Get Back To Work Damn It.

This week's fury stems from blue collar conservatives who rage against unions and their supposed deleterious effects. Once again Republicans have somehow convinced the working populace that the root of social unrest lies in one of their vested interests.

Nothing drove me more nuts when I worked at public school district and to hear blue collar co-workers bitch and moan about teacher unions. The shear irony of the predicament was so blindingly obvious that none of them seemed to realize why they were only earning 27,000 a year!! The job that the GOP has done on this group is truly a fascinating look into how one can make their worst enemy into a rabid follower. Just as George Bush's support relies on southern-state lower income families, he relies on vulnerable zealots who crave dogma.

Life-long-conservative co-workers would roll their eyes at the mention of a union. Sadly the state that I lived in had no union for public school employees and the effects were noticeable. Teachers in this state are paid some of the worst salaries in the country, bottoming out $25,000 a year. Yet this state's constituents are pleased as punch to stand at pulpits in churches and proclaim that our children are the most important things in the world. Are you seeing the double-standard I'm seeing?

White collar aristocrats seem to pick at the issue too, but have no problem not working on the weekend, a concept championed by unions. Nor do the blue-collar conservatives seem to have trouble accepting overtime pay after 40 hours, another issue pushed by unions. When 5PM rolls around, my mindless co-workers Cheri and Ryan had no qualms about darting home, after all they had worked an 8 hour day, another legal victory won by unions. When Julie called in sick and had to undergo surgery, it was employer-paid health care that got her Republican fat-ass better again, yet another Union victory for the working class. My Aunt was a PE teacher and yet she was an anti-unionist. But she never once seemed to complain about the payraises she got thanks to her district's union.

Now I see the dismantling and discrediting of unions left, right and center. And I wonder where we put our brains in the conundrum. Yes it is true that even blue-collar workers that are Republican seem to get angry when a CEO gets an exit package of 25 Million Dollars, but that anger does not equate to a vitriol that I see when Unions win higher wages for the common worker. Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP, who just got axed walked away with $21,000,000. And this is what they paid to fire her ass!! And we have the horse balls to bite the hands of union organizations. One republican white-collar declared to me that he was sick of unions, like the one at GM, destroying perfectly good companies because of the pension programs they negotiated in the 1970s. To that obnoxious Republican I would say: Didn't GM give their executive staff raises in excess of 15% last year? And you have the gall to lash out at the benefits negotiated to the working class of that company? Now tell me where the "Christian" value of morality lies in that.