America's union story: Blood, struggle and bargaining for good and bad

March 04, 2011|By Ashley Fantz, CNN
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-04/us/unions.history_1_protests-national-labor-college-labor-strikes?_s=PM:US
(SEE FULL ARTICLE HERE)

"Eighty-one-year-old labor historian Ken Germanson watches the news from home in Milwaukee every night, mystified.

"All those people raising their signs, protesting," he said. "Well, geez, what did our governor think was going to happen?"

Germanson ran the Wisconsin Labor History Society for nearly two decades, an organization that teaches students about the state's union heritage.
"Though tension in Indiana has amounted so far to little more than political name-calling, protests in Wisconsin and Ohio have drawn throngs of people from across the country, turning the debate into a national tug of war between Republicans and Democrats. Media reports and political rhetoric have framed the protests as battles between the working class and the rich. The issue has also drawn out many critics of unions who say that organized labor strikes disrupt public services and inflate wages at a rate that strains economies and taxpayers.""According to Ashley Fantz of CNN