In Wisconsin battle, it’s not about the budget
You still can’t find a single Democratic state senator in the entire state of Wisconsin. All 14 of them remain in self-imposed exile in Illinois, and as long as they stay there, they can continue to prevent passage of a highly controversial bill that would sharply reduce benefits for teachers and other government employees and, more importantly, gut public labor unions.
It’s that second aspect of the bill that has drawn national and even international attention. As the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports:
The bill would require most public workers to pay half their pension costs – typically 5.8% of pay for state workers – and in many cases at least 12% of their health care costs. Union leaders have said they are willing to accept those concessions, which total nearly $330 million through June 2013.
Under the bill, the unions could not bargain over anything but wages, would have to hold annual elections to keep their organizations intact and would lose the ability to have union dues deducted from state paychecks. Employees would no longer have to automatically pay union dues, but could choose whether they want to do so.
In other words, the unions are willing to swallow the economic demands. If givebacks are necessary to help balance the state budget in a time of crisis, the employees say they’re willing to do their part.
However, Gov. Scott Walker has refused to accept that offer and also refuses to negotiate with labor or Democrats. He doesn’t see this merely as a chance to win an important battle against organized labor; he sees it as an opportunity to win the entire war, forever, by stripping state unions of most of their power and influence. And if he succeeds, the implications for the labor movement nationwide would be profound.
At the moment, only five states prohibit collective bargaining by teachers and other public employees, as the map below demonstrates. Georgia is one of the five. (Note: The right to bargain collectively does not imply the legal right to strike in many states.)
Teachers unions in particular have long been a favorite target of conservatives, with a lot of people blaming unions for poor classroom performance. So the map above made me curious: How does the ability of teachers to form unions and bargain collectively correlate to classroom performance? If strong teachers unions truly do hamper education, the five states that ban collective bargaining by teachers ought to rank fairly high in educational performance.
Here are the numbers for the five states in question, plus Wisconsin, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, given annually across the nation to fourth and eighth graders.
Texas, North Carolina and Virginia are roughly at the national average. Georgia and South Carolina trail in most categories. Wisconsin does very well.
Here are the state rankings for average SAT scores for the six states in question:
Wisconsin 2
Virginia 33
North Carolina 39
Texas 45
Georgia 47
South Carolina 48
The numbers above might be a little misleading, given that most Wisconsin seniors take the ACT rather than the SAT. Then again, Wisconsin ranks second on the ACT as well.
– Jay Bookman
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618 comments Add your comment
MPercy
February 21st, 2011
6:19 pm
Doggone/GA @1:37 pm “But when you’re elected to office, your job is to represent your voters. And Dems have abdicated that responsibility.” and I would say they are doing an exceptionally GOOD JOB of that representation, by preventing the passage of a bad bill
See, and that’s what I was saying about the Senate Republicans who tried hard to prevent the passage of that other bad bill…I don’t recall your opinion of that being quite the same. I don’t recall the Rs of the Senate, however, fleeing the jurisdiction to prevent a quorum, they simply voted No when given the opportunity.
0311/0317 - 1811/1801
February 21st, 2011
6:19 pm
Del:
Exactly ! Smoke & Mirrors when they have nothing else.
0311/0317 - 1811/1801
February 21st, 2011
6:20 pm
Granny:
I did the new handle so I can find my posts a lot easier when I scroll but I’m still old “Scout”.
I announced it way back.
Adam
February 21st, 2011
6:20 pm
MPercy: It makes sense though, Republicans have been trying to get rid of unions regardless of which union it is for quite some time now. Why would I give my money to someone who wants my destruction? Just for the sake of appearing to be unbiased?
0311/0317 - 1811/1801
February 21st, 2011
6:22 pm
Mr. G. …………. you must have the patience of Job !
Adam
February 21st, 2011
6:25 pm
Also MPercy: The quorum thing might not work in the US Senate the same way it does in the Wisconsin State Senate. In any case The Rs did a good job of representing their own interests quite well. After successfully running the propaganda machine AGAINST health care reform, they did try to block a bill that was and is still seen as having things that it doesn’t have (such as death panels).
Misinformation went a long way toward shaping public opinion in that case and we’ll never really know if the Rs were representing their constituents OR if they had a concerted effort to do what they wanted and make the public see it their way through the misinformation.
In a way, we see the same kind of tactic in use in Wisconsin: blaming a budget crisis on something unrelated in an attempt to garner public opinion against something that the Rs wanted gone anyway. It’s just a tactic to get the public to continue voting them in while they continue to do whatever the heck they want, bit by bit.
MPercy
February 21st, 2011
6:26 pm
Left wing management @1:48 pm The 401 [sic, i suspect 401(k) was meant here] solution, to start with, is laughable after the gutting of Wall St regulation and the market crashes of recent years
Not at all. You seem to be under the impression that only Wall St. products can be bought in a 401(k). My 401(k) allows me to invest everything I save by investing into US Treasuries bond fund, as does my IRA (with an IRA you have tons more freedom).
MPercy
February 21st, 2011
6:33 pm
Jay @1:51 pm To MPercy: I do not know how they can make it any more explicit. The conservative reluctance to admit that fact demonstrates just how weak their case has become.
At least when I called out the question, when I was given some feedback that it was indeed the case, apparently, then I retracted that part of my comments. I still wonder what “doing our fair share” meant, but hey, so be it.
But I still get called out by our host and lumped in with other “conservatives” who show reluctance to admit a “fact” (I’ll accept as fact that something was said, but reserve my right to suspect perhaps, just perhaps, they were not really meaning the words they said).
Oh well.
Jimmy Hoffa, where are U?
February 21st, 2011
6:59 pm
“The bill would require most public workers to pay half their pension costs – typically 5.8% of pay for state workers – and in many cases at least 12% of their health care costs.”
See, right there is what creates animosity against unions. I had to contribute a lot more than 5.8% for retirement, and way more than 12% for health insurance. When union memebers whine about something that most other people have to live with it doesn’t win ‘em many friends I’m afraid.
Jay
February 21st, 2011
7:10 pm
So Jimmy, if someone had written something similar to your post, something along the lines that CEOs get all these tens of millions of dollars while complaining that their taxes are too high, etc., would you respond by accusing them of wealth envy? I’m just trying to comprehend how one thing differs from the other.
Left wing management
February 21st, 2011
7:11 pm
MPercy: “You seem to be under the impression that only Wall St. products can be bought in a 401(k).”
Ok, fair point. As you can imagine, though, my beef here is not entirely the matter of the wisdom of the investments from a financial standpoint but the subtle erosion in a sense of a social pact that it brings about. But again, I realize you and I are probably not going to agree on that anytime soon.
Erica
February 21st, 2011
10:42 pm
This is a biased post. The test scores are old and have since change.
http://www.act.org/news/data/10/states.html and http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/policyblog/detail/2010-sat-scores-by-state are the most recent test scores.
Maine, Hawaii, and New York have collective bargaining and they are in the bottom five SAT scores. Florida, Tennessee, and Michigan are in the bottom five for ACT scores which also have collective bargaining.
Michael Wade
February 21st, 2011
10:50 pm
Teacher union dues expressly cannot be used for PACs in Indiana. Teachers must make seperate contributions to those. Agency shop, or forced proportional payments by non union members, is used to fund the cost of the negotiation process and that seems only fair to me.
The Leg Lamp is a "major award".....
February 21st, 2011
11:10 pm
New Democrat slogan in Wisconsin:
“When the going gets tough, the weak get going……to Illinois.”
DueNothing
February 21st, 2011
11:13 pm
I’ll bet if a poll were done of all Wisconsin state workers you’d find that more than 50% of them vote Republican. I am including the police, fire and state troopers in that poll. I love how they cut their own throats.
Bill Orvis White
February 22nd, 2011
7:24 am
Fire all of them like the Honorable Ronald Wilson Reagan did with those lazy air traffic controllers. The reality is that Governor Walker needs to make cuts. He asked these spoiled teachers to make some sacrifice so that he can balance the budget and look for $avings. I say, FIRE THEM! There are millions of hard-working folk who could take their places. What a bunch of bums.
Then, don’t let those stupid liberal Dems back into their positions. IMPEACH THEM ALL! I pray that the Honorable Governor Walker NEVER BACKS DOWN!
I’m sick and tired of these radicals dictating to the rest of us!!!!!!
God Bless,
Bill
independent thinker
February 22nd, 2011
7:39 am
The union pension bonanza has to end somehow and some way. Gov. Walker is to be praised for taking on this tar baby,However he does himself a terrible disservice by exempting fire and police from his anti-collective bargaining program. They are the worst offenders. Just look at exploding pensions in Atlanta and NY City. for fire and police workers.
In NY City a fireman can retire after just twenty years of service, Their generous pensions have a $12,500 a year bonus at the end of the year. To get reelected, mayor Bloomberg agreed in a wave of post 9-11 sympathy for fire and police workers to give a vested $12,5000 pension bonus per year to existing workers to keep them on the job ( and gain votes)Now the bill is due for just that bag of goodies which is over 600 million dollars the city does not have. So just like Atlanta, the solution is cutting back on city services since city tax rates are among the highest in the country. Who loses with this Santa Clause attitude? the taxpayer and the public who these alleged servants serve.
We The People of the USA Need To Thank The Wisconsin 14 « streetvisuals
February 24th, 2011
12:15 pm
[...] Bookman In Wisconsin battle, it’s not about the budget 9:29 am February 21, 2011, by [...]