When the Wisconsin General Assembly voted to pass Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill, the Democratic legislators made themselves indistinguishable from the protestors surrounding the assembly floor.
They wore the same pro-union orange T-shirts. They behaved in the same sophomoric way, breaking out in a noisy, finger-pointing demonstration. They chanted the same ubiquitous word: “Shame!” They might as well have brought guitars onto the floor for a Woody Guthrie sing-along and touted “Walker = Hitler” signs.
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In Wisconsin, it’s less that Democrats act to protect a special interest than that they belong to a special interest. A complete identification has long existed among state government, the public-sector unions, and the Democratic party. By seeking to break up this powerful, self-dealing nexus, Walker is “assaulting,” in President Barack Obama’s formulation, a partisan political machine dependent on the state for its functioning.
The fight in Wisconsin has focused on collective-bargaining rights, but that is not the main event. As Daniel DiSalvo of the City College of New York-CUNY notes in a Weekly Standard article, 24 states either don’t allow collective bargaining for public workers, or permit it for only a segment of workers. Even if Walker prevails, Wisconsin will allow more wide-ranging collective bargaining than these states.
Not to mention the federal government. Obama may lecture Walker about union rights, but he can go straight to Congress with a highly political proposal to freeze the pay of federal workers because they can’t collectively bargain for wages or benefits.
No, the most important measure at stake in Wisconsin is the governor’s proposal for the state to stop deducting union dues from the paychecks of state workers. This practice essentially wields the taxing power of the government on behalf of the institutional interests of the unions. It makes the government an arm of the public-sector unions. It is a priceless favor.
Wisconsin doesn’t collect dues for Elks lodges or the NRA. What makes these organizations different from public-sector unions is that people freely choose to join them and freely choose to pay their dues. They are truly voluntary organizations that don’t rely on the power of the state for their well-being. Walker wants to give members of public-sector unions a measure of this same autonomy.
Perhaps some of these members aren’t liberal Democrats, so they don’t want to pay dues — roughly $1,000 annually in the case of teachers — which will overwhelmingly go to funding and organizing for Democratic candidates. Perhaps some of them, regardless of their politics, want to spend that money on their families or other pressing needs. Walker will allow them to exercise a choice now closed to them. In most of 21st-century America, that surely sounds like common sense; for the unions, it sounds like a dire threat.
When Indiana governor Mitch Daniels ended collective bargaining and the automatic collection of dues in 2005, the number of members paying dues plummeted by roughly 90 percent. In 2007, New York City’s Transit Authority briefly stopped automatically collecting dues for the Transport Workers Union, and dues fell off by more than a third. Without these dues, the ability of public-sector unions to influence elections — what they care about most — drastically diminishes.
This is why Wisconsin Senate Democrats preferred to flee the state rather than stay and vote on a proposal that would curtail their fundraising and organizational base. They can dress up their opposition in the rhetoric of workers’ “rights,” but even if all collective bargaining were stripped from all Wisconsin public workers, they’d still have extensive civil-service protections. For Democrats, the issue is whether they can continue to rely on state government to grease an essential cog in their political machine.
Public-sector unions are a creature of government, and the Democrats are the party of government. The two of them have identical interests and worldviews, and both want to leverage government to swell their campaign coffers. How to characterize this? The word “shame” comes to mind.
In a Union you get a vote. Often times your vote in a union counts more than your vote in an election, considering that special interests (the corporate kind and not the kind that hopes to keep just wages, decent healthcare, and keep their employees in a position to continue participating in the private economy) usually drown their voices out.
Unions are a counter-balance to the loud, rich, and ubiquitous voice of corporate America, as it has taken over.
We used to be anti-trust in this country, for over a half century--and it helped to build the middle class and create a more stable economy in which consumers could purchase goods and pay their mortgages. I don't know when we went from being anti-trust to anti-union but, Dorothy, we're a long way from home.
This all sounds great!... Until you realize that the $1,000 more you have in your pocket feels like alot less when your benefits are cut, wages are cut, and working conditions become less favorable, and there is nothing you can do about it because you don't have a union of like-minded workers banded together to stand together to make a difference, or the money gathered by union dues to fight anything in court. If any workers support this it is very short-sighted. Not to mention that the average government employee already earns 5-10% less than workers in the private sector, this is accounting for wages and benefits. (KCBS)
It makes me think of walmart... "Come and save more on our every-day low prices". (while we wipe out the competition). (oh yeah, about those every-day low prices, we'll phase those out once we've decimated any competition, and offer "selective low prices.")
How's that for an extra thousand in your pocket right now?
I'm a Federal employee. Jimmy Carter signed an executive order barring 98 percent of Federal Employees from collective bargaining for pay and benefits. Federal Unions represent non supervisory personnel when discrimination and work environment issues are involved. The US Civil service commission uses desk audits and job descriptions to set pay scales. On occasion audits will reduce the pay scale. As one artice in NRO pointed out 90 percent of the Public sector jobs are at the State and Local Level. Apparently the Union protestors in Wisconsin feel that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander.
You mean, That all sounds great....until you have to deal with reality? Until you are no longer protected by the taxpayers from facing prevailing economic conditions? Until you realize that you no longer exist in a vacuum?
Come on, y'all should remember this Dylan warning:
"The times, they are a-changing"
Steve, you keep using that word, but it's obvious that you don't know what it means.
The US is still way to anti-trust. Though you obviosly aren't. You want to maintain the only monopoly that is still legal in this country. The union monopoly over the supply of labor for many companies.
Unionism and anti-trust had nothing to do with the building of the middle class. That was formed decades before either movement was a glimmer in the eye of local socialists. It was the corporations that you rail against that created the middle class. They did it by inventing things that improved the productivity of workers. This improved productivity made it possible to pay workers more. Unions on the other hand are absolutely opposed to productivity enhancements.
In Eric's world, the only reason why anyone works for more than a dollar a day, is because of unions.
On the other hand, out here in the real world, non-union workers do very well.
There's a reason why, in the private sector, workers have been abandoning unions by the thousands. It's because unions produce nothing of value for workers.
Lesse here if I got this right. The Democrat controlled governments deducted up to $1,000 per year from it's employees paychecks and transferred that money to the Labor atUnions who then spent the money on the relection of the Democrats??
Leave it to conservatives to level the accusation of corruption ("racket"; "self-dealing") at the union/Democrat nexus.
Incomprehensible as it may seem, Democrats are partial to unions because of Democrasts' core belief that lower and middle class Americans do better with unions than without, and do so at the expense of those (if anyone) who can best minimize any negative effects.
Conservatives have very powerful arguments against unions. Unions, by definition, distort markets, and distorted markets lead to all sorts of bad consequences including, but not limited to, misallocation of resources, corrective policies designed to repair distortions which themselves lead to further distortions, etc. And while unions may have been really important back when twelve year olds were forced to work sixteen hour days, we've basically achieved a reasonable workplace (with a bunch of exceptions -- ask any coal miner).
This is a theme of conservative publications and especially conservative talk radio. It's provocative but not productive -- sorta like the daily bod display on the home page of NR.
I'm confused by comments like the one Eric O. posted. It is true that Walker's proposition will cost the teachers in increased benefits costs but what's wrong with that? Obama talks about shared sacrifice. Isn't that the ultimate example of shared sacrifice: public employees sharing in the burden of those who fund their pay, the very citizens Obama is goading into personal fiscal austerity? I am a state worker and I had to take 12 furlough days last year because the budget required it. Sometimes budgets require of us things we'd not do out of our own free will.
Also, since when do private teachers earn more than public teachers? Is Wisconsin special in this sense or are we simply comparing apples to oranges?
Apropos of my previous comment, I invite you to read Charles Koch's piece in today's Wall Street Journal.
His arguments are principled and cogent.
I don't doubt for a minute his sincerity. What's he out to do, die the third richest man in America instead of the fourth? What motivates him? Greed? Or instead a sincere desire for America to succeed by applying time-tested principles he believes are the correct ones?
Make no mistake -- I fundamentally disagree with the guy. But not for a moment do I think his motives are improper.
Contrast his piece with the garbage you hear on right wing talk radio or see in half the comments on this website.
To Steve and others, please note that Rich's comments are directed at public sector unions, not unions in the private sector.
I have no problem with unions bargaining in the private sector for their share of economic output. If workers believe that membership in a union will help them derive greater economic and workplace safety benefits then they should unionize.
However, the whole public sector union notion is inherently corrupt, as has been demonstrated repeatedly since the Wisconsin situation erupted. In my opinion the only rational (rational, meaning for all parties, not just the workers) reason for union representation in public jobs, given civil service protection laws already on the books, is for those jobs that have some element of physical labor/endangerment, such as police, firemen, etc. Those people may need representation to ensure that their work environment is not subject to safety concerns outside the norms of the job. But unionization for economic benefits only leads to the corrupt feedback loop that Rich cites here. FDR recognized it. I do too.
As a taxpayer, I want the executive branch employing public workers at a wage/benefit rate that ensures decent service at a reasonable value, something akin to what we hope to receive in private sector transactions. I don't want a chief executive looking across the negotiating table at the person he hopes will be leading the effort to get him/her re-elected.
MikeB & our union guests: it's not about "unions in general" it's only about "goverment employees in unions" (which as I'm sure you have heard even FDR was dead set against.) The left has to keep blurring that distinction, because nobody is going after "non-govt unions." Private unions will succeed or fail based on their own merits, and do not cause governments to go bankrupt. Whereas govt unions are in collusion with management (Democrat politicians) against the interests of the owners (taxpayers, i.e everyone else), and puts the entire state at financial risk.
It's really not "conservatives vs. unions", it's "taxpayers vs. bureaucrats." And we have run out of money to pay for the bureaucracy we have (another thing the left works hard to ignore), let alone the even bigger bureaucracy the left dreams of.
Only about 6% of voters are govt union employees, while pretty much 100% of voters pay taxes (state/local if not federal.)
So I say -- keep going, Madison protesters! You are shedding light on the sordid links between public unions and democrats. Let's have this debate!
To me, this is the absolute height of unfairness. My wife is a teacher in California and we are both conservative Republicans. It angers us to no end that union dues are automatically deducted from her paycheck and used to fund idiot local Socialist...I mean Democrat candidates, that neither of us would ever dream of voting into office.
I cannot think of anything that the Union has done for my wife, yet we get to watch at least $150.00 per month disappear from her paycheck.
I would just like to say thanks to all of those who have commented. This is the most respectful and thoughtful group I've encountered on this subject. I admire the passion on both sides. And the ability to keep the discussion civil. Hang in there everyone.
I've seen Union work first hand, and you are, flately either being disingenous or amazingly naive.
People, including businessmen, politicians, and, yes, Union leaders, act in their own self interest. With Unions, that has led to hundreds of millions of dollars poored into Democrat campaign coffers or alligned 3rd party advertising, and more money spent on phone banks and other get out the vote operations, in the past several election cycles.
What do they buy with this? Power. Trumka announces it. So did the SEIU in California. And politicians, being self interested, understand this. I have seen first hand Political appointees betraying the public trust and committing borderline fraud in order to ensure that the Unions that they deal with are happy with them. Why? So that they get the Union's money and support when it is time for their next job, or at least don't get the Union's opposition.
The Union use money that they forcibly take from their often unwilling, legally conscripted membership (related: a common practice is for local union leadership sets local elections at poorly publicized times and places to keep one clique in power), which, through collective bargaining allows them to dictate to the taxpayer their obligations (and thus how much money the gov't will confiscate from taxpayers at the point of a gun), and use that money to elect "their" politicians.
The politicians will turn around and be exceedingly, eh, accomodating, to the Union. This is an inevitable result of the system that is in place with Public Sector unionization in most places. To pretend that such basic power issues don't happen, and wouldn't naturally happen as people seek to take advantage of avenues to power, security, wealth and influence, is ignorant. Moreover, it's a denial of what's actually occuring right now.
If you already know this, I have the same demand of you that I have of the president and, frankly, the main stream media. Stop lying to the public.
@Jcc12: According to a former CA teacher I know, teachers in CA are able to opt out of paying the union dues, it is just intentionally difficult to find out about that and execute on it.
Sort of. If you submit the "Opt Out" form, you'll receive a rebate of those funds which were NOT spent on collective bargaining purposes. Except that amount is only about 38%. Of course, that means that the union still gets the remaining 62%, even if you're not even a member. And that's after you've gone through the considerable trouble of filling out the form, submitting it, receiving nasty comments from co-workers, alienation from colleagues, etc.
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