Wisconsin Gov. Walker Threatens To Deploy National Guard Against Unions

My point stands, BTA. Public officials aim to please the electorate, not the public servants the state employs. The voters have an interest in good schools and a balanced budget -- issues like teacher pay are not of interest to the vast majority of their constituents. The same conflict exists with our elected representatives.

 

Using your logic, companies would never underpay their employees because they have a vested interest in selling a high quality product! History, however, diasagrees with that logic. Companies that effectively block unionization efforts routinely underpay their employees.

 

Walmart is a case in point.

 

Exactly. I think people are confusing the difference between government and corporate. I'm not aware of any government agency that engaged in the abuses that corporations did. Government unions were created for the sole purpose of monetary compensation, there wasn't a "danger" or "abuse" element. Over the years the government unions have gotten too powerful and now the people and their government are trying to reign them in.

 

No we don't confuse the two. As a matter of fact you do see it, without being aware of it - in Wisconsin.

Depriving them of half their bargaining power. That's union busting per administrative law. Different means than corporate union busting, same end.

 

I'd say it wasn't just "wages" and more "working conditions." Just because government employment may be less likely to encourage abuse (then again, do we have any proof of that?) doesn't mean public employees can't be squeezed by poor working conditions. Unions are a measure for the employees to push back, providing organizational support as well as lobbying.

As for getting too powerful and now it being "the people" trying to rein them in, color me unconvinced. I'd say they are too powerful for some - and said some of the people want to see them weakened. Whether that is a good idea overall is another topic - I think the Wisconsin case is political intrigue masquerading as concerns over the budget. By now I think it much more likely that the unions (or, rather, most unions - particularly those affiliated with the Democratic party) are an "ingrained" of most GOP factions, and one opposed on a general principle.

 

To be fair, it appears some parts of this bill would actually save the state money. Some of the provisions found in the bill include increasing the amount of money the employees pay into their pension fund, and increasing the amount of money they pay towards their health care plan. So if the employees are paying costs that were formerly paid by the state, then clearly that would save the state money.

However, it is unclear to me how busting the union represents a cost savings to the government. Union dues are not paid to the state government, so how does preventing people from spending money that was never going to the state to begin with help the state reduce its deficit? From MSNBC.com, the main provision of the law would:

The main function of a union is to negotiate workers' salary and benefits. This bill takes away benefits (as listed above), and would also not allow the union to seek pay increases for their members, which effectively eliminates any need to have a union at all. In exchange, the governor has promised no layoffs of state employees.

 

Eh, sorry, I don't get it. I don't believe the monkey "governor" is really interested in saving any money, except for his real supporters, the tea cronies.

There have been two tracks in this discussion, one about the bill, which is nothing more than an attempt to bust the union on one level, while on the larger level, stealing from working-class, honest people, to pay off the rich. The other, the more serious one, is about the system of education, which indeed needs improving. There is frustration in the notion that the taxpayers are not getting their money's worth, and with that I completely agree. As for the "bill" proposed by the corporate stooge, it is what is: corporate communism.

 

...and it should be further pointed out that part of the reason benefits for government employees are so good is that the pay is often substantially lower than what those employees could be making in the private sector. Keep in mind that better benefits are in the long run cheaper for a company than higher pay since they get discounts due to the size of their employee pool. A dollar worth of benefits is usually quite a bit less expensive than an actual dollar in pay. That government jobs provide such good benefits is no accident -- it's a cost saving measure -- and it plays a big role in ensuring that the state is able to retain people who could easily earn more in the private sector.

 

While there is a point to that in the private sector (though also a counter-point), the dynamic is very different with the public sector. The interests of the general public are served by not allowing public servants in critical roles to strike. Prison guards, firemen, police officers, even social services workers, do critical work and can hold a city hostage in a way standard workers in a company can't hold that company hostage. Teachers aren't quite the same thing, but the power dynamic is still not the same.

What's more, what you fail to realize is that unions don't necessarily put the power in the hands of the union members. They put the power in the hands of the union bosses and leaders. How that trickles down to the rank and file may vary from one union to another, but American history is rife with union burocracy and corruption just as bad as anything you saw in corporations before unions.

That is such a gross inequality that I am honestly staggered you came up with it. In most publicly traded companies, these 'votes' are assigned per unit wealth (i.e. you have to pay money for them). They are literally a new aristocracy (and often one where other corporate entities are the aristocrats). In our democracy, while it's true that union members are a minority (about 12% of workers), they still have the same voice as any other group of the same size. On top of that, while the common worker may not be well aware of the union worker's situation, that knife cut's both ways. Propaganda comes out from both sides saying that union bosses are corrupt or that teachers are woefully underpaid. Both sides have their work cut out for them where the non-union worker is concerned, and both have produced powerful stereotypes.

 

NOG, I take it that it never occurred to you that I might ha e invoked that particular inequality with specific intent? It is true that corporate power rests in the hands of the few, but that is because most stockholders don't vote their shares. The ruling proxy rarely holds more than a third of the shares and the majority of shareholders care not one whit about how well the company employees are compensated. This directly parallels electoral politics. More than a third simply don't vote, and those that do are by and large unconcerned with how well their public servants are compensated. Teachers would need to make something in the area of 6 figures or the minimum wage before your typical voter will feel compelled to act, so it is unreasonable to assume that a teacher can really protect his pay or benefits at the ballot box.

 

He makes several good points but here are some things he doesn't say.

1. Workers can still use some protection regardless of if they work in the private or public sectors. Note that the GOP bill in WI had no other way for a worker to complain about real workplace issues.
2. While unions are a huge source of political money (often leftwing) they don't make up the bulk of it-after all the campaigns unions send money to are usually outspent-just look a the average funding for a political race between a democrat and a republican (the republican comes out with more campaign money I strongly suspect because the network of business and management people that give money to GOP candidates results in a larger total donation even though on paper it is broken up into multiple smaller donations from various individuals while the union has already collected money from individual members and writes a single check or two from that pre-consolidated account).
3. The County, mine, which the current governor ran (as County Exec for almost a decade prior to gaining the governorshp) has not seen an improvement in services. Hampering unions simply means workers aren't paid well-not that money saved is used for anything useful or even balancing the budget (my County is still having budget problems and recently had a series of articles on how the quality of County mental services has taken a turn for the worse while our union fighting Governor was County Exec). If anything the complaints sound like a call-if taken seriously-to reform how unions are dealt with rather than for a ban on unions (which the governor is subtly trying to create).

I'll see about adding pictures soon but I should sleep so maybe not tonight.

I caught the local VCY channel (Christian Right) acting as a propaganda outfit for the governor and this bill-hitting hard with points that were true and then venturing beyond the realm of half-truth to outright BS when that didn't work. Checking on local propaganda outlets though I don't listen to local rightwing radio (which is probably worse).

Also I was told most TV channels were running an ad asking people to support the bill. TV ads aren't cheap so that means someone with deep pockets is supporting this-which ads evidence to the argument more than just a lying governor is trying to pull stuff.


Oh, and several comments ago someone (I think it was Snook) mentioned the "MacIver Institute"-they are untrustworthy. They appear to want to be the local CATO (which is very ideological already) but are too involved in making their videos slick and outright deceptive. I've already caught them telling people half-truths on a totally different subject a couple months ago when our lying governor was costing our state a bunch of money by sending it back to the feds instead of building higher speed rail. The MacIver Institute did little things like not count *construction* jobs (which would have been in the thousands even if they just lasted a year or 2) when calculating how many jobs would be created by upgrading the freight lines between Milwaukee and Madison to carry people. It did BS like that and a few other things. From that experience I would say it is a safe bet to assume they will not tell you the whole story when you are looking over one of their reports.

 

Hmm, I'm not very sure about the underlying presumptions he bases the article on. Here is what I think they are:

- "Public sector unions are much richer, thus more powerful and can dictate policy." Compared to private business unions, perhaps. Altogether? Not necessarily, especially compared to any interest groups on the other end of the political spectrum. Sure, they try to bankroll politicians' campaigns when the politicians are friendly to their cause, but so does everyone else. As far as I know unions are far from the highest donor in such cases. Hasn't anyone noticed unions appear to usually be hammered in various ads and media campaigns? IMO that's an indication that they are being outspent in that.

- "There is too much money for government employees due to unions, not enough for everyone else." I'm not so sure about that. Government jobs, iirc, tend not to be competitively paid - and as already said, they tend to offer other incentives such as job security, benefits, etc. That is why they tend to be considered low-risk jobs compared to the high-risk, high-reward jobs (not all) one may find in the private sector with similar qualifications. If you make them worse, eventually you will end up with fewer qualified people choosing those jobs, thus getting worse service. When someone had to spent 4 years of their life and take on a not-insignificant student loan to get their B.A., there's only so little you can pay them before they (and, by the way, everyone else who is now looking for what to study in university), decide that they shouldn't bother.

Also, I am not so sure about the share of the different budgets in California (or Wisconsin, or elsewhere), but payroll isn't always the highest expense. In fact, I'm not so sure that reducing the workers' benefits will result in a lot of savings. Sure, if there are glaring cases such as the headmaster buying a yacht in 3 years (and I'd check first before assuming whatever someone somewhere wrote is correct), then those mistakes should be corrected. However, inferring that the system is broken and everyone is wallowing in government money because of a few cases might be a very wrong induction.

- The presumption is that the current state of public unions benefits "bureaucrats" and not ordinary citizens - thus their weakening WILL definitely benefit ordinary citizens. I'm not so sure - while unions do provide their members with additional perks, that needn't preclude every possible way to make working with them easier. However, what it certainly will mean is a change in the political status quo - with the bigger beneficiaries being their political opponents. This would change the political makeup of the state, not just on that limited issue, if for no other reason that politicians of all political stripe must find other backers - thus either change their platforms or be marginalized. Whether that will benefit citizens remains to be seen.

Overall, I am not saying everything is fine and no adjustments should be made, but I think that a lot of the calls against the evil unions are motivated not by any concern for government efficiency, but by purely partisan concerns and at the behest of political donors. In the Wisconsin case, in particular, iirc the public employees have already agreed with higher pension contributions - basically the pay cut that the government is proposing. Now it's pretty much all a matter of how much authority the government has over their jobs. Funny how things go, right?

(As an aside, I find the anger at the government jobs safety and "entitlements" somewhat misguided. Those guys chose to get less money than they could elsewhere for higher job security. Why shouldn't they enjoy the benefits of their choice, since they suffered its shortcomings? )

 

It's one thing to say: 'Don't let a crisis go to waste', and another to, in corporate speak, engage in 'rain-making' and intentionally manufacture that useful crisis yourself - which appears to be precisely what Walker did do in Wisconsin: He provoked it, to then use it to attack the Democrats through the public sector unions - one of their major source of campaign funding and grass roots political support. If he succeeds he kills two birds with one stone.

Walker claims a 'budget shortfall' of $137 million. He said that after his GOP had just pushed through $117 million in tax breaks for GOP business allies. Before all that, the State's fiscal agency had actually predicted a surplus for the state. Oh never mind. Taxes, bad. The unions didn't suck away all the money from the budget, it was Walker who gave the money away - to then blame the deficit he created on the the unions and the wages of public employees and their outrageous, just outrageous, 'entitlements'. Take that for chutzpah.

Walkers ideas of (non)governance remind me of the insane policies described in Ken Silverstein's horrifying article "Tea party in the Sonora: For the future of G.O.P. governance, look to Arizona"

Dwell on that - the expense for saving that $25 million was $149 million. And these fools boast that as an achievement? Lunacy! There are GOPers out there who are so dimwitted as to consider a lack of tax controls and tax enforcement a competitive advantage for their state - in their fever ravaged minds not having your books checked attracts (what sort of?) business. In light of such enthusiastically perpetrated monstrosities the current GOP push for allowing state bankruptcy is simply obscene. These folks reduce tax revenue by cutting taxes over the board, destroying intact budgets. Then they gut and cut working government agencies. And when the sh*t hits the fan, they say: Gee, the state is broke now, the agencies are broken, we need to take hard steps, cut even more, to get out of this crisis! Starve the beast put to it's logical insane conclusion.

Walker is just another one in a long line up of reckless, irresponsible and destructive GOP ideologues. The interests he serves in this are the folks who funded his election campaign. For them, destroying labour unions is in the top tier of their to-do list. The tea party wing of the GOP, as embodied by Walker, betrays with their mindless battle cry: "Cut Everything!" their angry neo-Jacobin mentality. They go to work, enthusiastically burning down the barn, with the unshakeable certainty that something awesome will rise from the ashes. The result might just be awesome, of the terrifying variety.

There will not be much state left when they are done. But, to reiterate that Republican mantra, "the state that governs least is the state that governs best".

 

No, it doesn't. I don't care how twisted you think the system is, being rich doesn't get you more votes. That is the huge, undeniable difference.

From experience, I can tell you that isn't true. Teacher wage has been a local and state issue around here before, and teachers weren't even being payed that badly. It was sub-par, which is why it was an issue, but it wasn't 'minimum wage' or anything close to it.

I only know specifics for a few recent elections, but Dems outspent Reps in all of them. Not always by a large marjin, but often.

This, unfortunately, sounds like politics as usual these days. When was the last time you heard of a budget fight actually resulting in solved problems, instead of just redirected waste spending to someone else's favorite waste.

I've heard this argument several times. Don't trust it. It's a very broad generalization and those are never true for their whole range. It all depends on the government and the job. While I was working for the State, the engineers and scientists could have made more money in the private sector, but would have gotten fewer benefits. Here at NASA, though, the engineers and scientists make a good deal more than the private sector, plus more benefits. From the stuff coming out of Wisconsin, I suspect teachers are payed quite competitively as it is.

 

Which is beside the point since Wisconsin - under originally projected surplus - would have been perfectly able to pay them.

The reason the state cannot to that any more is Walker's tax cuts (i.e. the corresponding loss in tax revenue). It's not what the teachers earn. Nothing the teachers or the unions have done has anything to do with that 'budget shortfall' of $137 million. That's Walker's achievement alone.