June 07, 2012
The Washington Post doesn’t leave its readers in doubt over whose side it takes in the class war. It routinely uses both its opinion and news pages to attack ordinary workers and the programs on which they depend, like Social Security and Medicare. It rarely points out obvious facts, like the projections of exploding costs for Medicare are primarily driven by the excessive rents collected by folks like drug companies, suppliers of health care equipment, and highly paid medical specialists.
In keeping with this spirit, the Post told readers about the “need for unions to reorganize” following Scott Walker’s victory in his recall election. By “reorganize” the Post doesn’t mean developing new strategies to protect their members’ interests. It meant accepting lower pay and benefits.
That call would make sense if there was evidence that union pay was substantially out of line with private sector pay. It turns out that this is not the case.
It is also striking how obsessed the Post is over the need to reform unions when it is so little concerned about incredibly larger abuses in the corporate sector. Corporate management routinely rips off its shareholders by appointing boards who are almost completely subservient to management.
This allows the top executives of even money-losing companies to collect paychecks in the tens of millions of dollars. While the Post is little bothered by this ripoff of the public, it rants endlessly over autoworkers who earn $60,000 a year or public employees who can get pensions of $2,000 a month.
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