Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has announced a plan to end collective bargaining rights for public employees working for the state.
I’m no legal scholar, but this strikes me as a flagrant violation of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which states in Section 7 (§157) of “Employee Rights”: “Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing”.
Am I missing something here?
To make matters worse, he told his troops to be ready with the guns: “Gov. Scott Walker says the Wisconsin National Guard is prepared to respond if there is any unrest among state employees in the wake of his announcement that he wants to take away nearly all collective bargaining rights.” (TPCQ: “The army? What am I, Oswalt here?”)
Oh, It’s On!
Walker is apparently ready for a legal challenge:
Secunda said unions may also argue there is a “constitutional right to collectively bargain,” and that the government is interfering with those rights.
Walker said he’s consulted with attorneys and, while he expects unions to sue, he feels confident the state would prevail.
“There’s absolutely no grounds for it,” Walker said of labor lawsuits. “As long as we’re not terminating an existing contract, which we aren’t.”
But as I understand it, this has nothing to do with the US (or Wisconsin) Constitution, nor is it related to existing contracts. It’s about the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. Right?
In 1937, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said:
The right to bargain collectively is at the bottom of social justice for the worker, as well as the sensible conduct of business affairs. The denial or observance of this right means the difference between despotism and democracy.
You’re not a despot, are you Mr. Walker?
“dope” pic from SEPAC. I also like this cartoon.
TimeWaster™
Speaking of Walker’s good decisions, check out this ad he ran during the campaign. (Keep in mind that his opponent,Tom Barrett, had been severely beaten by a man with a tire iron at the Wisconsin State Fair one year earlier.)
Stay classy, Scott!
Today I’m listening to: The BGM Show!
I’m very scared at what this means for my future career. As an English major, I very much would like to some day teach at my former high school. But with Scott Walker’s plans set in motion, if I end up getting teacher’s certification, I don’t know if I’ll even stay in the state. And at this point, I don’t know if I’ll be able to graduate from college. It’s already expensive, and I can’t afford much more. Nothing has ever scared me more, because nothing has ever felt as real to me as this does. My dad works for UW-Madison, and I don’t see even my family staying in state. Who knows how many other families there are like this.
In 2001 taxpayers contributed $423 million dollars to state employee health insurance premiums, while in 2011 taxpayers contributed more than $1 billion dollars. In 2011, state employees paid $64 million toward their health insurance, or about 5.6% of the total cost. (ETF Health Care Analysis)
·From 2001 to 2010 taxpayers spent more than $8 billion dollars on state employee health care coverage—over the same period of time state employees contributed about $398 million. (ETF Health Care Analysis)
·Public employers contributed almost $1.37 billion to the state’s pension fund in 2009, while employees contributed about $8 million, or about 0.6%. (LFB paper 84 Wisconsin Retirement System, Table 28)
·From 2000 to 2009 taxpayers spent about $12.6 billion on public employee pensions, during the same period public employees contributed $55.4 million. (LFB paper 84 Wisconsin Retirement System, Table 28)
·When looking at state operations, state employees account for about 60% of taxpayer cost—77% of state operations for the UW are employees, 70% for corrections, 63% for health services. (State Budget Office Memo 2-9-11)
·Wisconsin taxpayers currently make nearly a 100% payment for the employee portion of the public sector pension contribution. Illinois and Indiana taxpayers contribute the entire employee portion as well, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio pay 0% of the employee contribution. (State Budget Office Memo 2-9-11)
·Public employees in Wisconsin are vested in the retirement system immediately, while in Illinois it takes 8 years, 10 years in Indiana, 4 years in Iowa, 10 years in Michigan, 3 years in Minnesota, and 5 years in Ohio. (State Budget Office Memo 2-9-11)
Were talking requiring state employees to PAY MORE INTO THEIR OWN PENSION AND BENEFITS, LIKE THE PRIVATE SECTOR. That’s it. Nobody’s pensions are disappearing. Scott Walker doesn’t want to kill babies and teachers. The tax burden for maintaining this kind of lifestyle for public employees IS BACKBREAKING. I applaud Scott Walker for knowing how to trim the fat and not just raise taxes and having the BALLS and BACKBONE to stand by his conviction. OPEN YOUR EARS AND MINDS EVERYBODY. You just hate the man because you didn’t vote for him. Why does everybody have such a bleeding heart towards public employees? I have NO INSURANCE, make $11,000 a year. and PAID $1800 of that paupers sum in TAXES in 2010. Where’s my [bad word]ing empathy? [BAD WORD] YOU ALL. GO SCOTT WALKER!
The more curse words and all-capital-letter sentences you use, the more likely we are to agree with you! 8)
Listing factoids is another tactic that is sure to win over hearts and minds. Please note that I was wrong about how this all pertains to the NLRA, but you didn’t bother to address any of the points I made, then, did you?
Thanks for visiting my site, Jomo! (I censored a bad word you left, because this is a family forum. Please keep it civil.) Assuming you work full-time, $11,000 a year is indeed a pauper’s sum. A working person certainly deserves more for their toil.
But allowing wealthy Republicans to turn you against your fellow working people is not going to improve things for any of us. Right? After all, we wouldn’t have weekends off if we hadn’t united as working people once upon a time. Right? (I know, some people today don’t enjoy weekends off. So we should keep organizing to preserve this leisure time, as guaranteed by Article 42 of the Universal Declaration of Human RIghts.)
I’d love to write more, but I have to go to sleep now so I can wake up early and go to my cushy government-funded fatcat teaching job!
Jomo – there are some problems with your arguments: for one, what are the OVERALL figures of the benefits packages for public workers (including pay)? how does this compare with the OVERALL figures for those in the private sphere with equal education, seniority, etc? And when discussing the increase, what about changes in the cost of living? What were the changes in base pay as compared to health/retirement benefits? How did the labor force change?
Do you work for a corporation? Does that corporation give you health benefits? Does it help with your pension? Require you to bring in your own materials for your office, so you can do your job to the best of your ability?
I’ve had numerous teachers who have brought their own supplies – kleenex, maybe, or books, crayons/markers, or even dry-erase markers – to the classroom because the schools wouldn’t buy them (for whatever reason). Teachers that have stayed long after classes to work with students, or to run clubs that, if they are funded, are hardly funded enough to pay for the time the teachers spend on them. One of the activities I participated in in high school had weekend sessions, and started in the summer. After the costs of the materials provided, I’m sure there was very little left to compensate them for their time.
Jomo,
They have you brainwashed!! The republican party does not care about someone like you. They defend rich people and dumb people. Hmm, which are you? Their main premise is that if we take a dollar from the common folk, the rich will turn that dollar into 10 and it will “trickle” back to the common folk. You gotta be awfully dumb to still believe that after what George W Bush did to our national debt. Right-wingers claim liberals are the big spenders??? REPUBLICAN George W Bush elevated our debt to record levels. 6 of 8 years in office, the national debt rose by more than 500 billion dollars!! The entire national debt had not even been $500B before he took office. Thats insane!
Get a clue, Wisconsinites and Americans.
I keep hearing how the Public Employees are stealing the tax payer’s money. Okay, time for an eye opener. Public Employees are hired to do the work for the Tax Payers! Therefore they are paid by the Tax Payers!
They clean up the crap that you throw out of your car window, because you don’t want to take it home with you. After all it’s just too much trouble to walk a few feet and put it in your garbage can.
They baby sit your kids, and try to teach them the things that you are just too busy to, because that golf date is just more important. They monitor the cross walks to make sure your child is safe, every school day. They haul your kid back and forth to and from school so that you won’t be late to the office, or have to leave early.
Some of them risk their lives to protect your sorry ungratful butt when someone is trying to break into your house. And patrol the streets and put up with the guff from people like you, because you were yaking on your cell phone when you should have been paying attention to your driving.
They come without hesitation, when you get drunk and set the house on fire trying to barbeque a steak that many of them can’t even afford.
They make sure your street is free of pot holes so that you don’t have to cancel your golf date to have your wheels aligned.
And your response is. “You’re a bunch of over paid leaches.” Got news for you. Wealth doesn’t trickle down, but poverty does trickle up. If this continues, it’s only a matter of time until it reaches the rung on which you are standing. And the higher you are, the more painful the fall.