Chuck Sweeny – a Rockford Register Star reporter that I know from his days of covering the local Libertarian Party – gets to the heart of the goings on in Madison and explains why it is so critical for the unions to win against Governor Walker and the Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature.
But Democrats can’t compromise on ending collective bargaining rights, because that would weaken their party’s key political bloc. Democrats know that Walker’s gambit to break the unions is part of the national Republican strategy in the run up to the 2012 elections.
Chuck thinks that the Republicans, who only need one Democrat to show up to pass their agenda, will fold in the face of union pressure. I don’t think so. It costs real money to bus in all those protesters and keep them fed and housed. Every day Walker can keep the protesters on the street further weakens the Democrats for the next election.
What Chuck also leaves out is that recall elections can be called by petition in Wisconsin one year after a person is elected. All the Republicans have to do is collect about 25,000 signatures from a Senate District, get them verified, and six weeks later there will be an election. In a district that was barely won by a Democrat and with sentiment favoring the Governor there is a good chance that in 12 or 16 weeks Walker will have enough Senators to make a quorum and the unions will lose a LOT. Can he hold out that long? Walker has been in politics for a while and he has a reputation for not backing down. Time will tell.
As Chuck points out the Democrats depend on that union money to elect Democrats who will do the unions more favors so they can get their cut. But the marks are staring to wise up. My take is that the longer he holds out the stronger he will get. And he doesn’t have to get everything to win. A couple of things would do it: yearly union elections and no automatic deduction of union dues. The last point alone would mean a raise of a few percent for those who didn’t want to pay. In these hard times who wouldn’t like a raise or even a smaller cut in pay?
Wisconsin is only the first battle. Ohio is next. Indiana is even going after private sector unions. And a labor leader emphasizes Chuck’s point:
Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the nation’s largest public-sector union, said the moves in various state capitals to target state employees were an explicit effort to undermine a key source of Democratic funds.
“They know how much we spent in the last campaign,” he said. “They’re going to try and shoot us down.”
The 1.6 million-member AFSCME last year tapped emergency accounts and took out loans as it poured more than $90 million into Democratic campaign efforts in the mid-term elections.
Overall, unions put around $400 million into the 2008 campaign to help elect Mr. Obama and other Democrats.
That is quite a war chest. I think the Republicans would like to flatten it. I think they can.
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
5 responses to “What Madison Is All About”
Good reasoning, except for this: “That is quite a war chest. I think the Republicans would like to flatten it.”
This isn’t about ending unions and their showering of the money of their members on Dems; it is about balancing the state budget. Unions need to be regulated because they have been too greedy in the past. Walker is trying to save future state finances from disaster.
A secondary benefit is a small reduction of the power of the unions to amass for political use the involuntary dues from their members, whose membership is also involuntary. Classically, this is called indentured servitude.
Andrew Sullivan is running a series of posts in support of Wisconsin teachers right now. In one he links to the Teacher’s Union website to show that salaries have actually decreased there, in non-inflation terms, since 1994. The average teacher salary is now slightly less than $50,000.00 p/year, plus benefits. Poor things, my heart bleeds for them.
Let’s see, right now they get most of their health care, sick leave, and fully funded retirement. In addition they work about 9 months out of 12. Pro-rated that comes to about $65,000 p/year for actual work. Then they also get winter break, spring break, most holidays including Martin Luther King, Presidents Day, & Thanksgiving which is 2 days. Besides that, most teachers I know actually teach 6 hours a day at most. Many have teacher’s aids they use for scoring tests and grading essays.
Contrast that with someone like me. Owning a small business I sometimes work 6 or 7 days a week. My usual day is at least 8 hours, and if necessary to meet a shipment deadline, I have worked as many as 12 hours. I have no paid vacation, pay all my health care, no employer paid retirement, pay double social security taxes (15.3%), have no paid sick leave, do not get paid to collect sales or use taxes on behalf of the state. I do not, and have never had children. Yet people like me pay for the cushy benefits and laid-back working conditions of teachers.
And there are many right now who are out of work, but still paying property taxes either directly or passed on through rents that support teachers and other government workers.
Fire all their asses, and hire from the pool of unemployed, underemployed, and retired who go begging just to stand as a greater at your local Wal-Mart. Considering the reading and math scores of high school grads out of public schools, would the average person do worse as a teacher?
As I keep mentioning here and there… the Republicans in Wisconsin have a really nasty option, should they choose to use it. That 3/5 quorum ONLY applies to financial bills.
They COULD, if they wished to, put up (and pass) a bill banning public-employee unions entirely. Or making Wisconsin a “right to work” state. I don’t really know why they haven’t mentioned this yet.
“…I don’t really know why they haven’t mentioned this yet”
Because the WI GOP put the ‘cow’ in coward.
Even if Walker manages to stand tall I fully expect the legislature to eventually cave and give the unions whatever they want.
guy,
It is obvious they know this: WI Senators must collect their pay by coming to the Senate floor.
My guess is that Walker wants to get Maximum PR out of the Democrats on the run before doing some heavy lifting.
Do you know why there is time? So everything doesn’t happen all at once.