Mark Shields on Unions

Inside Washington on Public Broadcasting hosted a panel discussion on various issues one of which centered around the protests in Wisconsin over the Governor's attempt to limit collective bargaining rights for state employees.

Mark Shields a noted commentator and columnist was uncharacteristically passionate about the role of unions in the United States.

Here is the transcript in part:

MR. SHIELDS: Let’s be very blunt. The United States workers would never have had a five-day work week, an eight-hour work day. We would never have had minimum wage laws, child labor laws, health and pension benefits, without the skill, the passion, the commitment, and the clout of organized labor. Owners and employers just didn’t voluntarily wake up one morning and say, let’s be nice to the workers. So unions made a difference in America’s landscape. Do they make a difference every day? You better believe it.

At the same time, the same people, my good friend Evan, whom I respect enormously, endorses and embraces private sector unions, which now have fallen in strength to the point where they represent one out of 12 workers. They’re defanged. They’re basically powerless, okay? When they represented 35 percent of workers, a generation ago, not Evan, but many on the right said, they were a threat to American democracy. They’re a threat to the American way of life. Now public employees have the same right to collective bargain that any employee does. And it’s that simple. How does a school teacher, a lone school teacher negotiate with the city of New York or the city of Milwaukee. You’ve got to pool your resources to do that.

…..

MR. SHIELDS: Here’s the rub. Yes. This is ground zero in the fight for collective bargaining for unions. But here’s the rub. Between 1989 and 2009, the average hourly wage – the median hourly wage for the American male fell by 2 percent – fell by 2 percent. All of the concentration was in the top 1 percent, 56 percent of all the economic growth was in the top 1 percent. Thirty six percent was in the top one-tenth of 1 percent. The bottom 90 percent got 16 percent. That’s why this tension exists right now.

People in Wisconsin have had their own lives decimated and threatened and they bought into, quite frankly, the specious argument that the enemy is not the economic system that’s rigged against them with a tax system that’s exploitative. Somehow it’s a social worker [who wants to protect her rights to collective bargaining.]