Madison — On Valentine’s Day, over 100 students in tiny Stoughton, Wis., marched out of their classrooms and into the unseasonably warm air. They had decided to protest Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s new bill to require higher pension and health-care contributions from state and local government employees.
As a student “union” leader barked into a megaphone in the background, one high-school junior expressed his concern for his teachers. “A lot of my teachers have been really concerned about this — they don’t know if they’re going to have jobs next year or not,” he worried.
Two days later, schools in Madison canceled classes so teachers could join 20,000 people in picketing the capitol building. A 700-student entourage from Madison East High School, urged on by their teachers, marched the three miles from their school to the capitol. Wisconsin’s MacIver Institute, armed with a video camera, asked one of the students what the group was there to protest. “We’re trying to stop whatever this dude is doing,” he eruditely explained.
This “dude” is trying to fill a $3.6 billion hole in the state’s budget by requiring state and local government employees to pay 5.8 percent of their salary towards their pensions (most currently pay nothing), and increasing their share of health-care premiums to 12 percent (double their current share). Governor Walker’s plan would also eliminate collective bargaining for almost everything except salary for government employees.
Some of the responses to Walker’s plan from legislative Democrats made our friend from Madison East High look like Winston Churchill. One state senator said the plan instituted “legalized slavery.” (Apparently Wisconsin’s benefits aren’t quite as lucrative as the slave pension plan.) A Democratic assemblyman compared Walker to Hosni Mubarak. On Thursday, with a vote on the full bill scheduled in the Senate, 14 Democratic senators delayed the vote by fleeing to a hotel in Rockford, Illinois. Before he ran for the border, Democratic senator Jon Erpenbach posted a single word on his Facebook page: “Democracy.”
In the meantime, the capitol was packed with thousands of government employees, many of whom had staged a “sleep-in” the night before. One sign-wielding protester approached a tie-wearing GOP staffer and sneered, “You must be a Republican.” He turned and asked, “Because I’m working?”
The raucous, drum-beating crowd was mostly made up of teachers, high-school kids, and University of Wisconsin students. On Thursday, school districts all over the state began canceling classes as their teachers called in sick en masse — government-employee strikes are illegal in Wisconsin — and teachers continued to bring their students to protest with them.
Of course, what the kids don’t understand is that Walker’s plan is intended to save their teachers’ jobs. Without the modest employee contributions required in the bill, Walker estimates he will have to fire up to 6,000 public employees. The teachers are in effect choosing massive job losses over moderate concessions.
In fact, that might be the silver lining in this whole imbroglio: If teachers and their students manage to succeed in killing Walker’s bill, the next government employee demonstration will be half as big.
— Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
"The teachers are in effect choosing massive job losses over moderate concessions."
But it's for the kids.
Large class sizes are bad...unless they're the result of teacher union actions.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"...new bill to require higher pension and health-care contributions from state and local government employees."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse'Higher' is unnecessary and actually misleading isn't it? Drop it and the sentence becomes more factual.
I'm in favor of the kids being onsite at the capital for this. Eventually, it's perhaps some of them might get an education in this matter, which is something that would have been impossible in the classroom.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs far as I understand they need one Democrat present to hold the vote. There are 19 Republicans and 14 Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate. Why does not one Republican swith the party? For a week or so. If Democrats are palying these games, why Republicans are so shy?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOne of the dirty secrets is that when push comes to shove and teachers' unions are finally forced to accept either layoffs for some or pay cuts for all (often "cuts" means smaller raises than expected), they usually finally choose the former. The unions are dominated by and run for the benefit of the entrenched middle-aged careerists making the highest salaries. With judgment on merit being strictly verboten in so many school systems, layoffs are conducted on a seniority basis - meaning more younger, low-salary teachers have to be fired, rather than fewer older ones making the same total amount. This maximizes the disruption of the layoffs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGovernor Walker still has time to do the right thing. He needs to demand that every teacher who called in "sick" produce evidence or hold them accountable for illegally striking as government employees. He needs to call out by the name the 14 Democrats who fled the state and ask for them to be recalled from office for refusing to do the job for which they were put into office. This is not a time to play nice.
Make this a presidential issue. Get Obama involved as much as possible. Don't let this issue die. Show the people there is a difference between Republicans trying to control government spending and Democrats who make teachers out to be false gods and unaccountable to the taxpayers who pay their salaries.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut "it's for the kids". Just what America needs, a bunch of "never been there, never done that" children deciding what to do in the state legislature.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow many kids will openly oppose what their teachers are doing, knowing that their grades could depend on it?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA similar occurrence in Florida last year entailed an even more cynical use of The Children. Students joined teachers to intensely lobby Charlie Crist to veto a bill that would have weakened teacher tenure and made teacher pay and retention partially dependent on test results (Crist of course ended up vetoing the bill, thus severing all remaining ties with the right).
But what an alliance - teachers who don't want to be judged based on whether they actually teach their students anything, and students who don't want to be tested.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUnions force higher wages and benefits - lose jobs. Sounds like a familiar and modern tune.
Teachers recruited us students back in the 60s when they unionized. Of course they could fool us into thinking they would stop within reason back then. Kids weren't raised by packs of wild teachers back then either.
The solution to better education has been proven to be not money. Vouchers, alternative competition, and results oriented accountability will help, though. Thanks for bringing the teacher problem to our attention, unions. We'll get to work on it long term.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat the other commenters said -- if this was about saving teacher's jobs, the unions would be willing to negotiate on pension contributions.
But it's not -- this protest is entirely "organized", and represents a strategy that benefits the organizers, not the folks who call in sick and ride DNC buses to Madison: in other words the union chiefs with seniority and the fattest paychecks, and their political allies (Democrats). It's no surprise Organize For America is involved. If ACORN was still around, they'd be front and center as well.
Call me crazy, but I have an idea -- why not allow unions in govt but ONLY if they are self-policing skills-based "guild" unions. For instance, a teachers union that would not only be willing but EAGER to fire bad teachers and replace them with better ones (there are tons of old union clingers who are worthless as teachers, and also tons of fresh graduates desperate for jobs . . . ) BEFORE parents or the school board have to take action against those lousy teachers, because THEY ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT THE QUALITY OF TEACHING.
Unfortunately the unions we have seem to be all about protecting useless workers and amassing political power while getting rich on the taxpayer's dime (the Democrats are always looking to hire loyal foot soldiers, and these unions are always for sale.)
I live in Madison, and I can tell you that 99.9% of these protesters are 1) unionized state employees (mostly teachers), 2) affiliated private sector union members (the AFL-CIO robocalls and TV ads started on Tuesday), 3) college students who only have to walk about 8 blocks from campus and the weather is unseasonably warm this week (convincing them to skip class is like shooting fish in a barrel.)
Not sure how this will play out, but I sense the Reps have an endgame (vote on the bill) and I have no idea what the Dems/unionstooges intend (how long can they hide out of state? how long can schools stay closed? There is a lot of risk of backlash here.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf it really is illegal for public workers to go on strike, the governor should order (assuming he can) state troopers to go through the protestors asking for their identification. If and when such identification shows that a teacher is present without leave and protesting, a good case can be made that this particular teacher broke the law and is participating in an illegal strike in violation of Wisconsin law and his or her own collective bargaining agreement. Even government workers can be fired for cause, and claiming sick days without being sick to obstruct the political process is as good a cause as you can get. Send the troopers through the crowds, and have your attorney general file charges against every teacher in breach of their agreement.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's all these dudes in suit, man! Fight the power!! We want free everything! Viva Mao! Free Mumia!! Coin another empty slogan!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs a public school teacher, I have no problem being judged by whether I actually teach my students anything (I do.) I'm just not convinced that standardized testing is the best way to measure learning gains, especially when my brightest students tell me they don't take the tests seriously.
Half the problem is PR. Much of the justifiable concern about our schools leads to rhetoric that comes out sounding simply anti-teacher, with generalized statements about failing schools and lazy teachers. A hard working, motivated teacher who loves his kids and loves his subject waits in vain to hear school reform advocates admit that he exists, so the union seems to be his only advocate. (And I'm not a union member).
If school reform is going to take place without more of the same, teachers have to be convinced that they have a meaningful voice in the process, and that if teachers are going to be held accountable, so will parents and scholars. Just my 2 cents worth.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTo be fair, The UW students may have been upset that day because their basketball team had just been thrashed by my beloved Boilermakers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow sad, and cynical, and utterly predictable that they use their primary victims as stage props. If state and federal governments continue piling up the debt levels that the unionists want, it is the children they are exploiting whose futures will be destroyed before they even reach adulthood.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSend truant officers to the absentee kids' homes. Free Mao - next door for $2.99! How 1960's these phonies are. When I was a senior in high school, there was a rumor that CUNY would cancel the next year's freshmen class, so the colleges had students demonstrate (knowing full well that no such thing would happen) and scared the hell out of them. These municipal unions are filled with marxists and ACORN types in addition to Working Families Party members (meaning people who don't work).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Governor should kill two birds with one stone. Pass the collective bargaining bill and the pension plan contributions, then seek out and fire every teacher who participated in the "sick out" but showed up to protest.
13,000 protesters, right? That's 2x what he needs...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe governor can't fire locally hired teachers. However the State AG can go after their union for organizing an illegal strike.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think those that called in sick need to experience life in the unemployed side of reality for awhile. Let them do what they always claim they are sacrificing themselves for, making twice as much in the public sector if I were not working in the pubic.
I'm all for affording them the right and opportunity to do so by mass firing of all that called in sick and protested.
That would give them a Reality Check, and also send the message nationwide that these type of tactics are not acceptable, nor going to continue, as we can easily replace current public union members with private sector unemployed that wold love to switch places and accept the concessions as well.
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