l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 Millionaire Union Boss Compares Ohioans to Nazis
Joe Rugola, paid $253,351 in forced dues, is very worried about the middle
class
By: Jason Hart (Diary) | May 7th, 2013 at 04:00 PM |
Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE) Executive Director Joe
Rugola, who last week compared supporters of workplace freedom to Nazis, was
paid $253,351 in member dues during the union’s most recent fiscal year.
At a May 1 press conference, Rugola decried workplace freedom as “extreme.
” Asked by reporters why 24 states already have workplace freedom laws on
the books if the policy is extreme, Rugola said, “all of Germany went
extreme in 1933 … that doesn’t make it wise.”
Rugola added, “Extremism as a majority notion does not necessarily pass the
test of good government, good policy, sound democracy.”
OAPSE, a local of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees (AFSCME), staunchly opposes letting workers choose whether to pay
a labor union. Rugola, a former president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, has worked
with other union bosses to frame expanded worker rights as an attack on
worker rights.
According to The Columbus Dispatch, Rugola was asked whether he meant to
compare the introduction of right to work legislation with Nazi Germany and
he replied, “no, I meant to compare it to extremism.”
An Associated Press story on the dueling May 1 workplace freedom press
conferences quoted Rugola extensively but did not mention his allusion to
Nazi Germany.
“America’s right-to-work states are the poorest, most unhealthy and
undereducated states in the union. That is a fact,” Rugola asserted,
warning that “right-wing extremist legislators” and corporations driven by
“godless greed” were looking to rob Ohioans of their rights.
In recent years, Ohio has lagged far behind workplace freedom states in
terms of job creation, wage growth, and disposable income growth.
But Rugola, who was paid a quarter of a million dollars in forced dues last
year, exclaimed that it was OAPSE’s “intention with every fiber of our
being to make war on those who want to make war on the American middle-class
.”
Over-the-top rhetoric is nothing new for Ohio union bosses, who torture
common sense and the English language to avoid the truth about workplace
freedom. When Michigan’s legislature passed right to work in December 2012,
union front group We Are Ohio compared their actions to the bombing of
Pearl Harbor.
Although Joe Rugola may currently be in the lead for the most hateful,
ignorant comment in Ohio’s workplace freedom debate, he is not the highest
paid Ohio union boss. That distinction goes to Ohio Education Association (
OEA) President Patricia Frost-Brooks, who was paid $267,916 last year based
on OEA’s latest report to the Department of Labor.
Review OEA’s workplace freedom talking points and the propaganda from We
Are Ohio to learn how Rugola’s suggestion that workplace freedom is like
Nazism fits with union desperation to maintain the flow of mandatory dues.
This story originally appeared at Media Trackers Ohio. |
|
