Yesterday, ThinkProgress noted the huge backlash from Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) “budget repair bill,” which would severely limit collective bargaining and eliminate the right of unions to negotiate pensions, retirement, and benefits. When asked by a reporter what would happen if workers resist, Walker threatened to use the “National Guard” against a possible walkout.
In response to Walker’s intent to misappropriate the deployment of the National Guard in an effort to intimidate state workers, the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers released a statement today, expressing that collective bargaining is “fundamental” to the middle class:
As a publicly owned team we wouldn’t have been able to win the Super Bowl without the support of our fans. … They are the teachers, nurses and child care workers who take care of us and our families. But now in an unprecedented political attack Governor Walker is trying to take away their right to have a voice and bargain at work.
The right to negotiate wages and benefits is a fundamental underpinning of our middle class. When workers join together it serves as a check on corporate power and helps ALL workers by raising community standards. Wisconsin’s long standing tradition of allowing public sector workers to have a voice on the job has worked for the state since the 1930s. It has created greater consistency in the relationship between labor and management and a shared approach to public work
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/15/packers-support-workers/
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