Fair Share and Democracy
May 2018

In a time of increasing inequality, when workers have a decreasing say in our economy, the U. S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 is about to undo Vermont law and destroy our unions.
Either we hang together or surely we will hang separately, was Benjamin Franklin’s observation in our battle against George III; without solidarity, our American Revolution would have failed. Likewise, the only defense workers have against the power of corporations is to act together. The child in the coal mine, the garment worker in the sweat shop and the laborer on the factory floor learned that standing alone was futile; only through unity are employee rights secured. Now, however, the soul of labor, collective bargaining, earned in struggle and blood, faces extinction.
On April 25, 2013, I reported S.14, the agency fee bill, on the floor of the Vermont House. What subsequently became Act.37 simply states that any nonunion member of a public bargaining unit will pay a share of the cost for services rendered by the union on behalf of all workers, dues-paying member or not. An elected union is mandated by law to expend resources to represent all employees, regardless of affiliation, in collective bargaining, grievance procedures and other work related matters. No one is entitled to a free ride; the cost for such representation should be borne by all. Everyone is simply asked to pay a fair share for services delivered. Opponents argue, incorrectly, that in violation of the First Amendment, workers are being forced to join a union.
In our democratic form of governance, although we express various social and political opinions, we work together in accepting actions by our elected officials. And, assuming that each of us is equally represented, we contribute a fair share of financial support for our common good. Otherwise, without the unity that Franklin spoke of, we will have anarchy, which is what will happen when the court in the Janus ruling overthrows agency fee legislation. Vermont’s Act.37 will be discarded, labor will be further splintered, workers will lose their seat at the table with management, economic inequality will escalate and our democracy will suffer.
Back in 2013, when I asked a conservative colleague and close friend about the pending agency fee bill, he surprised me by saying he was going to vote for it. “Why?” I asked. “Because it’s fair,” he responded.
Fairness is what democracy is about.

Abraham Lincoln and American Labor
February 2018

As we honor the birth of our first Republican President ten score and nine years ago, and his struggle to keep us united, we wonder what his reaction would be to today’s greatest threat to our union, a divisive monetary gap between those who create our wealth (labor) and those who seize the profits (capital).
“And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that [all] such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them,” according to him in 1847.
Human progress from the beginning is a story of work: Hunter-gatherers in nomadic life foraging for survival, and then homesteaders raising livestock and working the soil. Families engaged in honest toil, banding together, creating tools, goods and services. With diversification came the need for a system of economic exchange and the origins of capital which, Lincoln concedes in 1861, is worthy of some protections.
“But it has so happened in all ages of the world,” he says, “that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.”
And In 1838, he warns of inevitable threats from ambitious men who would use “the passions of the people as opposed to their judgement,” to undermine our democratic form of government.
Corporate billionaires, Lincoln’s ‘ambitious men’ of today, use  wealth, power, and control of government not to seek a ‘large proportion of the fruits;’  but to take it all. They siphon the toil of others into their profit margin games of hedge funds, economic gimmicks and stock manipulation. Meanwhile, they dole out to workers only what is necessary to keep them producing as long as they are needed. Freedom to move among jobs, protection from abuses, livable wages, on-job safety, workers rights, collective action, and all the requirements for a decent living are discarded.
It is difficult to imagine anyone who would be more offended than Abraham Lincoln by today’s Republican stance for unsafe, underpaid, voiceless, and forced labor. The only way for all of us to enjoy the fruits of our work, our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the preservation of our democracy, according to Lincoln, is through “general intelligence, sound morality and … a reverence for the constitution and laws.”