Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by a margin of nearly two to one: 60 percent to 33 percent. While a slim majority of Republicans favored taking away some bargaining rights, they were outnumbered by large majorities of Democrats and independents who said they opposed weakening them.
Those surveyed said they opposed, 56 percent to 37 percent, cutting the pay or benefits of public employees to reduce deficits, breaking down along similar party lines. A majority of respondents who have no union members living in their households opposed both cuts in pay or benefits and taking away the collective bargaining rights of public employees.
Governors in both parties have been making the case that public workers are either overpaid or have overly generous health and pension benefits. But 61 percent of those polled — including just over half of Republicans — said they thought the salaries and benefits of most public employees were either “about right” or “too low” for the work they do.
When it came to one of the most debated, and expensive, benefits that many government workers enjoy but private sector workers do not — the ability to retire early, and begin collecting pension checks — Americans were closely divided. Forty-nine percent said police officers and firefighters should be able to retire and begin receiving pension checks even if they are in their 40s or 50s; 44 percent said they should have to be older.
There was a similar divide on whether teachers should be able to retire and draw pensions before they are 65.
The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Feb. 24-27 with 984 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all adults. Of those surveyed, 20 percent said there was a union member in their household, and 25 percent said there was a public employee in their household.
Republicans, particularly Scott Walker, are in real trouble here. People realize that if public unions are destroyed and unions in general are wiped out, all workers' rights are vulnerable. Most of all, they realize that Republicans are doing everything they can to get Americans fighting over scraps while corporate fat cats take the lion's share of profits. When ExxonMobil is making the kind of quarterly profits that could easily close entire biennial state budget gaps, that has people wondering.
They remember that the Bush tax cuts have been in place for years now, and unemployment is up and wages are stagnant if not falling. They're wondering where the payoff is. We cut taxes on the ultra-rich. Their incomes quadrupled adjusted for inflation from 1993 to 2007. The top 400 income earners in the country made $85 billion in 2007...the same as the bottom 50% of American workers combined.
And yet we're supposed to believe that unions are ruining the country. We're not buying it. We're being asked to sacrifice our lives to our feudal corporate masters, and in return we get asked to make more sacrifices. We're told that people like you and me have to take cuts. We're told that my generation and younger have to realize there will be no Social Security or Medicare when we're allowed to retire in our 70's...maybe then if at all...and told to take wage and health care benefit cuts now.
We work for companies that know they can do anything they want because of "right-to-work" laws, that we can be fired for any reason that isn't expressly discriminatory...and even then the burden of proof is on us. We're told that we have to give up overtime pay for comp time in order to "help" business owners. We're already serfs.
At least somebody is finally standing up, and by standing up I mean for the right ideals and against the right people, not idiotic carping over "the size of government".
Americans are figuring this out.
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