. This is where the heresy of union dues enters the picture.

And if that weren't bad enough, some wise-ass got the idea for an urban sewage system. And another for consumer protections. And yet another for an agency that would promote public health.

And boom! We had taxes.

You have to agree this was pointless, wasteful stuff.

Through the widespread implementation of Right to Work statutes, we can—at long last—cede control to Republicans and their healthy, inclusive, we're-all-in-this-together agenda.

Anger is a very unhealthy state of being. It's what makes us cut off our nose to spite our face. It's what makes bloggers post inarticulate rants—like I did last Thursday. When we're angry our thinking is muddled. Our actions lamentable.

Do we really want to destroy unions? Do we really want to remove the checks-and-balances a two party system provides? Do we really want to hand over one-hundred percent of everything to Republicans and wealthy businessmen?

Are we really so naive?

So many things in the United States of America could be better. Our leadership. Our government. Ourselves. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't the answer.

We don't burn down our houses when we discover an insect infestation. We call an exterminator. And despite my howling indignation about so many facets of twenty-first century America, I don't generally advocate for revolution.

Yeah, blowing stuff up and smashing windows is lots of fun. And who doesn't enjoy a roaring fire now and then? But in the end it mostly wastes time and energy. And the clean-up is a bitch.

Mr. Janus, the vast majority of taxes go to the public good, except in places like Illinois where the *ahem* pension obligation threatens the economic well-being of the entire state and demands an inordinate share of tax revenue. 

Whining about higher taxes and political positions as your employer slavishly seeks to honor its pension commitment to you is questionable at best and off-the-charts hypocrisy at worst. Now would be a good time to mention that Janus was a two-faced Roman god.

Tell you what, Janus. Why don't you file a suit alleging your pension is too generous, and that instead of threatening the entire population with higher taxes and service cuts, your employer should instead increase your union dues and scale back your benefits?

You know, show some of that individual responsibility you Republicans are always crowing about.

Yeah. That's what I thought.

You're Just Minutes Away from Being Business-Friendly!

Inspired by the famous J.F. Kennedy quote (“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”) and Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner's new favorite thing, I have spent considerable time wondering how you and I can become more business-friendly.

A bit of disposable income would seem to be the obvious answer, but then our employer's CEO would starve to death.

So that's out.

Undeterred, I have endeavored mightily to create four paths employees can take to ensure their employer remains healthy and wealthy, while simultaneously keeping the executive suite corpse-free.

1. Lease your office space. This would be a revenue torrent if every working American agreed to rent their desk, chair, cubicle, workstation and office equipment from their employer.

Imagine our corporations and chief executive officers, gloriously lifted into the trillion-dollarsphere! 

Huzzah!

This is just a missed opportunity. Bleeping golden as a former Illinois governor would have said.

2. Pay to work. Traditionally, Americans have expected to be paid for their labor. This needs to stop. Have you ever considered what your employer's bottom line would look like if you paid for your employment?

Would there even be enough zeros in the mathematical spectrum to measure the annual windfall?

Again, this is a missed opportunity that demands a feasibility study. Or an urgent inter-office memo.

Either one works.

3. Volunteer. You've always suspected you were a non-profit organization. Here's your chance to make that a reality.

Like the previous suggestions, this might provoke concerns about your survival, but that's just being selfish. We're talking the greatest good for the greatest number here. Kind of.

Give till it hurts.

4. Slave labor. The problem with volunteers is they can leave. Slaves can't. And enabled by a stable workforce, business can plan and project. The better to build an indomitable empire upon the backs of a resource they know will be available—regardless of economic conditions.

Nothing says 'continuity' like shackles and leg irons.

Happy Valentine's Day

Like WABC once did in New York, Chicago now has its very own Cousin Brucie. But instead of spinning records, our Cousin Brucie spins facts. 

You see, our Cousin Brucie is governor.

Bruce Rauner is a billionaire vulture cap, er, venture capitalist, who assumed office by outspending and relentlessly trashing his opponent. Like so many of these things, last year's gubernatorial election was a choice between tepid and not-so-hot.

Cousin Brucie was always a little short on details, at least when they didn't concern the atrocities committed by the previous administration. Which is why his Valentine's Day gift to the workers of Illinois is such a surprise.

You see, Governor Rauner wants to give workers—drum roll, please—the right to work. That might sound a little redundant and confusing, buts that's only because it's supposed to.

In that cunning way Republican wordsmiths have, they take an idea, cloak it in a deceptive-sounding name and make it sound like the most patriotic and sensible thing ever. 

The right to work? Gosh. That just makes my chest swell with pride. I want to run to the nearest window, fling it open and shout “I am an American, dammit! And I have the right to work!”

Okay. Deep breath, LPG.

If you aren't aware of it already, Republicans are cold. And where you have cold and water (which Illinois does), you frequently have icebergs. And the sneaky thing about icebergs is that most of their mass is underwater.

So while you're coming in for a closer look, BOOM! The part you couldn't see punches a great big hole in your boat and now it's sinking. I hope you're in compliance with local nautical safety codes, because you're going to need a life jacket.

And let me tell you: the patriotic affirmation offered by Right to Work proponents is one big, freaking iceberg.

It seeks to destroy unions. It seeks to destroy them by eliminating the source of their support, which is M-O-N-E-Y. 

Contrary to just about everything Republicans have done for the past one-hundred years, they will offer workers something for nothing, but only as long as they agree to slit their own throats. Workers can theoretically enjoy union benefits without paying union dues. 

But I say theoretically because guess what happens to a union when no one is paid to represent it?

That's right. It dies. Which is the whole idea.

This is a spectacularly good thing for Republicans and businessmen. And who doesn't want that?

Another benefit of de-funding a union is that you also eliminate an important source of income for the Democratic party. Still another is that when wages in a union-free environment fall, profit margins zoom, further concentrating wealth in the hands of the already well-off.

You don't have to squint very hard to see the outcome.

Do you know what Feudalism is?

Of course, Cousin Brucie isn't admitting any of this. He's sticking to script, and spinning Right to Work as a legitimate plan to strengthen Illinois' economy and boost its regional competitiveness.This despite a complete lack of supportive data. 

It's not union-busting. Honest.

But it's worth noting that at numerous campaign fundraisers last year, Rauner stressed to donors his urgent desire to lower the minimum wage. Not maintain it. Not raise it. Lower it.

The great poet Maya Angelou once said “When people tell you who they are, believe them.”

The governor doesn't want to restore the economy of Illinois. At least not yours. No, he wants to make Illinois “business-friendly”, which is code for an open house free-for-all where profits are high and costs are low and the skies are not cloudy all day.

So. Have you figured out what Feudalism is yet?

I can't wait for Labor Day.

Lions and Tigers and Unions! Oh My!

You have, in the optimistic parlance of the day, reinvented yourself as a bus driver. There is great exposure to risk and liability. Stress. And a wondrous assortment of unusual smells. There are no benefits—unless you count the olfactory stimulation.

Applicants must undergo extensive background checks, as you have regular contact with children, the elderly and the developmentally-disabled. 

It would be a public relations disaster to have a sex offender stopping by the local high school or assisted living facility. Or someone with domestic violence complaints collecting residents at a shelter for battered women.

And who wants that? 

Not you.

So yes, it's tough getting in—like a country club.

Not surprisingly, the help wanted sign out front is permanent. But despite the rigorous entry requirements and the risk, the pay is low. Turnover is high. There is a very peculiar dynamic at work here.

If there is such a thing as a living wage, yours would be on life-support. It is a frequent topic of discussion, or more specifically, grousing, among your co-workers.

While the grizzled types with whom you work enjoy the semi-autonomy of being on the road, they wonder why call-takers, nestled inside cozy cubicles with very little exposure to risk or liability aside from the occasional raised voice, make more money.

It doesn't add up.

But neither does your co-worker's refusal to consider the union option—until you realize the majority of them are pick-up-truck-driving, climate-change-denying, dyed-in-the-wool Republicans.

And if unions aren't the first step to a socialist hell, they are mafia-run crooks. Just ask a teacher. Or a cop. Or LeBron James. They'll tell you.

In the eyes of your co-workers, it is better to accept the status quo. Or continue to grouse. Either is preferable to incipient socialism. You wonder if they recognize the similarity between their circumstances and the income disparity ravaging the country.

You doubt it.

The important thing is you/we/they don't unionize. That would be destructive. And socialist. Just ask Rush Limbaugh. Or Fox News. Or the boss. They'll tell you. 

You attempt to impart the idea there is no prison so confining as closed-mindedness. But despite your co-worker's demonstrated ability to receive information on evolving traffic conditions over the company-provided radio, this falls on deaf ears.

Owing to the nature of the position, it appears that for the time being you have little choice but to take this sitting down.

Ten-four.

Irony Strikes

It’s a great time to be a 'have' in America. Even better than normal, I mean.

Despite budget-cuts and a nation-wide dollar shortage, the gold coins falling into their pile continue to accumulate. Meanwhile, those in the pile of the have-nots continue to disappear. It's a fact that America’s income disparity now resembles that of a third-world nation.

Remarkably, this dynamic also applies to union membership, where lavish pensions and recession-defying raises are the norm for haves, while the nots watch a bitter stream of concessions and pay-cuts erode what were once self-sustaining livelihoods.

What does it mean when even our unions—once bastions of hope for America’s labor against the absolute power of corporate ownership—have succumbed to this exclusionary and destructive trend?

I’m confused how this is supposed to revitalize our much-talked about manufacturing base. About how this is supposed to draw the best and the brightest and reverse the brain drain I hear so many industries complaining about.

I’m concerned because I know what serfs are. And what feudalism is. And the degree to which the twentieth-century is increasingly appearing as an anomaly and not a societal model. This resonates with me because I’ve lived it.

As a former sales and service consultant for one of the baby bells spun-off in the wake of the anti-trust litigation brought against AT&T, I watched in shock and horror as my union rolled over for the labor-hating victor of a hostile takeover:

Can we fluff your pillow for you, Mr. Nacchio? Freshen your drink? Exactly how far would you like us to bend over, Mr. Nacchio?

There was no fight. There were no negotiations. To my knowledge, not a single attempt was made to bash in Joseph P. Nacchio’s head with a brick. (Which isn’t to infer that I endorse workplace violence.)

Our jobs were radically reconfigured to ensure failure.

I can confirm with absolute certainty that sales goals require sales calls. While statistically conceivable, calls from angry customers who have taken a third day off of work for a technician that never shows do not generate much in the way of commission.

But they do make it very easy to dismiss a floor full of sales reps for non-performance.

So yes. I’m jealous of any union that not only remains functional, but powerful.

And that jealousy turns to something much warmer when it becomes apparent that the only unions remaining powerful are those representing the well-off. I mean, do Kobe Bryant and Albert Pujols really need union-backed protection?

The answer is no. Or rather, hell no.

Beyond the finger-pointing and the politicking and the nostalgia, the fact remains that America was strongest when its middle-class was largest. And in a consumer-based economy, why don’t you want the most money in the pockets of the most people?

Seems like a no-brainer. A win-win.

But what the hell do I know?

Vicki Johnson

Two blogs in one day after one in all of February. Imagine. So it goes when the fire of outrage burns brightly.

It was confirmed today that Republicans in the Wisconsin state legislature unearthed an obscure parliamentary procedure Wednesday night, allowing them to ratify a bill stripping public-sector unions of their right to collective bargaining despite the continued absence of Democrats.

This is just the first domino to fall in what will likely be a very long chain.

I hope those who voted for Scott Walker last November recall their reasoning and their faith when they find themselves at the mercy of their employer in ways they absolutely cannot imagine today.

****

Vicki Johnson is a woman in her mid-forties. She is the manager of a feed mill in central Wisconsin, and is someone I have never met. For all I know, she is a wonderful woman. A caring mother. A devoted daughter. A best friend.

But she is also dangerously naïve. Amazingly short-sighted. And just a little misinformed. And she (presumably) votes.

Her thoughts fascinate me because they are a glimpse into the middle-class Republican mind; the mind responsible for installing people like Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, Mitch Daniels, John Kasich and Chris Christie into public office.

If you’re not fortunate-enough to live in the United States circa 2011, Walker, Snyder, Daniels, Kasich and Christie are governors waging war on those with the temerity to belong to public-sector unions, with the eventual goal of establishing a Republican (i.e. corporate) monopoly on governance in the United States.

Not that small government adherents like Johnson see the contradiction.

She likens the behavior of the fourteen Wisconsin state representatives who left the state capitol to prevent passage of Walker’s kill-collective-bargaining-or-else bill to “little children throwing a tantrum, and they should be spanked.”

(I can't imagine what she makes of the Boston Tea Party.)

I have a persistent and nagging suspicion that were the Wisconsin Fourteen Republican, she’d be calling them “wile” and “savvy”, saying “they’re just freedom-loving people standing up for what they believe in.”

When asked about unions, Johnson paused her Shirley Temple DVD and answered thusly:

“Up here, if you’re an honest, hard-working person, you take your lumps. I don’t believe in unions. They were good when they started. But now, the union protects the lazy man. I really think these days an honest, hard-working man doesn’t need protection.”

I can't help but feel like the deli customer in When Harry Met Sally, who after watching Meg Ryan seemingly experience an orgasm after biting into a sandwich, tells the waitress "I'll have what she's having."

For those of us who don't live in a Norman Rockwell painting, being honest and hard-working means that with a dollar, we can buy a weekday edition of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (which incidentally, costs one-dollar).

It would undoubtedly come as a shock to Ms. Johnson, but there are millions of honest and hard-working people who are fending off financial ruin and persistent unemployment because our elected representation (which, incidentally, is non-union) allowed Wall Street (which is also non-union) to gamble with our economy and our futures without fear of retribution or punishment or accountability.

Being ‘good’ employees or ‘bad’ employees had nothing to do with it. Being not rich and not powerful did.

Johnson’s is the conservative mind at work. It’s this or it’s that. It is or it isn’t. It’s up or it’s down. In the words of the execrable George W. Bush, “You’re either with us or you’re against us.” There are no shades of grey.

It’s easy, quick, black and white thinking. Which incidentally, is characteristic of the adolescent brain.

Draw your own conclusions.

She is the triumph of conservative marketing; intoxicated by the nostalgia of traditional values even as those around her are sacrificed at the altar of executive compensation and insatiable corporate and conservative greed.

Ignorance is clearly bliss.

Our Serfin' Safari

From Morocco to Bahrain, citizens are demanding democracies in which everyone has an equal voice, and are overthrowing the authoritarian dictators who stand in their way.

In the United States, we are electing them.

One example comes from Wisconsin, where angry voters engorged by Republican fear-mongering elected Scott Walker as governor last fall.

Walker is a Reagan-worshipping conservative determined to enact the small government his corporate sponsors demand by doing things like “balancing the budget”. But balancing the budget is a Trojan Horse.

Balancing the budget is code for slashing programs that assist the poor and the elderly.

Balancing the budget is code for unplugging the middle class.

Balancing the budget is code for big, giant business unfettered by regulation or oversight.

Balancing the budget is code for fuck you.

But there are obstacles. Namely, Democrats and the people who fund them. Oh, and that irksome concept of democracy.

Democrats receive a majority of their campaign financing from unions. And it is clear to conservatives that in order to silence Democrats, unions must be crushed.

Big business has sought—and mostly succeeded—in eroding private sector union membership, either by relocating jobs to areas of the country where unions hold no sway or by exporting them.

Government doesn’t have that option.

Public sector unions must be snuffed out via big, ugly confrontations. It’s a risk conservatives are willing to take, because when coupled with the Supreme Court’s landmark decision on Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the elimination of unions paves the way for Republicans to run—for all intent and purposes— unopposed.

Eliminate a Democrat’s funding and you effectively eliminate the Democrat. And who doesn’t think that’s a great idea?

If you believe that history began with the Kennedy presidency or the civil rights movement, you need to know there was a time when the middle class didn’t exist. A time when workers didn’t have eight-hour days and weekends off, much less paid vacations, health insurance and maternity leave.

The world was a handful of rich folk, with nearly everyone else an indentured servant to a feudal lord. People (or serfs) were purposely kept ignorant and in fear of an angry, judgmental god lest they saw things for what they really were.

The world somehow managed to progress to the point where even people who didn't wear crowns could learn to read or own land. And to conservatives, this is where it all went to hell. This is where the idea of democracy flowered.

People with absolute power didn’t give it up without a fight. Installing democracy demanded fierce, bloody and prolonged fighting where people died. With extraordinarily rare exceptions, kings and queens didn’t just give it to us. Those bent on democracy took it.

This was also the cost of providing workers with their current quality of life.

In the formation of unions, lives were lost. More were ruined. Businessmen didn’t recognize them because it was the right thing to do. They recognized them when they had no other choice. It was the unions, or sometimes the mere threat of them, that drove business owners to relent and give workers a fair share of the pie.

But as the U.S. curdles into a society consisting of either somnambulant, ossified sheep or snarling, amoral jackals, this is changing. The entitlement conservatives love to whine about when addressing social programs and unions has crept into their vocabulary as well.

In short, they feel that you have too much of everything. That you’re stealing from them. And that must stop. And we, by voting for Republicans like Scott Walker, inexplicably agree.

While not lemmings hurtling ourselves off the cliff in a literal sense, we absolutely, positively are in the figurative one. Is there a more pathetic sight in America than a nurse and a department manager screaming at each other while the wealthiest of us get tax breaks and enjoy actual congressional representation?

Like the party that supposedly represents us, the middle class are dupes for the oldest political ploy in the book: divide and conquer.

The enemy isn’t the sheet metal worker across the street, or the teacher across town. The enemy are those who run Wall Street, oil companies, corporate banks and big pharma, and the naked, bankrupt shills who spread their ass cheeks for them in exchange for campaign funding.

Do we know the difference?

I don’t hate the wealthy. Or the powerful. Hell, I believe some of them should even be allowed to live.

Where I become anti-social is with the idea of absolute rule. That the United States become a corporate oligarchy, serving only the interests of its richest and most-powerful clients. A country by, for and of the wealthy.

It is said a people have the government they deserve. And as a distracted, cynical citizenry who are too busy to pay attention to politics, we certainly have that.

Now that we know the conservative agenda and their ruthlessness and their relentlessness, are we still too busy to pay attention?

For Labor Day

For the balance of human history, workers were employed at the whim of their employer. There were no rules governing working conditions or compensation or time off. The terms were whatever suited the employer, when it suited the employer.

And workers suffered accordingly.

With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the imbalance only worsened. For the employer, mechanization meant greater output and greater profits with lower production costs.

For the employee, it meant exhausting days under gruesome conditions. Children were enlisted to feed industry’s insatiable appetite. Six-day work weeks with ten-hour days were typical. At its worst, seven-day work weeks full of fourteen-hour days devoured the lives of men, women and children alike.

Reform eventually began with children, and with the rise to power of the union soon extended to adults. Workers at last had a say in the conditions and terms of their employment, putting an end to the exploitation enjoyed by the nation’s employers.

And this was a good thing.

The wealthy were loathe to admit it, but the rise of the union (and with it the middle-class) only enriched them, as it meant more people with more disposable income. It was a far cry from the Marxist redistribution of wealth America’s captains of industry had feared. But the equilibrium couldn’t last. A handful of unions began to amass enormous power.

The United Auto Workers union (UAW) was the most-powerful.

America’s auto manufacturers had a near-monopoly on what was easily the world’s biggest market. And General Motors controlled fifty-percent of that market. The other half was essentially divided between Ford and Chrysler, with a handful of smaller automakers and imports fighting for whatever remained.

And the UAW controlled one-hundred percent of their labor.

The UAW was phenomenally-successful at extracting generous terms for its membership. Even as domestic automakers began to lose market-share, UAW members continued to receive lavish contracts, with salaries and benefits disproportionate to their skill and education levels. This was the fruit of a corpulent corporate culture that would soon be receiving a lap band.

As America’s industrial might migrated overseas, its manufacturing-based economy was replaced by a service-oriented one. These were typically lower-paying jobs in offices, not factories. They were also rarely unionized. The convergence of increasing consumer unhappiness with domestic automobiles and an increasingly white collar workforce changed the perception of unions.

Unions were held-up as shelters for wildly-overcompensated, lazy and incompetent workers. The workers at Chicago’s McCormick Place were exposed to public derision for the terms of their union contracts; contracts which drove and rewarded unproductive behavior.

Then-president Ronald Reagan was widely-praised when he smashed the air traffic controller’s union. Unions had become overripe fruit. The social pendulum had reached the end of its labor-friendly swing, and was now beginning a move in the opposite direction.

As the seventies became the eighties and the eighties became the nineties, union membership continued to fall. Where they still existed, unions were mere shadows of their former selves. Members routinely made concessions in return for having a job to report to.

Mercury Marine (an outboard motor manufacturer in Fond du Lac, WI.) recently demanded that union members either accept a seven-year wage-freeze and a thirty-percent wage-cut for laid-off workers (called back to work), or face losing their jobs when the company opened a proposed non-union plant in Stillwater, OK.

Additional concessions would reduce vacation time and affect both health care and pension benefits.

Faced with having a job versus not having a job, workers voted Friday and reluctantly accepted the company’s offer.

The gulf between America’s richest and poorest continues to widen. An ever-increasing percentage of America's wealth is held in fewer and fewer hands as income inequity continues to soar. CEOs make hundreds (hundreds!) of times what their employees do.

Yet America’s workers are told they must concede to remain competitive in the new global marketplace. Curious that executive compensation continues to rise amidst all this belt-tightening and globalization, isn’t it?

On the one-way street that employment has become, it is clear that unions are once again the best path towards restoring two-way traffic. In a country with an economy which is two-thirds consumer-driven, even the short-sighted and the self-serving that pass for corporate leadership need to acknowledge the importance of a viable middle-class.

And that begins with viable unions.

It's time to give the pendulum a shove in a new direction.