Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

I disagree with this assertion that public employees are somehow undeserving of the benefits of unionism because they perform tasks which, in your mind, don't rise to the level of skilled labor. My wife has been a public school educator for seventeen years. To watch her take charge of a roomful of kids and get them to learn and to listen, all while navigating the labyrinthine requirements of high-stakes standardized testing, is something which has to be seen to be believed. I often think that, of the two of us, hers is the far more demanding job. She brings skill and integrity to the job every single day and she does it without the benefit of a union. As a reward for her talent and dedication, she's seen her wages stagnate and her benefits whittled away to the point that if I were to lose my job and we had to put the family on her insurance, our monthly premium would be $1,200 for a plan which would continue to gouge us every time we had an interaction with a medical professional.

I also find it interesting that you segregate police and firefighters out from all other public-sector employees. Why is that? Does someone need to put themselves in harm's way in order to qualify for the benefits of unionism?

The true benefits of unionism extend beyond mere job protection and collective bargaining. Unionism in and of itself creates classes of stable jobs which allow a middle class to exist. It's become all the rage to throw stones at public sector employees who still enjoy some semblance of the kinds of benefits which far more Americans used to. Forty years ago, a third of US employees belonged to unions. Today, six percent of do. The decline in unionized jobs tracks closely with the downward spiral of the American middle class. We are now flirting with levels of income inequality and wealth concentration which haven't existed in this country since the age of Getty and Rockefeller.

So rather than bash on the few folks who still have it relatively good, wouldn't it be more productive to ask why so many Americans have it so much worse than their parents and grandparents ever did?