http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-lowitz-20100511,0,1998217.storyFar from transforming certain employees into taxpayer-funded aristocrats, unions today seek to preserve fairness for workers and a semblance of the American middle class.
Suzan Lowitz
May 11, 2010 | 9:43 a.m
Robert "Mickey" Kaus, author of the May 3 Times Op-Ed article "America's lead weight, should meet director James Cameron, who famously blamed the high cost of movies on the film industry unions. This contention was false then, and it's false now.
I would like to invite Kaus to attend a meeting of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. He would see that the conditions of union members in all industries are far from the lives of an "aristocrat at taxpayer expense." We who belong to unions simply attempt to maintain something like an American middle-class lifestyle, with some assurance of a modest pension to supplement Social Security, which may or may not exist several years from now. We hope for sufficient healthcare to assure that we don't die as a result of our hard work. And we try to hold on to some of the benefits put in place to assure that we aren't exploited by employers who, if not for some regulations, would work us into the ground without fair compensation and would fail to maintain safe working conditions.
How can Kaus write this on the heels of the worst mining disaster in decades?
Kaus cites Detroit automakers and Los Angeles public schools as examples of institutions whose decline has been hastened by unions. The Los Angeles Unified School District suffers from overcrowding and a lack of funds, a problem endemic to our school system since I was a student in the 1960s and '70s. Teacher pay is hardly generous and, some would argue, is insufficient to keep excellent instructors in our schools. As for Detroit, volumes have been written on the causes of the automakers' financial failures. General Motors' have been attributed to its financing arm as well as the disproportionate salaries and bonuses of its executives.
FULL story at link.