Front Page | International Report | Weingarten rights | Conservatives | In Memoriam & Got an O.U.C.H. | Grievance Roster THE CONSERVATIVES WANT YOU Opinion by Michael G Secrest From time to time someone will call the Union Hall wanting help with some work problem, or seeking advice about how to work within the system to get something done.  When asked where they work, so we can figure which steward to refer them to, they say they don’t want their boss to know that the union is involved.  That’s like saying, ok, I’ll date you but I don’t want to go anywhere my friends might see you.  Come on, we’re prettier than that!  The conservatives are just trying to paint us ugly. The economic conservative’s philosophy insists that the best thing for the American economy is to get more money into the hands of the rich.  The rich will then use it to expand their businesses to make themselves richer, which will create more jobs and more job security for us working folks.  The last six years we have witnessed this idea put into practice.  Has it helped us? That theory was good in practice when the rich factory owner lived in the mansion on the hill and we all lived in the shacks in the valley.  It wasn’t good for us, but it had more validity then than it does now.  Now, the only money the business owner spends in America is for interpreters to translate the word “widget” into some third world language and for lawyers to find ways to avoid paying taxes on all the profits they make from marking their products up 1000% or more. Over a century ago, the working people in the shacks in the valley felt the sting of this conservative ideology and stood together as a union movement to demand a decent wage for their labor.  For more than 50 years, they paid the price in turmoil, blood and even lives to get something better for their families.  And from that struggle and sacrifice came the rewards of a decent wage and a decent living for a large new population of middle class Americans.  By the 1960s, unions were powerful enough that working people were well enough off to educate their children and with that education, and with working people having the free time to exercise their political leanings, came freedom and power for working people.  Women and minorities, through much sacrifice of their own, and the middle class in general, led the country in a new direction; a direction that Conservatives vowed to destroy before it ruined their way of life forever.  This war against the middle class and the unionism that created it, started with Ronald Reagan and I pray culminated with George W. Bush.  Though the most transparent in his animosity against the middle class, I don’t think President Bush is worse than any other conservative politician.  He was just more powerful because he had a conservative Congress to follow suit.  Giving large tax breaks to the rich is a conservative thing to do.  Trying to bust up unions is a conservative thing to do.  Passing laws to injure working people and make it harder for unions to do business is a conservative thing to do. Rewarding business leaders who move their businesses overseas is a conservative thing to do.  A century ago, when working people started fighting for a better life for themselves and their children, they created the middle class.  Destroying the middle class to get back to the good old days of the rich man on the hill and the poor working class in shacks on the flood plain is a conservative thing to do.  I will not fall for the conservative line that they hold my core values in their hearts.  What they hold in their hearts is my destruction.  They will say that they are patriotic and that they love America to appeal to my patriotism.  They will say that they are religious and that they love God to appeal to my spirituality. They will never look down to see my plight, but there eye is not on the flag, or on the sky, but on the mansion on the hill. Times are improving for working people.  It’s time to stand up and help them improve.  We all know a  union is a shield against the destruction of everything we stand for.  And we know that unions are as relevant to the future of the middle class as they were to our beginnings.