Thanks to Wikicommons.

In Wisconsin, as well as other places across the nation a battle line has been drawn. The issue: public employee unions (such as those for teachers).

This is an issue which has been highly politicized. But what is behind the attempts to restrict unions ability to negotiate (and as a result, their power)?

Robert Barro, whose opinion appears in the Wall Street Journal, attacks unions noting that

For a teachers union, collective bargaining means that suppliers of teacher services to all public school systems in a state—or even across states—can collude with regard to acceptable wages, benefits and working conditions. An analogy for business would be for all providers of airline transportation to assemble to fix ticket prices, capacity and so on. From this perspective, collective bargaining on a broad scale is more similar to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty.

On the other side of the line Hendrik Hertzburg, in an article for the New Yorker, argues that unions are

the only truly formidable counterweight to the ever-growing political power of that top one-thousandth [wage earners]

Many Americans, as Paul Krugman notes, agree with Hertzburg as

while people don’t necessarily love unions — hey, I personally don’t necessarily love unions — most people apparently see them as having a legitimate role.

However, the role of unions as a political balance may be coming to a close . Mickey Kaus notes that

The Internet has already empowered organizations like MoveOn.org to provide both dollars and volunteers to Dems through a structure that need not have anything to do with organized labor. … Why picket when you can click it?

No matter the end result in Wisconsin (and elsewhere) Nancy Folbre for Economix argues that the protesters time was not wasted as

the committed progressive activists of Wisconsin have raised the level of news organizations’ attention to state politics and broadened the public debate over the fiscal crisis.

So no matter what your beliefs are, don’t be afraid to stand up for them (especially if that means posting a comment).