The Facts on Wisconsin: What the Unions Want, and Why It’s Insane
Wisconsin can no longer afford public employee unions having a stranglehold on state and local government. The money just isn’t there. Wisconsin is broke. And Wisconsin private sector employees — who don’t have the same lavish pensions, health plans, and job protection — can’t afford to pay any more taxes to prop up the public employees and their union bosses.
Collective bargaining is not a right, not with the military and not with public employees. In the 1950s, Wisconsin became the first state to give its public workers the ability — not the right — to bargain collectively. School teachers had no collective bargaining rights until after the illegal strike by the Hortonville School District in the 1970s. Collective bargaining is a privilege given them, and it can be taken away.
Wisconsin is one of only about 30 states with collective bargaining laws covering state and local workers. Since the 1950s, however, government employee unions have exploded in size and power, and benefits and pensions are forcing many states into bankruptcy. Public employees retire in their early 50s and Wisconsin taxpayers must continue sending to their Florida retirement homes checks for a significant portion of their former salaries for decades to come. While the rest of us struggle to put aside a portion of our earnings for our 401(k)s and watch as they dwindle in size during the recession, retired public employees in their 50s simply walk to their mailbox for the checks we send them, courtesy of the taxpayers of a state with a $3.3 billion deficit. It is the very definition of insanity.
And let’s not forget that public employee collective bargaining itself is also a rigged game. Wisconsin’s collective bargaining law says that state-appointed arbitrators must consider agreements both internal (unions within the school district) and external (agreements struck by other school districts) when ruling on disputes submitted to them with regard to pension and health care benefits. When hundreds of school districts bargain at the same time, one is bound to cave. Then the next, and the next. And soon every state-appointed arbitrator is legally required to look at the going rate of the districts which have caved, and the domino effect begins. When two sides don’t agree — and the public employee unions rarely give in where it counts — they must submit to binding arbitration with state-appointed warmed-over Marxists filling the role as arbitrators. The result: a $3.3 billion deficit.
Under Walker’s bill, public employee unions lose only the ability to collectively bargain for these lavish benefits. A mere 5.8% of the average state employee pay will be required to go toward their pension, and they would be responsible for only 12.6% of their own health insurance costs. This is a deal virtually any private sector employee can only dream about — after Walker’s bill passes, the Sun will still rise, the Earth will still turn on its axis, and public employees will still have better pay and benefits than the private sector.
Why are unions busing in sucklings from across the country? Because they can see the handwriting on the wall. With collective bargaining limited to salaries like the rest of us, public employee union members will ask why they’re paying all this money in the form of mandatory union dues. If Walker’s budget repair bill passes, it will create momentum for similar bills pending in Ohio, Indiana, and other states.
However, there is another and perhaps more compelling reason why unions are treating Madison like the Alamo. As my Dad taught me: when looking for someone’s true motivation, always follow the money. Walker’s bill also would allow public employees to avoid making mandatory dues payments to unions if they don’t join those unions.
Currently, workers can choose not to join unions, but they must make “fair share” payments similar to dues — a requirement that unions say is needed because all workers benefit from their work at the bargaining table. Imagine the money the unions will lose if union members can keep that money and spend it on their own family instead. Without funding, public sector unions will wither and die like a noxious weed.
Public employee unions are the sworn enemy of balanced budgets and private sector taxpayers who are struggling to make ends meet and simultaneously plan for and fund their own meager retirement plans. It was George Meany — former president of the AFL-CIO — who said: “It’s impossible to bargain collectively with the government.” This is because the labor movement has always viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more profits out of a company. But with government, there are no profits. They merely negotiate for more tax dollars. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt warned us about public employee unions, saying that it was “unthinkable and intolerable” for government unions to strike.
Public service workers are hard-working and do a good job overall here in Wisconsin. Who can blame them for wanting more pay and better benefits? But they are a minority of the workers in this country. Their salaries and benefits are paid for by taxpayers who have no more to give. The unemployment rate among government employees is a mere 2.8% and their salaries and benefits far exceed that of the private sector — all at taxpayer expense.
Wisconsin is broke. Not only do we have a $3.3 billion deficit, but we also have a $137 million shortfall coming this June. Governor Walker’s budget repair bill is only the first in a long line of austere measures which must be passed to restore fiscal sanity to Madison and avoid layoffs for some of the union sign carriers this week in Madison. He is not busting unions. He’s returning fiscal sanity to Madison. In doing so, Walker is following in the footsteps of Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. That puts him in some pretty good company.
AMEN!
jl
Co-sign!
It’s ridiculous and pathetic that it has come to this…where the “public sector servants” have become the most “privileged”, “pampered”, “pandered to” class of thieving leeches in the whole damned country and they have the audacity to piss and moan about actually contributing to their own pensions and health-care as if that’s some sort of ‘punishment’. Well, if having to live a little closer to the economic reality the rest of the tax-payers are living in is ‘punishment’…cry me a g-damned river.
Fire all striking union teachers! Fire all Fleebag Dem lawmakers in Illinois!
Always remember how Stalin responded to American demands that he remove Soviet troops from Eastern Europe after WWII – “What we have – We keep!”
Also remember that it took a series of full-scale revolutions to eventually change that situation.
“Currently, workers can choose not to join unions, but they must make “fair share” payments similar to dues — a requirement that unions say is needed because all workers benefit from their work at the bargaining table.”
And aren’t they correct about this? If not, why? If you think government workers should not have the right to unionize, come right out and say it. But if there IS a right to collectively bargain, people should not be able to take a free ride, receiving the benefits of such bargaining without paying dues to the organisation that secured those additional benefits.
I’m personally open to the idea that government workers should not have the right to collectively bargain. I have nothing contempt for those who take away such rights by stealth and subterfuge (such as by making union dues voluntary), rather than through the democratic decisionmaking.
I have nothing but contempt for those who would force anyone works at a given profession, say teaching, to join a union in order to do so. If someone want to be represented by a union they should be free to join a union, pay its dues and be so represeneted. if someone doesnt want to join a union they shouldnt have to . That isn’t union busting it’s freedom . If a union is entilted to some percentage of your pay whether you want their “help” then Tony Soprano has a right to a percentage of your income whether you want his “protection” or not. And oddly enough Tony is often running the union too !
You have the right to express your own beliefs, of course, but in my day a public sector union would EARN respect and fair share payments from non-members by actually being their advocates, something today’s SEIU and the like no longer seem to care to do. I was a fair-sharer for a couple of years, and satisfied to do so, until in a cost-cutting move they stopped providing effective counsel during individual personnel disciplinary hearings. Instead, they lobbied the legislature for a mandatory membership law – and eventually won out. BTW, [surprise, surprise] they never did improve their counseling effectiveness, even for members. Didn’t have to, anymore, because the worker was s@rewed either way.
You sir, are deserving of my utter contempt. You are a tyrant.
From the NLRB website:
Did you know there was such an organization?
Why should anyone pay anything for benefits from the actions of others, e.g. unions? I benefit from the gardening of others, who have beautiful gardens; from those who keep their homes beautiful; from those who make my neighborhood desirable by providing concerts, drama, and entertainment. So what?
Don’t worry Markus. You don’t have to join the conservative PJM club.
But be sure to send your dues in regularly or we will ban you, per our “election” a month ago.
It’s the “right” of our club that you should have to pay to enjoy our commentary, even though PJM itself is free.
Florida has or is trying to pass a law ending the practice of deducting union dues as a money saving measure. It would save something like 25 million a year. A union is a private entity. Withholding money from someone’s paycheck usually requires a court order or legislation. The unions contract with the State doesn’t abrogate due process for someone who doesn’t join the union.
The Fleebaggers will come back some time this week I’d guess, and then the bill will pass causing a cascade effect. The notion that Public Employee Unions were ever anything other than a perscription for corruption is preposterous. They should never have been allowed in the first place.
But if there IS a right to collectively bargain, people should not be able to take a free ride, receiving the benefits of such bargaining without paying dues to the organisation that secured those additional benefits.
That line of thinking proves my point: that the notion of the “right” to collective bargaining, as used by the Left, is actually intended as an assault on the genuine right to individual bargaining, more commonly known as “freedom of association”.
you illustrate the failing education system.
a complete lack of critical thinking.
Kos, (Can I call you Kos?)
What if people don’t want unions bargaining for them? What if they don’t want the “benefits” the unions secure? What if they would prefer to keep their money and negotiate their own salaries? What if they would prefer the union doesn’t interfeer when bad teachers need to be sacked and good teachers retained? What if they would prefer merit, instead of seniority determine pay and status? What then?
Then they still have to pay for the union and the services they want, right?
I see. So, the money they earned is not really theirs, since it can be taken from them by an entity they’re not contracted to, would not contract to, and would prefer not to be affected by.
And these are free men you say? And the Unions fight for them? What an odd sort of freedom, and what an odd sort of support.
This means you think people should belong to other people who can take their money and decide their conditions of employment, without the “owned” person’s consent.
If you don’t like the thirteenth amendment to the constitution, why don’t you just come right out and say so?
It’s not a “right.” It’s a privelege. Priveleges can be removed.
Yep, misspelled “Privilege,” didn’t I? Curses.
I love seeing that Thomas Paine quote in its abridged form – it’s almost a 100% certainty that the quoter has never read the entire quote and thus doesn’t have any clue as to what Paine’s conclusion was. Here it is, in its entirety:
“Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.”
You see that part about “out of two evils to choose the least”? I don’t think most folks would be into the whole anarcho-capitalism thing – their common sense would most likely prevent them from plunging themselves into such chaos.
As for the post, it’s pretty clear that you loathe unions more than just about anything, which is fine, but how about some intellectual honesty here? You mention that certain (not all) law enforcement and fire department unions wound up exempt from Gov Walker’s proposed policies. Why is that? Could it be that those unions happened to support Gov Walker’s election bid? I’m sure that overlap is pure happenstance, right? Or justifiable in some other, convoluted way? If Gov Walker was serious about limiting union power, why not go whole hog across the board? It’s because he isn’t serious. He’s just another political hack with his foot on the necks of those who didn’t support his candidacy.
MUCH too much reality for PJM.
All utter baloney and misdirection on your part. You’re saying the author is engaging in some sort of rather egregious misinterpretation of Paine’s point. I don’t see it that way at all. Giving up your money, some of your independence (and perhaps even your life) are the expected sacrifices for the formation and administration of government; however ugly the result may be at times.
But here you want to foist this false choice upon people who wish to start saying “no” to a government that has grown out of control; that choice being keeping things the way things are versus having no government at all (Anarcho-capitalism?”) I don’t see anyone here making such an argument, but I suspect you already know that to be true and as such your point is a fundamentally unserious one at best.
Same thing goes for your parting shot at the exempting of fire and police from the new laws regarding bargaining rights and the apparent hypocrisy that drives it. I honestly don’t know the details nor the origins of that claim but will do some reading. I do however suspect that it would matter not to you whether they really were exempt; that the thrust of your post is just one more blind defense of public sector unions no matter the cost.
You ask an interesting question and your comment is intellectually stimulating, but it is also narrow minded – even though you seem to decry bias. Why could not the public safety sector unions not be in a better position than educators to understand and appreciate budgetary limitations of WI’s fiscal situation? Might it be as simple as that?
In my own locale – out in La-La Land – many public safety unions have taken the lead in factoring downward their members salary basis and benefit packages in an attempt to maintain minimal force numbers and membership bases during these admittedly challenging times. And in an almost Lemming-like emulation of the WI teachers’ unions, many West Coast teachers’ unions don’t seem to “get it” and continue to want more. Could it be something teachers don’t understand? Are they too far removed from societal reality? Or is it dogmatic blindness? I await clarification and enlightenment.
Or could it be because police and fire services are of a different nature from teaching?
Let me make the difference very stark for you, because you are obviously slow of comprehension: No one dies when teachers take a “sick out.” But if police and fire weren’t on the job, there’s a very good chance of people dying.
Now go put another sock on your hand and try again. You want to make sure your next check from Andy Stern is a nice big one, don’t you?
How about this ‘REALITY” Joseph the left wing Socialist moonbats , a thought process subscribed to by MOST Teachers, are fighting tooth and nail to keep themselves in control of schools so they can continue to propagandize their students with the same Socialist moonbat Green NAZI ideology that they have been doing for decades. They are being supported by the Socialist moonbat Usurper in chief Obama and all the other Socialist moonbat Union leaders in the country. They are desperate as they see an awakening electorate finally seeing them for what they REALLY are, self centered anti American control freaks.
SB,
Most of the police and fire union folks DID oppose Walker.
See
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/02/21/wisconsin-state-senator-smacks-down-chris-matthews-youre-completely-u
As the State’s leader, Walker has to pick his battles. He chose to not risk prompting public safety job actions. I suspect that once the writing is on the wall for all to see, public safety unions will of their own volition choose to support responsible budgets.
Lou
Governor Walker was asked about Police and Firefighter union support on the radio last night. He pointed out that only 4 or 5 of over 300 different unions representing PD and FD supported his campaign the rest went to his opponent…
sb: I assure you, Gov. Walker is dead serious about balancing the budget.
“If Gov Walker was serious about limiting union power, why not go whole hog across the board? It’s because he isn’t serious…”
Classic twisting of the story. YOU have made him the union buster, and thus being wrong, you say he is not serious. He has never made busting the unions an issue. That is how you wackos try to characterize it…incorrectly, I might add. Were he to focus on busting the unions, he would not have taken a small careful pass, enough to balance the budget. He would have gone all out. But he never promised to do that, and he is going out of his way to protect jobs. The ox getting gored is the one owned by the dems and unions…the golden calf that funnels all the PAC dues to the dems. The real issue here is not union busting, it’s the beheading of the dems’ golden goose. Just another hack, eh. Sure. That’s why the entire country is focussed on this….because he’s just another hack. Maybe YOU should get serious.
So Thomas Paine agitated for limited government . This is a surprise ?
Gov Walker is trying to limit state government by limiting the expenses and corruption inherent in the unionization the states’ schools. That he chooses to take on one union at a time may be tactics and it may be that some unions are more rapacious and destructive than others. It isn’t all that difficult to see all this as something other than partisan politics , unless you want to be blind.
What Obama is doing is against the law as per the National Labor Relations Board.
But, do you really think we’ll hear anything about it?
Only if the czars determine a time and place to employ the NLRB for more abusive control power.
It’s my understanding the Walker isn’t doing anything different than he has always done in cutting wasteful spending.
If you say that he is going after unions that didn’t support his run for Governor perhaps you didn’t support him because you new what was coming. End of the gravy train.
Response to SB in comment 7
I think you need a history lesson! You claim the author of the piece purposefully miss-represented what Paine had to say. To that I say rubbish! It is you who have it ass backwards.
“….and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.””
To try and tease out anything other than what Paine meant above, specifically “Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government”, in an effort to defend public sector SERVANTS ability to set their own wages in an incestuous, cigar filled back rooms with Union thugs and Democratic Party leaders is ridiculous!
Paine was very specifically talking about actual national security, you know, the kind that involves killing the enemy and breaking their weapons. You know, the part of the governments responsibility that is actually specifically called out in the preamble to the Constitution
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
I know, I forgot, libby libs don’t like the constitution, especially the part about defending our rights to be FREE CITIZENS!
people and businesses create jobs, not government.
I am a 100% on the conservative side of things, but this statement always bothers me. Government obviously does create jobs. I was a marine for 4 years, millions of Americans were in the military and many for 20 to 30 years. The truth of the matter is that government can create jobs, it cannot create wealth to pay for jobs, thus it should be limited to creating as few jobs with the lowest cost as possible to perform the tasks required to be performed by it. There has to be a better way to say this, and be honest, instead of saying government does not create jobs. We are conservatives, preserving our language is important, and this kind of statement degrades our language and our integrity.
stonerii
Let’s see if I can help
The statement that governments don’t create jobs is absolutely factual as any educated adherent to Adam Smith knows.
Governments do not create anything without first taking money out of the private sector. The absolute best case for the government is to trade one job that the private sector would have created for one job the government creates. Sadly, governments rarely are that efficient. It is more likely that our government destroys 2 plus private sector jobs for every public sector job it creates.
In essence, all governments can do is chose winners and create losers by shifting money out of private sector and in to the government sector. What this means, in essence, is the government is picking winners by the types of jobs they create, jobs that the free market may or may not have created, and creating losers by the jobs that the private sector now can not create.
This is especially insidious when governments are run by despots like Dances With Words who think that jobs that create carbon sequestration sites are more important than Uncle Willy purchasing a new suit of clothes.
Yes, words matter! We as conservatives should refuse to cede the language to the enemy, especially when we are right and they are wrong.
What jobs the government should create, by first destroying private sector jobs, is a topic for another conversation. But let it be said, that even the job you spoke of, being a Marine, came at the expense of a job that the private sector would otherwise have created.
This whole episode has given me a lot of fun with my progressive friends.
One posted this open letter on her FB page from some mutts at the UW about how they are all hard-workin’ people just tryin’ to get by, blah blah blah, they are fighting for all workers, etc. You know the drill.
Anyway, in the comments I asked her how she and the letter writers could justify shutting down the schools. After all, the teacher got paid for his/her absence, but the students’ parents might not have been able to get childcare on short notice and had to take the day off WITHOUT pay. Some of the students may have been on the free breakfast/lunch programs, and if the school is closed, they don’t get a meal that day.
So now we have little Britni and Jayden stuck at home watching rasslin’, maybe being supervised (or not if Gramma wasn’t available because Mama needs to work at the coffee shop to pay the bills), stuffing their faces with cheetos instead of Miz Michelle’s Healthy Hot Lunch, getting fatter by the minute and even less likely to compete when they graduate from school because they missed out on vital school time. How do they justify hurting poor kids because they didn’t want to ruin their weekend plans by protesting on a Saturday?
None of her librul friends were able to respond after that.
LMAO! Awesome [and hilarious] post, Madame Von Shtupp!
Aren’t the politicians embarrassed about fleeing the state?
No FLEEBAGGERS have no shame.
The infantile Democratic Politicians who RAN AWAY should be barred from ever going back to the Senate again and new elections held in their districts so the populace can be represented by mature responsible adults who will stand and fight their cause not run away like children.
Would you say “No more than rats leaving a sinking ship”?
Dear Dr. Bones,
To guess what the Kolourblind Kiddies think they see when the Freelords an’ Kiddiemasters of Foxcuckooland draw their attention to Union thugs, the neocomradologist could do worse than start with basics:
(( I have borrowed from Big LEW, the Learnèd Elders of Wiki, omitting the source references and adding the occasional EMPHASIS.
(( The latter is mostly jocular, though not entirely. Poor old ‘Sarmatia’ may be an excellent instance of kolourblindkiddiedom, but She is not unique. Paddy and I agree that the _nie pozwalam_ crew are not going to get a monopoly on the self-sorrowin’ racket if we Mac’s and O’s can prevent it: ¡Jeszcze Hibernia nie zginela! ))
Be that as it may, the chief thing at the moment is to add up LEW’s percentages [1] and then observe that, affirmative Milwaukee and touristrappy Menominee County to the contrary notwithstanding, Chîzestán is functionally a colony of Transalpia Felix. The “olives, vines and vices” folks do not come in higher than sixth, and, as for the *real* Youknowwhos, they are a very thin icing on the cheese. Party Neocomrade S. K. Walker will not be needin’ *their* votes anytime soon.
And for now, enough of Chîzestán.
–JHM
[1] 42.6 + 10.9 + 09.3 + 08.5 + 06.5 (¿huh?) == 77.8
All these migrants from various countries worked hard and long days just so they could feed their families. They would have hated unions that stopped everyone from ‘earning’,not being ‘given’ a wage.
As an officer from a local union representing workers in a mining/manufacturing facility in the mid-west, my opposition to the public unions may be surprising. Check out what I have to say at http://samschaos.blogspot.com/2011/02/hey-gov-walker-this-union-man-is-right.html
http://samschaos.blogspot.com/2011/02/fdr-afl-cio-opposed-public-unions.html
&
http://samschaos.blogspot.com/2011/02/return-of-taxpayer.html
Sam, this is from your “FDR, AFL-CIO Opposed Public Unions” piece, which is an excellent argument against public unions:
“Professors Harry H. Wellington and Ralph D. Winter, in their Brookings Institution Study entitled, “The Unions and the Cities,” focus on this problem concerning the strike weapon:
The trouble is that if unions are able to withhold labor – to strike – as well as to employ the usual methods of political pressure, they may possess a disproportionate share of effective power in the process of decisions. Collective bargaining would then be so effective a pressure as to skew the results of the ‘normal’ American political process.
… Since interest groups other than public employees, with conflicting claims on municipal government, do not, as a general proposition, have anything approaching the effectiveness of the strike – or at least cannot maintain that relative degree of power over the long run – they may be put at a significant competitive disadvantage in the political process.”
And as you asked “One final question. When one political party develops a cozy relationship with labor and grants favors to labor as reward for their support, what happens when that party loses power? Wisconsin happens.”
Sam, this is from your “FDR, AFL-CIO Opposed Public Unions” piece, which is an excellent argument against public unions:
“Professors Harry H. Wellington and Ralph D. Winter, in their Brookings Institution Study entitled, “The Unions and the Cities,” focus on this problem concerning the strike weapon:
The trouble is that if unions are able to withhold labor – to strike – as well as to employ the usual methods of political pressure, they may possess a disproportionate share of effective power in the process of decisions. Collective bargaining would then be so effective a pressure as to skew the results of the ‘normal’ American political process.
… Since interest groups other than public employees, with conflicting claims on municipal government, do not, as a general proposition, have anything approaching the effectiveness of the strike – or at least cannot maintain that relative degree of power over the long run – they may be put at a significant competitive disadvantage in the political process.”
And as you asked “One final question. When one political party develops a cozy relationship with labor and grants favors to labor as reward for their support, what happens when that party loses power? Wisconsin happens.”
unions are a parasitic organism living off the private sector works.
there are two basic types of people …producers and parasites.
“Walker is following in the footsteps of Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.”
Nonsense, NJ and IN have the 1st and 3rd most underfunded pension funds in the country. The former is cratering the latter permanently depressed.
Walker is following only in that he was just elected Governor.
what ever happened to the Beck decision?
in 1988, the SCOTUS ruled that union employees do not have to pay that portion of their dues which goes to candidates they do not support.
There is a lot of confused wording in this article, and the public discourse. The result is an economic and political disaster. Some basics:
For the last century, it has been the policy of the USA to promote collective bargaining between employees and management in the private sector, on the terms and conditions of employment. No such policy exists for public employees, for the simple reason that it does not work. One party is the sovereign, the other is a group of subordinates. The role of the sovereign in private sector labor disputes is to provide countervailing power between the parties; this is impossible in the public sector. It has absolutely nothing to do with contribution. Marines contribute their discipline, suffering, blood, and life for me, but they can not negotiate combat with their general.
IMHO, it is fundamentally wrong to allow public service unions, or unions in the priesthood, or unions in the Marines. It violates common sense. Public employees ultimately work for the voters, the voters are sovereign. It is a tragedy that union negotiations have been so corrupted that one party effectively sits on both sides of the table, and a large segment, or majority of voters have no say. The voters in Wisconsin have rejected this long standing power structure. This is their right, all agreements, particularly life long agreements, with a sovereign exist at its policy discretion.
Wisconsin labor negotiators created agreements with no funds to support them, unfunded liabilities. The bill is due and payable; there is no money. The governor, a veteran of union conflicts ran on a platform to reorder these agreements. Fundamentally it is an 8% haircut for some state employees and a revocation of collective bargaining for long term benefits. It is a painful necessity, and will not be the last change, with which we all must contend.
The private sector has been savaged by global competition, US employees must compete with distant workers who make ten percent of US wages. The private sector is heavily burdened with government dictates that increase costs, particularly in heavy industry. As a result it no longer exists in America; it no longer generates high wages, and tax revenues to support government services. We live in a new normal; we must tighten our belts.
On the plus side, Wisconsin is far better off than Libya. Our workers no longer die at work. Our basic problem, for the future, is how to prevent the absolute concentration of economic power in a few hands. There is little difference between Qaddafi and Bill Gates.
I was the president of a large police union. The worst thing I could have done or any union leader can do is lead their members over a cliff. You don’t punish the public for something they are not involved in. Also, you always have to go back to the public for support in the future for other issues that concern your members. We were public SERVANTS first and the power of our name and position was worth more than what a ‘blue flu’ or ‘slow down’ would accomplish. You lose all sense of professionalism. A union leader also has to know the limitations of his position and how far you can push before you’ve reached ‘their’ (the Cities) limit. We got outstanding wages, benefits, pensions and got into areas never before achieved. What the teachers are doing in Wisconsin is reprehensible and they will lose the publics support, which is crucial to their futures. And. a union president can’t let his position go to his head and think he rules the world because he has a podium and a microphone and press coverage.
I am disgusted. Daniels now wants to cave to the unions. They have got to him. What a WIMP.
This is a great explanation of what the real issues are in Wisconsin. It’s not “union busting” but rather a self-defense measure to limit the unions’ ability to bust the budget every year. Hang in there, Governor Walker!!
FDR and Union Tyranny
As a former, retired, teacher union member whose father was a member of a company union, I don’t in the least feel hypocritical in opposing the actions of Wisconsin teachers. Bottom line is, they’re wrong, in the extreme.
When I began as a public school English teacher in the early 70′s in suburban Long Island, I had no intention of joining either the local or state unions. Even then, the state union was decidedly liberal and, in fact, there was a movement afoot to expunge the word, “union,” in favor of “association” in order to preserve a sense of teacher professionalism.
“Union” won out in that debate, not that it mattered since the umbrella organization, the National Education Association, the NEA, which partners with the American Federation of Teachers, the AFT, is a de facto union, with 3.2 million members.
In any event, during my first year I refused on principle to join the local but succumbed in my second after repeated interruptions of my class by an importuning union rep. As it turned out, I subsequently learned that the district administration, in conjunction with the union, frowned on those who didn’t join and if I hadn’t signed on I may not have had a job my third year.
With that as preface and introduction to the current education crisis in Madison, Wisconsin and elsewhere, it’s been more than disquieting to discover that I was at least in partial agreement with the greatest liberal icon in the history of liberal icons, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Not that FDR was opposed to unions or collective bargaining–far from it–but he knew the inherent dangers of public employees negotiating with governments via union representatives.
As he said, ”All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public-personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations:” http://tiny.cc/pnwwf
Apparently, today’s public employee unions never got that message as to the “insurmountable limitations” and the impossibility of such situations. Nor can they seem to grasp FDR’s reminder that, in collective bargaining with governments, “The employer is the whole people,” meaning that, seated on the other side of the negotiating table, are not representatives of some greedy corporation but the American public.
Extrapolating from Roosevelt’s words, when public employee unions demonstrate and agitate and demand, they are demonstrating and agitating against “the whole people” and their demands are not being made against a mayor, governor, or president but rather against every taxpayer.
President Ronald Reagan . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3744)
Crusader:
It is obvious you do not know the definition of “Tyrant”
Perhaps you should look it up before your next irresponsible response.
A Tyrant is a ruler who rules without the benefit of a structure of Laws and Constitution.
Neither Mr. Wickert, a non elected official, or Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a duly elected official, representing the majority of Wisconsin voters in our most recent election, are NOT tyrants, but responsible citizens working to support the will of the electorate to balance the State’s underfunded budget,legally within the Laws and Constitution of the State of Wisconsin.
I suggest you re-evaluate your opinion and decide who is trying to bypass the Laws and Constitution of the State of Wisconsin, by refusing to participate in the legislative process for which they were elected. Last time I checked 14 fugitive Democratic Senators are still camped out in Illinois to avoid their legal responsibility to participate in the Wisconsin State Senate.