With an immediate budget shortfall of $137 million, and a long term one of $3.6 billion, Gov. Scott Walker has taken sharp aim at Wisconsin public employee unions.
He says he won't bargain with them anymore because the state is broke and in these economic hard times, public employee unions remain woefully out of touch with a private sector that's been bleeding jobs and reducing employee benefits throughout the Great Recession.
Toward that end, the governor has a good point. From 2001 to 2010, the governor's office says, state taxpayers spent more than $8 billion on state employee health care coverage, of which state employees contributed only about $398 million. And according to Walker's office, Wisconsin taxpayers take care of nearly all of the payments for the employee contribution to their public-sector pensions. (When was the last time your employer mentioned a pension plan?)
What's more, the governor says, Wisconsin's public employees are vested in those retirement plans - so elusive in the private-sector - immediately.
Again, that sounds pretty generous for the current economic climate.
This is where the battle lines are being drawn - quite literally, if you take seriously Walker's inflammatory suggestion Friday of using the National Guard to quell any unrest that might arise from labor strife over his proposals. But while we agree in principal with the administration's stand that taxpayers can't continue to subsidize outrageous benefits for public employees that are accessible to increasingly few in the private sector, we disagree with his bullish approach on the matter. The reason is that, backed into a corner, the unions are planning to fight back, and not just the public ones.
"Make no mistake about it, war has been declared on unions in Wisconsin," said Teamsters representative Danny McGowan. "The attack on public sector bargaining is viewed as an attack on labor, no matter what the sector."
Indeed, unions representing machinists, construction workers, nurses, teachers, public workers, electricians and others all attacked Walker's proposal Monday, saying he should bargain with workers to get the concessions he wants.
Unions have a rich history in Wisconsin and in the United States, where their collective action has given us the 8-hour work day, the minimum wage, and other workplace standards that rightfully endure. They have won these rights by standing together and standing up to the monied and powerful interests that have exploited American workers.
Yet having a government job isn't anything like the private sector. And the taxpayers aren't a faceless, for-profit corporation - they are you and me, and too many of the people we know are either out of work, worried about being out of work or know someone who is.
It isn't too much to ask public-sector employees to share in that pain.
Our other point is that all this talk of fighting each other in the midst of our current fiscal morass isn't doing anything about the real problem - which is that the state is spending far more than it takes in. It's also inflaming peripheral forces - including unions and private-interest groups to oppose not only Walker's budget, but perhaps his entire administration for the next four years.
Not exactly a recipe for moving Wisconsin forward.
Walker said 1,500 state workers could be laid off if something isn't done soon. Meanwhile, the Legislature is moving quickly to pass his proposal to strip collective bargaining from the unions, perhaps as soon as Thursday.
We hope Walker isn't picking a fight with the unions merely to shore up his political bonafides with his base. And we hope the unions aren't declaring war on the state taxpayers for their own political benefit, and that of their members.
What we need is more serious discussions between the two sides on the budget mess - with a sense of urgency, yes, but far less inflammatory rhetoric.
He says he won't bargain with them anymore because the state is broke and in these economic hard times, public employee unions remain woefully out of touch with a private sector that's been bleeding jobs and reducing employee benefits throughout the Great Recession.
Toward that end, the governor has a good point. From 2001 to 2010, the governor's office says, state taxpayers spent more than $8 billion on state employee health care coverage, of which state employees contributed only about $398 million. And according to Walker's office, Wisconsin taxpayers take care of nearly all of the payments for the employee contribution to their public-sector pensions. (When was the last time your employer mentioned a pension plan?)
What's more, the governor says, Wisconsin's public employees are vested in those retirement plans - so elusive in the private-sector - immediately.
Again, that sounds pretty generous for the current economic climate.
This is where the battle lines are being drawn - quite literally, if you take seriously Walker's inflammatory suggestion Friday of using the National Guard to quell any unrest that might arise from labor strife over his proposals. But while we agree in principal with the administration's stand that taxpayers can't continue to subsidize outrageous benefits for public employees that are accessible to increasingly few in the private sector, we disagree with his bullish approach on the matter. The reason is that, backed into a corner, the unions are planning to fight back, and not just the public ones.
"Make no mistake about it, war has been declared on unions in Wisconsin," said Teamsters representative Danny McGowan. "The attack on public sector bargaining is viewed as an attack on labor, no matter what the sector."
Indeed, unions representing machinists, construction workers, nurses, teachers, public workers, electricians and others all attacked Walker's proposal Monday, saying he should bargain with workers to get the concessions he wants.
Unions have a rich history in Wisconsin and in the United States, where their collective action has given us the 8-hour work day, the minimum wage, and other workplace standards that rightfully endure. They have won these rights by standing together and standing up to the monied and powerful interests that have exploited American workers.
Yet having a government job isn't anything like the private sector. And the taxpayers aren't a faceless, for-profit corporation - they are you and me, and too many of the people we know are either out of work, worried about being out of work or know someone who is.
It isn't too much to ask public-sector employees to share in that pain.
Our other point is that all this talk of fighting each other in the midst of our current fiscal morass isn't doing anything about the real problem - which is that the state is spending far more than it takes in. It's also inflaming peripheral forces - including unions and private-interest groups to oppose not only Walker's budget, but perhaps his entire administration for the next four years.
Not exactly a recipe for moving Wisconsin forward.
Walker said 1,500 state workers could be laid off if something isn't done soon. Meanwhile, the Legislature is moving quickly to pass his proposal to strip collective bargaining from the unions, perhaps as soon as Thursday.
We hope Walker isn't picking a fight with the unions merely to shore up his political bonafides with his base. And we hope the unions aren't declaring war on the state taxpayers for their own political benefit, and that of their members.
What we need is more serious discussions between the two sides on the budget mess - with a sense of urgency, yes, but far less inflammatory rhetoric.
