Letters to the Editor: Think voting is easy? Talk to students and service workers in St. Paul. Read an excerpt from an op-ed by Rebecca Brinney on the subject at the website for the St. Paul Public Schools.
When will our elected officials get the idea that what is good for the country as a whole is best for their district?
Sara Goad
St. Paul
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When will our elected officials get the idea that what is good for the country as a whole is best for their district?
I am writing to urge you to support passage of Act 10, a bill that would restore the pre-1965 right of workers to form unions.
It would reinstate civil service protections for the public employee unions, such as the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Association of Government Employees – as well as public employee unions for private entities. It would help improve communication between unions and their members, so that they could focus more closely on their mutual goals: the good of the workforce or the public service.
In my district, the state, and throughout the country, workers are being systematically marginalized.
In my own workplace, the Minnesota State Patrol, we are in the midst of a union busting drive. After the last election, the union asked my employer to allow its members to vote on whether to get rid of its contract with my employer. We held a public meeting in front of all the officers and staff members in the hall, and I remember reading a statement at the meeting and feeling a sinking feeling inside as the union asked that we vote on this issue.
We knew in my mind that we couldn’t do it. We knew it was a union-busting issue, and we knew that we had to do it – but we also knew that we couldn’t let union leadership take the agency with us or leave us behind, while the union made the final decision that would determine where the state patrol was headed.
My boss and I met with our union rep, who asked us for our opinion. He presented the union’s side of the story, and we told him we couldn’
