Unions try to bully Madison’s elected officials into submission?
This is not my opinion at all. But i thought this article, written by Trevino for the UK Gaurdian was ‘interesting’ as well as the comments following. And is it just me or does it seem like the far right is trying to pit the public unions against the private?
Who Governs Wisconsin By Joshua Trevino
The fight for America’s future now centres upon Wisconsin. On one side are Governor Scott Walker, the Wisconsin Republican majorities in the legislature, and the majority of Wisconsinites who voted them into office. On the other side are the public sector unions for whom governance is, at bottom, a racket – and their Democratic allies.
This fight began when Governor Walker decided to deal with Wisconsin’s state budget deficit, projected at $3.6bn over the coming two years, by addressing root causes: not through tax hikes or state worker layoffs, but by tackling the excessive powers and benefits of the public sector unions. With this done, sensible budgeting and prioritisation is possible – not with an eye toward union demands, but to the actual needs of Wisconsinites.
The striking thing about the governor’s proposals is their mildness. Indeed, private sector workers – that is, the overwhelming majority of Wisconsinites and Americans both – would be fortunate to have such terms. Wisconsin public sector union members are to be asked to contribute 5.8% of their salaries to pensions, and 12% to their healthcare premiums. They furthermore will retain collective bargaining rights only on matters of salary, but lose them for benefits and perks. These would be regarded as fairly ordinary terms of employment engagement for most Americans.
For public sector unions, it’s a declaration of war.
These unions – the American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union, the Wisconsin Education Association and others – regard American democratic governance not as a guarantor of liberties, but as an engorged teat. Their purpose is not the protection of its workers as such, but the organised extraction of money and privileges from their fellow citizens’ taxes.
The contrast with private sector unions is stark. Though their record is mixed – see the United Auto Workers for a union that nearly eradicated its own industrial sector – they do, at bottom, represent principles of free association and private commerce that fit squarely within the American tradition. Private sector unions do have a long and squalid history of seeking state power to enforce their will (as their near-uniform opposition to right-to-work legislation shows), but they are not per se antithetical to the free market tradition that animates our nation’s economy, even now.
Where private sector unions organise against another private interest – be it the bosses, the owners or the corporations – public sector unions organise against the people at large. Their purpose is altogether more insidious by its very nature, and their methods are familiar to any aficionado of the gangster film genre: nice state you have here – shame if something were to happen to it.
Faced with the prospect of losing their generous subsidies from Wisconsin’s taxpayers, Wisconsin’s public sector unions are attacking them. Members of the teachers’ union are in their third day of a “sick out” that denies Wisconsin children the education that is their due. Wisconsin officeholders are subjected to physical threat and intimidation, with “[a]ngry crowds … pounding on our glass windows”, according to one Wisconsin Senate staffer email. Firefighters have arrived to lend their voice and muscle to the fracas. In their desperation, the public sector unions have resorted to the practice of government-as-piñata: hit it hard enough, and the money will spill forth.
The Wisconsin Senate Democrats, for their part, are weighing in by checking out. Rather than fulfill their duty toward their constituents and oaths of office by debating and voting on the governor’s plan, they have disappeared en masse. The intent is to deny the Wisconsin Senate the quorum necessary to conduct business.
