Apparently this is the philosophy behind the right in the US today. Housing market collapse? Unemployment skyrocketing? Impose "austerity" measures on working people while enshrining historically low tax rates on the wealthy. State facing a budget crisis? Go after the last remaining veneer of the once vaunted "middle class", the public sector unions. None of us shall be truly prosperous until (almost) all of us are earning poverty wages and living without benefits.
I work in a public library. Libraries in Illinois are under heavy attack, along with most other municipal, city, state and federal agencies.
In Schaumburg, a Cook county suburb, a candidate for trustee has proposed that the library slash it's workforce and use instead "volunteers"
Hetzer claims that replacing part-time trained staff with volunteers would save the library $1.5 million to $1.75 million in salaries and benefits. Hetzer knows our total personnel budget including benefits is $6 million. To effect these savings we would need to replace at least a quarter — 1 out of every 4 — of our trained staff with volunteers.
Volunteers would need extensive training with no assurance that the added costs associated with their training and supervision would result in any cost savings. And what does the staff do when the volunteer fails to show up?
Hetzer states the library is not there to provide employment; it’s there to provide service to the taxpayers.
Does Mr. Hetzer understand that quality service does not happen without extensive training and dedication? This service that library patrons expect can only be delivered by a well-trained and professional staff.
Slash workforce, rely on library "volunteers"
In Florida, there is an even more dire proposal:
Over 7,000 students in Miami-Dade County Public Schools are enrolled in virtual classrooms, or e-learning labs. Core subjects are taken on computers, and instead of a teacher, there is a “facilitator” in the room who makes sure the students are actually doing their work. The facilitator also gives tech help.
Replace teachers with computers & partly trained "Facilitators"
The attack is clear; the enemy is obvious. Having successfully destroyed the manufacturing base and (unionized) workforce, the ruling class seeks now to permanently create a desperate, impoverished underclass; strip away the last vestiges of social justice and security, place every pension under the thumb of Wall Street and set working people against each other in an endless competition, a true race to the bottom. "Volunteers", "Facilitators", and other low paid or no paid workers will be used to wedge working people one against the other, and create an even larger pool of desperate, unemployed/underemployed workers; competing against each other (and workers in developing countries) for the same low wage-no benefit jobs. Meanwhile, the "public spaces" - schools, libraries, social service agencies - will be gutted. Parks and recreation? Mental health facilities for low income citizens? Services for the disabled? They will be tossed on the heap - the "LIHEAP" of our society Obama propses LIHEAP cuts
Here in the suburbs of Illinois, we need to stand with the workers of Wisconsin and Ohio as they fight back against the vicious attacks. In the spirit of Haymarket, we need to remember these words:
"A time will come, when from our coffins
"Will rise a powerful voice,
"Stronger than that which you want now to choke,
"A thousand times stronger, more striking!"
These were the last words of Spies...
Hangmen, what do you gain from this?
Did you annihilate the spiritual giant?
Did you extinguish the sun?
"August Spies," by David Edelshtat (Oct 10, 1890; translated
from Yiddish by Ori Kiritz) from, Kiritz, Ori. The
Poetics of Anarchy: David Edelshtat's Revolutionary Poetry.
(Frankfurt: Lang, Europaischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1997.)
and unite. Today at 5 p.m. in Daley Plaza, there is an ISO rally in support of the union workers of Wisconsin. If you can't make that, follow the ISO website or others to see how you can help us unite to defeat the forces that would divide and conquer us. http://www.facebook.com/...