If I can't have a pension and decent benefits why should they?

[haele]

62. I've had union benefits. I've had "employer provided benefits"

In my experience as a "professional" worker in a middle class "grey collar" (blue/white collar - engineering/technical/management skills)job, the Employer-provided benefits are far more of a burden on the take-home pay than Union benefit/fees.
True, Employer-provided benefits can be "voluntary", so that an employee can make the gawd-awful decision not to provide his or her family with health care and contribute to the roller-coaster ride of a company 401K that might result in a retirement supplement to Social Security so that they can keep a roof over the head and food on the table as their wages stagnate or hours get cut willy-nilly for some corporate stooge's bottom line - a decision that that probably would not have had to happen if there had been a Union to bargain for them.
The fact is that the large employers that make their money on other people's money rather than create a product or provide a service - the ones that really fight against unions because the majority of the "management" level usually never had to do physical labor or worry at the end of a pay period if the bills were going to be paid - are the ones that are making the investment to demonize unions and cut the "cost" of a workforce to maximize profits.

Public Sector Employees are the last refuge of an independent working middle class. That's why there's so much money and propaganda being expended to destroy it. After they are gone, the middle class will be defined by patronage, and everyone else relegated to, frankly, "independent contractors" aka sharecroppers or a migrant workforce.

And then, we'll see what real poverty is again. 25 to 30 million and increasing dis-enfranchised citizens with no credit, no permanent housing, no chance for quality or upper level education, no time to care for or provide a healthy example for their children - who will have little future, in poor health and in competition for whatever few crumbs of opportunity are dropped down to raise them out of debt-slavery into some independent standard of living. What little wages they get, they must pay the majority of the taxes to support the infrastructure and regulatory support that those with enough money (and the ability to buy loopholes can avoid paying taxes)use on a daily basis.
All social safety nets out of reach unless one is deemed "worthy" enough. If one does not make enough money to buy a "citizen franchise", one is basically disposable.
As to whatever might be left over to this pretty much permanent underclass with nowhere to go, the churches of Mammon, the Gangs and Mobs, and and all the other con-artists and social predators will be able to prey on with impunity, all under the cover of a Calvinistic, Dominionist judge mental process - after all, "the poor must have done something wrong, so they deserve to be poor until they shape up" and "God rewards the Righteous with money and power".

Haele