Repression of public workers

With all the noise about what has happened in Wisconsin where the legislature passed and the governor signed a law that takes away some of the bargaining rights of some of the state workers and forces them to contribute more to their pension and health benefits, I wanted to update you all on another government that is taking a much harder line on the issue.

This government does not allow public workers to unionize. The workers cannot bargain over their salary levels. The workers cannot bargain over benefit levels or about pension of health care contributions. The government has taken to making arbitrary moves without even consulting the workers. Just recently, this government decided to freeze all wages so that no employee would get a raise in 2011 or 2011 no matter what had previously been promised to those employees and no matter what the rate of inflation turns out to be during those two years. This is much harsher than Scott Walker's Wisconsin attacks. Walker left the unions in place to negotiate wages. He just took benefits and pensions away from them. Walker did not freeze wages. Walker did not cut any workers.

So, I am sure you all know the government that I am talking about. It is the federal government of the USA headed by none other than Obama. Obama used his powers to freeze all wages for government employees. Did anyone hear a peep out of organized labor when he did that? Of course not. Obama did nothing to let federal employees have any collective bargaining rights. Did anyone hear a peep from labor about that? Of course not.