Unions holding on to their rights, or bankrupting all of us?

To the editor:

A recent letter to the editor headlined "Had enough" appalled me. The writer called the protesting citizens in Wisconsin "union bullies and spoiled brats" without citing one bit of evidence for these sweeping generalizations.

The vast majority of public employees, both union and non-union, are hardworking, taxpaying Americans who do their jobs as best they can. There are absolutely no facts to back up the writer's wild allegations of hefty pay, benefits, tenure and pension plans. Where are his protests about the rich bankers on Wall Street who almost single handedly brought down the U.S. economy while taking hefty bonuses?

Unions have played an important part in the development of America and continue to do so. Collective bargaining has been a hard-won right and is important to a productive America and to protect employers from abuses of the past. Perhaps even the writer's wage is higher because of the hard work of unions to champion a growing middle class.

The tragedy is that the Wisconsin protests have nothing to do with unions and collective bargaining. In fact, collective bargaining has no impact at all on the Wisconsin budgets or potential deficits. No, this is purely a political power play in the Republican Party's continued attempted to destroy the middle class in order to create a rich, powerful class that will rule in any way they see fit.

America needs to wake up and see that this puts us on a direct path to the destruction of all except the rich. I agree with the writer in one statement: Enough is enough.

Paul Carman

Henderson

To the editor:

This front page story in Tuesday's Review-Journal ("Union threat draws workers into street") is a great example of the most powerful, self-serving faction in Nevada, namely government corporate monopolies passing themselves off as unions, adopting the tactic that the best defense is a good offense.

It's ironic the lead organization would be the SEIU Inc., since in several recent news articles it has been reported the average SEIU wage in the Clark County government is $80,000 a year. This compares to $41,000 for the average private-sector worker. In fact, there isn't one single private-sector industry in Nevada that can even come close to that obscene number. Even Nevada's highest compensated and heavily unionized "natural resources and mining" industry has an average annual wage of $68,484.

Don't let anyone rewrite history for you. It was the private-sector unions of the early and postwar 20th century that created the middle class in America.

The government unions came after all the hard work, suffering and sacrifice by the private-sector unions. Since gaining their foothold, the government unions have done nothing except look out for themselves, shattering all connections to the private sector and raising the cost of government to a point that is bankrupting not only Nevada but the entire country.

Every private-sector citizen, including union members, needs to understand what these government monopolies have done and then support all efforts to rein in their unwarranted and undeserved wealth, power and control over Nevada society.

Knight Allen

Las Vegas