Regarding Robert Whitcomb’s Sept. 2 column, “It all sounds good,” in which he wrote that rather than “helping members of public-employee unions, especially firefighters, police officers and teachers,” he was glad to hear “more about the private sector from Senator Obama” in his speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Whitcomb is right that private-sector workers have suffered the most over the past 30 years in terms of dropping wages, benefits and secure retirements. However, Whitcomb’s nonsense about public officials “giving away the public’s store” as the reason public employees have fared better than their private-sector counterparts over the past three decades shows his lack of knowledge on the issue.

Whitcomb’s generalization goes too far.

Take New Orleans firefighters and police officers as an example. They stayed on the front lines during Katrina, rescuing thousands, and stayed during the evacuation for Gustav to protect their city. When those employees first come on the job they earn less than $10 an hour — less than a fast-food worker. And it doesn’t get much better as their career progresses.

The reason that their pay is so far below what they deserve for their sweat and sacrifice is that they don’t have the right to bargain. Unions, in large part, created the middle class in our country, and they gave us the weekend that Whitcomb so rightly attributes to the labor movement.

Today, private-sector workers across the country face a similar fate. It’s virtually impossible for private-sector workers to join a union today. Those who attempt to organize a union are mercilessly threatened, harassed, disciplined and even terminated by their employers. Private-sector bosses get away with these injustices because American labor laws have been tilted in favor of the privileged and big corporations. That skewing of the laws, in turn, has fueled the drop in unionization among private sector workers.

History has shown that the only way for workers to stand up to their boss to improve safety on the job and wages and benefits is by organizing a union and negotiating a contract.

So how do we fix the problem? It’s simple: We need to fix the laws.

Two bills passed the U.S. House last year but stalled in the Senate. One is called the Employee Free Choice Act, which would level the playing field for private-sector workers once again by fixing the union election laws that corporations most often abuse when their employees try to unionize. The other law is called the Employer-Employee Cooperation Act. This bill would give public-safety workers the right to negotiate with their employer over safety, wages and benefits.

What Whitcomb should note is that both bills had overwhelming support from Democrats in both the U.S. House and Senate. And both stalled because Republicans and their friends in big business don’t want to see workers with real, enforceable rights.

If Whitcomb is serious about his concern for workers and the middle class in this country, I welcome his support on these two important bills.

PAUL A. DOUGHTY

Providence

The writer is president of Providence Firefighters Local 799 IAFF.