How the US hid its revolution behind the Arab
Interior flair did not disappoint Russian lovers of conspiracy. Needless to say, the Arab revolutions were in the hands of the United States. They allowed Washington to hide from the eyes of the world public the nightmare that has been happening in the US for two months already. Almost half of the states: from huge California to tiny Massachusetts - are covered by mass protests. In some places, the number of participants is measured in hundreds of thousands of people. Protesters rush into administrative buildings and block the work of local authorities. Opposition parliamentarians flee to neighboring states. Courts are overwhelmed with lawsuits, authorities arrange feverish balloting in state parliaments to shouts of “shame,” and Democrats and Republicans quickly collect signatures to revoke a record number of deputies from each other.Everything that happens is a kind of revenge of the Republican party to President Obama. Nearly two more years to wait for the next presidential election, therefore Republicans cannot get rid of Obama himself. But in November, the mid-term elections were held in the USA 2010, and since the beginning of 2011, the leadership has changed in many states. Basically, from democratic to republican. It's time to save the country from socialism, at least at the local level, and at the same time to deprive the democrats of one of the main support groups.
The authorities immediately 18 from 50 US states (in almost all the governor’s seat and parliament - under the control of the Republicans) announced that they were going to cut the rights of public sector trade unions to defeat the budget deficit and reduce state debt. In each state, this measure has its own nuances, but the essence is the same everywhere: to deprive state unions of the opportunity to enter into collective labor agreements with the employer, that is, with the government.
To the inhabitants of continental Europe, and especially Russia, such a measure would have seemed a real swinishness and insanity. After all, it is clear to any left-thinking person that restrictions on the collective labor contracts of state employees mean one thing: the financial situation of doctors, teachers and other civil servants will worsen. No budget deficits and government debts are worth it. Cut in the budget that you want, but the salaries of teachers and doctors can not be touched.
A similar view is shared by many US residents. Among them, President Obama himself, who condemned the mass initiative of the states and called it "an attack on the trade unions." Particularly violent protests unfolded in Wisconsin. In a state of five million, the streets of the state capital, Madison, were taken by 100 000 people. And they came out several times, not to mention regular smaller rallies. For several weeks, protesters occupied the state parliament building, not allowing deputies to vote for criminal amendments. Michael Moore himself came to provincial Madison to curse the capitalists there at a rally. The solidarity with the solidarity with the American protesters, respectively, was declared by the legendary Polish trade union Solidarity.
To save Wisconsin from anti-union amendments, opposition Democratic parliamentarians fled to neighboring Illinois, depriving the Republican majority of the necessary quorum. But the cunning Republicans threw out of the bill all the provisions relating to the expenditure of budgetary funds (for which a quorum is required), leaving only anti-union restrictions, and adopted it by a simple majority vote. Thus, the Wisconsin public sector trade unions (except for police and firefighters) were deprived of the opportunity to enter into collective bargaining agreements on any parameters other than wages, the maximum growth of which the Republicans limited to the rate of inflation.
Now the confrontation in Wisconsin has moved from the streets and parliament to the courts. 29 March, the court temporarily suspended the entry into force of the new law due to procedural violations. But to return everything back is unlikely to succeed. In Wisconsin, Republicans control both the parliament and the post of governor, and they firmly intend to push through anti-union restrictions, because they are sure that this will add to their popularity with American voters.
And it really adds. Americans are not Europeans. Thousands go to a trade union rally, and millions calculate how much they have to pay taxes on the maintenance of these state employees and their trade unions. Judging by opinion polls, the majority of Americans believe that the authorities should solve budgetary problems not with the help of new taxes and borrowings, but to cut spending, cut state employees, and even cut the rights of trade unions. And if they didn’t think so, then Republican Scott Walker would hardly get a majority in the Wisconsin gubernatorial elections in 2010. Because in his election campaign, Walker bluntly said that he was going to cut state spending, including by reducing salaries state employees.
Americans understand that high budget expenditures on education and medicine still do not guarantee the high quality of these services. But equalizing conditions of collective labor contracts is a reliable way to reduce the effectiveness of government spending. To prove this, the Republicans of Wisconsin made their banner to the young teacher Megan Sampson. In 2010, she won the title of “Best Young Teacher of the State”, and then came under reduction. The management of the school where Megan worked could not help her valuable employee. The terms of the collective bargaining agreement of the union required that reductions be made at the expense of the youngest workers.
Yes, and the concept of public sector unions does not fit very well with the concept of efficiency. One thing is a private enterprise, where employees, of course, want a bigger salary, but at the same time are afraid of the bankruptcy of their employer. And quite another - state employees, who have no such limitation. Moreover, politicians, on the contrary, are interested in raising their salary once again - this is the best way to get additional votes in the next elections. And the last remain taxpayers who are not represented in this transaction between politicians and state employees, although they finance both.
Several states, such as Texas and North Carolina, banned collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions as early as the 90s. And nothing terrible, no failure in the field of social services happened there. Now a dozen states will be added to them, where the Republicans will be able to push through new restrictions despite the resistance of the Democrats, for whom the trade unionists are the most reliable voter. And so, gradually, state employees' unions, where about 36% are currently employed in this sector, will disappear from the US economy. In the same way, over the past 50 years, the unions of private sector workers have actually become extinct in the USA (membership in 1960 – 2010 has fallen from 32% to 7%). In a developed economy, an employer is interested in a specific, unique employee no less than an employee in an employer, and both of them have no desire to contain any more unions from the trade union.
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