Conservative radio talk show host Mark Belling, who has previously referred to teachers as "lunatics" and "not good people"; Hispanics as "wetbacks"; and the Milwaukee County Chairwoman as a "bitch," has a new line on his sterling resume: He referred to a WTMJ female reporter as a "bimbo" for getting the definition of the so-called "right-to-work" legislation wrong.
Humorously, in his mauling of Julia Fella for getting it wrong on a website, Belling corrected her with an even more egregious error on the air. Belling repeated The Big Lie that union work places "force" workers to join and Right to Work would change all that.
Simply not true.
University of Wisconsin assistant professor Alexia Kulwiec recently appeared on WORT-FM in Madison and explained that "Federal law cannot come to an agreement that forces someone to join a union."
Kulwiec continued to explain that under the current law in Wisconsin, workers in union workplaces have to pay smaller-than-normal union dues, know as "fair share." The correctly-named "fair share" simply covers the costs that the union is spending to negotiate wages and work conditions and to represent workers in workplace disputes.
What "Right-to-Work" does is simply allow workers to opt-out of paying "fair share" dues-- even though the union is still has a "duty of fair representation" and still must spend time and resources representing and defending the "free-rider" worker that is no longer paying their "fair share" dues.
But, let's go back to "bimbo." It has an interesting history-- before it was a popular derogatory term exclusively aimed at women by belly-scratchers alarmed at their entrance into the workforce in the 1970s and 80s, it was a derogatory term exclusively aimed at men:
"stupid, inconsequential man, contemptible person"
Kudos, to Mark Belling for digging it out of the dustbin of history and bringing the term bimbo back home!