The corruptive force of power

Know why kids no longer work in our factories for pennies a day? In no small part because of labor unions and the strikes they used to engage in. Setting aside for the moment all the misleading rhetoric, the polarization of the debate, and the politicization of our public schools . . . Am I the only one to notice that the DPS teachers' strike (illegal or not) actually worked? Over the last two decades, our Republican friends in the Legislature have been systematically creating an imbalance of power. Progressive politics of the 60s and 70s worked to equalize (with widely varying degrees of success) people, corporations and our government. The 60s and 70s led to boom times in the 80s and 90s. Public policies of empowerment, activism and involvement led to the innovation and technological advances of that period. The backward politics of the 90s and 2000s have resulted in a wholesale shift toward concentrating power with the wealthy, with corporations, and with the government. During that period, mergers and acquisitions, free trade acts, and globalization of our economy have enriched the wealthy and powerful beyond their wildest dreams. At the same time, these shifts have resulted in taking power away from the people on whose backs this country was built and is maintained. We see it everywhere. Tort reform eliminated the balance between injured victims of corporate America, and the corporations that profit from ignoring the consequences of those injuries. The Patriot Act took away the right to privacy and made people's lives an open book for the government to look and listen in on. Deregulation of the credit card and credit reporting industries permitted corporations to increase profits in the four digit percentages while eliminating the individual's ability to effectively combat identify theft. Revising of bankruptcy laws has empowered banks to engage in predatory lending, effectively mortgaging trillions of dollars of homesteads with artificially inflated collateral to back up the loans. Free trade throughout the hemisphere allowed cheap sweatshop labor in developing countries to replace the manufacturing base and jobs that built our economy for a century. I could go on and on, but I won't, except of course to note that anti-strike laws have gutted workers' ability to bargain effectively with management. Now, management simply offers take-it-or-leave it deals knowing that they can afford to wait out their workers. Their workers, however, can't afford to wait out management. No matter how you slice it up, a balance of power leads to equity. When you deal with someone you consider an equal, someone who can bite you just as hard as you can bite them, you've got to be polite, honest, fair, and most of all, careful to be sure you don't get outsmarted. Imbalances of power result in inequity. When dealing with an inferior, it's no trouble to simply stomp on his toes, and then issue him an invoice for the privilege of having you do it. I think it's time we get some balance back into our society. It's more than a desire -- we need to get some balance back. I hate strikes and the short-term chaos they cause. At the same time, I understand the long-term societal benefits that balancing these interests brings us. I can't stand our litigation culture even though I'm a lawyer. At the same time, it's been proven that lawsuits and the accountability they create significantly improve the safety of the products we buy, the quality of medical care, all the while stopping corporations from reducing human lives to accounting calculations. I despise governmental regulation of the free market, but at the same time I can see the devastation visited upon families when banks hand out money to people who obviously aren't going to be able to pay back the principal, much less with interest tacked on. At the end of the day, it's the actions of the DPS's Board and unions that demonstrate what works and what doesn't. When strikes are allowed, management comes to the table with a very different attitude than when strikes are illegal. If we really want to help our kids and prepare them for the future, it's time to work on getting balance back into our society, not on blaming teachers for sticking up for themselves. When you hear the Republican rhetoric, lambasting teachers for engaging in an illegal strike, don't miss what it is they are really complaining about. They are really against restoring balance between labor and management. They are really against bargaining equitably. What they really prefer is to entrench power in management, and they take offense at any attempt to equalize management's dictatorial control with a healthy dose of the power of the people. Like it or not, we are all in this together. I hope our Republican friends in the legislature, sometime in the foreseeable future, begin acting like it.