The union protests that have erupted in the capitals of three Midwestern states—Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana—are rooted in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s push to bust public employee unions in the Badger State.
Walker and his Republican backers claim that the governor’s proposed legislation, which will eliminate collective bargaining rights for most of the state’s workers, are part of necessary deficit reduction measures the state needs in managing its current debt crisis.
The bill’s true aim, however, is to break the back of the Democratic Party in Wisconsin by rendering its biggest contributor—public sector organized labor—impotent. As evidenced by the similar legislation proposed in the Indiana and Ohio state legislatures, the anti-union agenda is gaining traction in its efforts to remove one of last political players representing working- and middle-class families.
Public sector collective bargaining rights emerged with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, with both operating under the same premise that denying rights and freedoms to some citizens was unjustifiable. Earlier legislation granted private sector employees collective bargaining rights with which workers could negotiate wages and benefits, but public workers at the federal, state and local levels were denied such rights until 1955.
That year, a special committee of the American Bar Association deemed government labor practices “an anachronism,” and concluded that the government could not rightly impose certain obligations on employers while failing to deal with its own workers on the same reasonably favorable basis. After witnessing the example of cities like New York and Philadelphia, Wisconsin became the first state to enact legislation recognizing government employees’ rights to collective bargaining.
Subsequent years saw similar laws enacted—President John Kennedy in 1962, to federal employees; by then-Governor Ronald Reagan for California public sector workers; and by President Richard Nixon in 1969, who expanded and strengthened the bargaining rights Kennedy first offered federal workers.
As that truncated list demonstrates, critical support for government unions was bipartisan. Tellingly, the support from both parties resulted in a tenfold increase in government union membership between the mid ‘50s and mid ‘70s.
Since 1970, however, bipartisan support for government unions eroded as the public organized labor movement gained rising political clout. Eventually, the anti-union backlash resulted in efforts to strip collective bargaining rights, leading us to the steps of Wisconsin State Legislature today.
Governor Walker stated that Wisconsin public employees have a pretty cushy deal in terms of the percentage workers must contribute to their pensions and health insurance premiums, and he has a point. Most put less than 1 percent into their pensions, and around 6 percent into their health insurance premiums—Walker’s bill proposes contributions of near 6 percent to employee pensions and above 12.5 percent for health insurance premiums.
The average private sector employee in Wisconsin pays nearly 25 percent of their annual income towards health insurance costs, making it a struggle to save anything for retirement. Therefore, it’s not difficult to imagine them buying into Walker’s bill.
The public employee unions facing the governor’s proposed increases have already agreed to the deal, recognizing that the nationwide financial belt-tightening does not exclude organized labor. Walker, however, is not trying to bargain with the workers—rather, he wants to take away their right to bargain at all.
Highlighting the distinctly political nature of Walker’s move is the notable exclusion of the two groups whose unions supported Walker in the last election: police and firefighters. The move to exempt those public safety smacks of a distinctly partisan tone, one that suggests that those who play nice are guaranteed a seat at the table.
A common misconception holds that public employees are overpaid when compared to their private sector counterparts, and Walker has made that claim regarding Wisconsin’s government workers. However, the Economic Policy Institute tells us that the argument is not true, when one considers comparable qualifications versus salaries—Wisconsin state and local employees earn about 14 percent less than comparable private sector employees.
However, most of us know that working for the government never makes one rich, so the government must balance the wage disparity with better benefits. Government workers expect that since their annual wages are lower, benefits (and pensions) will be better—indeed, unionized public employees have continually taken pay cuts and givebacks in order to save their retirement and benefit packages.
With the end of the financial crisis nowhere near in sight, it turns out that many—if not most—state governments will be unable to pay a lot of those pensions, and Republicans in Congress want to allow states the right to declare bankruptcy in order to renege on delivering those promises. In effect, the public sector unions got bamboozled. The sad irony is that the collective bargaining rights used to negotiate wages and benefits—and the accompanying cuts the workers took to save the latter—were good faith attempts to play ball with the government’s austerity plan and protect workers’ retirements.
Walker’s assertion that denying collective bargaining rights would save the state money holds no water, as there is no correlation between public sector bargaining rights and state budget deficits. North Carolina, which does not allow its public workers to bargain, faces a 20 percent deficit—Wisconsin faces a 12.8 percent deficit. Ohio’s Republican governor John Kasich has proposed similar legislation—the Buckeye State’s deficit is half that of North Carolina’s. Clearly, budget deficits cannot be attributed to collective bargaining rights, but the impact of the recession on different states and their varying fiscal practices.
Surely, the extension of tax cuts for Wisconsin businesses and high-income earners has had a far greater impact on the state sinking deeper into the red.
The entire debate raging in the Midwest has marked the most ferocious assault on organized labor in over 50 years. Harkening back to those early days of civil rights and labor struggles recalls the question asked by the downtrodden: how does taking away the rights of some improve the lot of others?
These facts seem to matter little to the governors of Wisconsin, Indiana or Ohio, who, backed by powerful, wealthy players like the billionaire Koch brothers, continue their push to eliminate unions as a meaningful political actor. By railing against the “pampered” and “spoiled” public sector unions, and attempting to turn private sector employees against them, moneyed interests have decided to play both sides off the other, and at each other’s expense.
As the divide between the richest and poorest Americans widens, the middle class finds itself being hit on all sides: the victim of a downward shifting tax burden predicated by the government’s extension of tax cuts for the wealthy, its entitlements jeopardized, and its political voice being increasingly marginalized.
Unions draw the ire of many who are disgusted by the perceived greed and shortsightedness of the demands of organized labor, but we cannot fail to recognize the importance of their existence. After all, as one of the last remaining voices for working Americans, the union is one of the few institutions able to stand up to the wealthy, who can employ legions of lawyers and lobbyists to fight their battles.
Fiscal austerity is the new reality, and we must find a way to handle our debt crises responsibly and effectively, rather than exploiting the opportunity for political gain.
It is clear that the battle being fought is not simply that of union versus management, but a pivotal engagement between the haves and the have-nots. In the interest of those who are in increasing danger of losing their seat at the negotiation table, we endorse America’s public employee unions.
