[MKE - Indymedia] Tues, Zeidler lecture on Public Employee Unions

[Art Heitzer]

  Public Employee Unions Topic of Lecture

     Labor-movement scholar and award-winning author William Powell Jones
will talk on “Why We Need Public Employee Unions” at the fourth annual Frank
P. Zeidler Memorial Lecture at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 29, in the Central
Milwaukee Public Library’s Centennial Hall, 814 W. Wisconsin Ave. The
program is free and open to the public.

    Jones, an associate professor of history at the University of
Wisconsin—Madison, specializes in the history of public sector unions,
African American history and the history of the civil rights movement.  He
is the author of “The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber
Workers in the Jim Crow South,” and is working on a new book about public
sector unions and the service industry.

     An advocate of collective bargaining rights for public employees, Jones
wrote last month in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel opinion piece,

     “Several recent studies show that total compensation (wages and
benefits) for public employees is still slightly below that of workers in
the private sector, but the gap has narrowed significantly in the past 50
years. In addition to economic benefits, unions won health, safety and
workplace fairness protections that cost nothing to taxpayers but increased
the efficiency and reliability of public services.

     “Contrary to the widespread perception that unions transformed
government workers into what Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has called “a new
privileged class,” the economic benefits of unionization have gone almost
entirely to the lowest-paid employees. Roughly 60% of Wisconsin’s public
employees have a college degree, compared to 30% in the private sector. A
recent study by the Economic Policy Institute found that college graduates
earn 25% less in government jobs than they do in the private sector.”

     The Frank P. Zeidler Memorial Lecture Committee, consisting of
representatives of community organizations which the late Milwaukee mayor
influenced, organizes this annual program in memory of the longtime
Socialist and historian.

     Although these lectures are free, tax deductible donations to support
them may be made to the International Institute of Wisconsin, with the lower
left-hand corner of checks denoting “Zeidler Lecture.” Mail them to the
International Institute at 1110 N. Old Third Street, Suite 420, Milwaukee WI
53203.
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