Several mean-spirited bills designed to scapegoat ferry workers have been introduced by both Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature. It seems as if some Washington lawmakers are in league with their GOP counterparts in Wisconsin.
Sens. Mary Margaret Haugen (D-Camano Island) and Curtis King (R-Yakima), and Reps. Judy Clibborn (D-Mercer Island) and Mike Anderson (R-Wenatchee) are sponsoring the bills.
As you will recall, KING-TV ran a series of “specials” depicting wasteful practices in our ferry system. Those isolated incidents then took on lives of their own. Some viewers were left with the false impression that ferry workers are underworked, overpaid drains on our state finances.
Predictably, opportunists seized on the opening those misconceptions afforded them. And now the people who are in peril are ferry workers. Once again, workers are being painted as the culprits. No excuses are being made for whatever mismanagement within our ferry system might have occurred, but it is dishonest to suggest that those rare incidents are the norm, or that workers are to blame. Such inflammatory declarations may sell newspapers and TV advertising space, but they do not pass the sniff test of truth. They are little more than attempts to scapegoat working men and women.
Scapegoating is often employed to hide darker, more ominous motives on the part of the accusers.
Granted, the state is in the throes of a budget crunch. So is every other state in our nation. Across our land we see massive unemployment, home foreclosures, loss of health care coverage, stolen pensions and shrunken wages. It is not a phenomenon that started in 2011. It has been going on for years. How did it happen? Why are we in such desperate straits?
Lawmakers, charged with oversight obligations, failed miserably in their duties to safeguard the interests of the people, that’s how and why.
KING-TV would have done us all a real service had it run a series of no-holds-barred segments on the culpability of financial institutions and Wall Street. The station could have revealed how unfettered greed on the part of those who manipulated credit default swaps and derivatives, hedge funds and other financial instruments caused the financial crisis that some lawmakers are now trying to get workers to pay for — again. And KING-TV would have deserved much praise had it exposed how corporations purchase favorable legislation with the dollars they donate to political campaigns.
Then, there is the cost of two unnecessary wars and tax cuts to the super-rich that, taken together, total about $6 trillion. That’s equivalent to nearly $20,000 for every man, woman and child in our nation. Those misadventures have rendered the federal government incapable of providing essential discretionary funding to states and municipalities. Who will pay the price? Working people, that’s who. After the current economic crisis subsides, one constant will remain: The wealthy will have entered it wealthy and will emerge wealthy. Only working class people will have suffered.
Teachers, ferry workers, social workers and other public employees, and cash-strapped institutions that provide essential services to people, are being asked to make more sacrifices.
A “redistribution of wealth” that some sign-wavers label socialism is not a distant threat. It has already happened and it continues to happen. The redistribution has gone from our pocket books into the bank vaults of the super-rich. If the word “socialism” is to be employed it must be used in its proper context. We workers are the victims of corporate socialism and laws that favor the investor class.
Rather than take on the owners of enormous economic and legislative powers, too many lawmakers opt to attack Main Street America. They do so by scapegoating working men and women with the hopes of pitting us against one another. They believe we will not mount an effective response to such institutionalized scapegoating.
There is a tipping point. Who knows what will prompt it? Unless lawmakers govern humanely and with integrity, with social and economic justice serving as the foundations for their acts, working men and women may well take peaceful and decisive action to repel the attacks aimed at us and our neighbors.
Scapegoating workers must stop! Attempting to balance budgets by further punishing workers must stop! We the people must speak up for the 85 percent of us who comprise America’s working class. Tell legislators to scrap their phony bills that attack public employees. It is our turn to be represented! Honestly!
-Richard Austin
Richard Austin is president of the Pacific Coast Pensioners Association of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
This Op-ed appeared in the Everett Hearld on March 6, 2011.