Hate to say I told him so..

A "Your Turn" article that I wrote a month or two ago was rejected by the St. Cloud Times editorial board. In it I said that the Right to Work amendment would make it to the ballot in November.  I admit that I was wrong about that, though given what happened last night, I believe it will happen next November.  

What I was correct about was thus: 

...when the union leadership organize angry demonstrations like so many 60s hippie throwbacks or a cadres of Bolsheviks running roughshod in near-riotous mobs, they’re not doing themselves any favors. At the same time, they just don’t seem to have a clue as to just how precarious their position is, or how to fix it.

Up to this point, Minnesota’s teacher and other unions, having had the luxury of being able to act like spoiled teenagers; largely without consequence, have been virtual one-trick ponies in terms of defaulting to in-your-face, thuggish tactics to get demands met.

As Minnesota native Bob Dylan once crooned, “Oh the times, they are a changing. If Minnesota’s unions want to survive, they better damn well change with them.

Randy Krebs, St. Cloud Times editorial guru, stated that my language was too strong.  Sometimes though, the truth hurts.  Those who work in the media, above all, should know this. 

My point was that "in your face" demonstrations no longer work.  The unions instead need to focus on winning the hearts and minds of the electorate, and that would need to take place via a positive public relations campaign (See the Mormon Church, for example).  I am a union member, but I am also far-enough removed from the kool-aid drinking, monolithic union culture to know how the public views unions; and that in this economy, there is precious-little sympathy for their 'plight' and their propensity to throw temper tantrums over health care benefits, tenure issues, and the like, when many non-union counterparts are worrying about simply finding a job in this rotten economy that the democrat party, abetted by those same union footsoldiers, have created. 

The Wisconsin union goons sealed their fate when they laid siege to the Capitol in Madison.  The Wisconsin Democrats sealed their fate when they retreated like 'Brave Sir Robin' across the Illinois border. 

There is, thankfully, a different political course upon which we as a nation are embarking; a course in which reason is gaining an equal footing with, and dare I say, is on a trajectory to soon overtake 'might makes right' thug tactics.

I'm just wondering how long it will take before the unions (and, incidentally, the media that blindly support them) realize this.  Or will they instead find themselves huddled together, and pouting in a feckless corner of irrelevance as the rest of the world moves (and prospers) beyond them.

Regarding One Trick Ponies.

The cover from this month’s edition from my teacher’s union magazine:

Minnesota, like many other states, is about to become a “Right To Work” state, and it is the unions themselves that are unwittingly helping it to happen.

The unions and the democrat party have long had a nearly exclusive, symbiotic relationship. As long as the democrats remained in power, the unions were protected by the democrats; and in turn, the unions were free to act in a blatantly partisan fashion and be an unrepentant, militant arm of the democratic party.

Because of this relationship, the unions never had to worry about public relations. They could afford to be as-in-your-face-nasty-as-they-damned-well-wanted-to-be. Conservative rank-and-file members were summarily ignored. They didn’t care what the average non-union person thought. They didn’t care about winning the hearts and minds of the average American voter. They were quite comfortable in their roles as the enforcement/thug/footsoldier arm of the democratic party. But now that the democrats are largely out of power in Minnesota, as well as in a host of other state legislatures, the unions are suddenly finding themselves in the precarious position of being the toady left on a street corner whose protector has suddenly left the scene.

Now, given that “Right To Work” will no doubt make it on the ballot this November as a Constitutional amendment in Minnesota (and other states) , one would think that the unions’ very survival would depend on improving their public image. One would think that the unions would be running a full court press on public relations, running ads 24/7 extolling their virtues, and the services that their members provide to the public.

But instead, the public unions, including the teacher’s unions (of which I’m a member) have doubled-down on their self-serving, narcissistic thuggery. They haven’t yet awakened to the fact that with Right to Work going to the ballot this fall, it will no longer be the legislators (whom they used to have in their hip pocket) that they’ll have to convince. They’ll have to convince the very voters of Minnesota why they should remain a viable, omnipotent, political force.

Ergo, when the union leadership organize angry demonstrations like so many 60s hippie throwbacks or a cadres of Bolsheviks running roughshod in near-riotous mobs, they’re not doing themselves any favors. At the same time, they just don’t seem to have a clue as to just how precarious their position is, or how to fix it.

Up to this point, Minnesota’s teacher and other unions, having had the luxury of being able to act like spoiled teenagers; largely without consequence, have been virtual one-trick ponies in terms of defaulting to in-your-face, thuggish tactics to get demands met.

But as Minnesota native Bob Dylan once crooned, “Oh the times, they are a changing.”

If Minnesota’s unions want to survive, they better damn well change with them.