When every single Republican is anti-union, why are so many DUers anti-union too?

[Hekate]

112. You mean a living wage, OSHA standards, health & retirement benefits? Why shouldn't every worker...

...have it that "cushy"? Why do you want to pull everyone down into misery?

I worked for my local County Public Works for a couple of years, and can tell you that from the dump workers to the clerks to the engineers, I saw very few indeed that fit your stereotype. Well, there was one clerk. One. Clerk. More often, if you talked to people even a little while you saw they all had some notion of what it meant to be a public servant, to make things better for the community, to be proud of their work even in the face of budget cuts.

Many people seek out public sector jobs in hopes of security for their families rather than riches. Engineers and other professionals could conceivably make more money in the private sector in the short term -- at greater risk of never having a retirement plan some day. At a lower level, it becomes even more important.

My whole life I've benefitted from unions one way and another. During my own work life I was excluded as being a "confidential" employee (i.e. the boss's secretary sees all, knows all) but I certainly felt the results of other people's negotiations. My father was a union man during the 44 years he worked at Lockheed Aircraft, my first husband was in the Hotel and Restaurant Worker's Union (my giving birth at Kaiser Hospital cost us under $100, thank you), and my second and final husband was in the statewide Faculty Association, which is most definitely a union.

If you have questions about what certain public sector jobs entail -- the visible ones that cause you so much resentment, especially -- that information is readily available to you. These days it's all online.