Wisconsin

[6 Iron]

Well, the Governor of Wisconsin basically received support from the police and fire unions which helped him get elected and once elected he looked out for their interests by not including them in his proposed ban...

This is inaccurate. The governor was supported by the Milwaukee police and fire unions, but the statewide unions supported his opponent in the election. Governor Walker implied that he did not include police and fire in the ban on collective bargaining for non salary benefits because of his fear of disrupting emergency services, which based on what we have seen in Wisconsin, I would say was a reasonable fear.

[Maestro G]

In a show of solidarity, Wisconsin police have marched into the state capitol to support the protesters and vow not to expel them!

http://understory.ran.org/2011/02/25/br ... e-capitol/

The clock is ticking on Walker! Boy did this backfire on him!

He should resign now to spare the state the cost of a recall and save Wisconsin some much needed money! Wow!

Walker should fire the police immediately, along with their chiefs, call in the sherriffs or if need be the state guard, and hire a new non-unionized police force.  Reagan had the balls to do this with the air traffic controllers, I hope Walker is made of similar stuff.

The job of the police is to enforce the law, not to pick sides in politics. This action is disgraceful on their part.

The only thing that is disgraceful about all this is that Walker is in the "back pocket" of the Koch brothers, and his payback is an attempt to eliminate a basic labor right under the guise of pension reform. This borders on corruption, but of course, this is not unique to Walker.  Once again, a rabid pro business republican trying to resolve enormous fiscal problems on the backs of the working middle class!

Maestro G  >

[Pkg Man]

In a show of solidarity, Wisconsin police have marched into the state capitol to support the protesters and vow not to expel them!

http://understory.ran.org/2011/02/25/br ... e-capitol/

The clock is ticking on Walker! Boy did this backfire on him!

He should resign now to spare the state the cost of a recall and save Wisconsin some much needed money! Wow!

Walker should fire the police immediately, along with their chiefs, call in the sherriffs or if need be the state guard, and hire a new non-unionized police force.  Reagan had the balls to do this with the air traffic controllers, I hope Walker is made of similar stuff.

The job of the police is to enforce the law, not to pick sides in politics. This action is disgraceful on their part.

The only thing that is disgraceful about all this is that Walker is in the "back pocket" of the Koch brothers, and his payback is an attempt to eliminate a basic labor right under the guise of pension reform. This borders on corruption, but of course, this is not unique to Walker.  Once again, a rabid pro business republican trying to resolve enormous fiscal problems on the backs of the working middle class!

Maestro G  >

How exactly do the Koch brothers benefit from elimination of collective bargaining rights over benefits for PUBLIC employees?

Even if Governor Walker is in their "back pocket", I sure hope he is successful.  Even FDR saw no role for public employee unions.

[Lone Wolf]

an attempt to eliminate a basic labor right

You mean the "right" to block taxpayers from offering whatever terms of employment that they wish?  What is the origin of this "right"?  What principle is it based on?

Are you sure that this right even exists?

Corporations are a group of investors coming together because they think that by organizing they can make more money for themselves than if they go it on their own. 

Unions are a group of employees coming together because they think that by organizing they can make more money for themselves than if they go it on their own.

That's accurate, but you're forgetting something crucial.  I cannot be compelled to do business with any particular corporation.  However, I will be compelled by force of law to do business with a union (whether I want to or not) once my business has unionized.

This is a huge distinction because it equates to the use of force.  Imagine if a corporation could force you to buy their products.  This is the situation the business owner finds himself in.

It's not labor unions that are "bad" or "wrong".  It's the labor laws.

[Storm]

How exactly do the Koch brothers benefit from elimination of collective bargaining rights over benefits for PUBLIC employees?

Even if Governor Walker is in their "back pocket", I sure hope he is successful.  Even FDR saw no role for public employee unions.

The Koch brothers benefit by using their billions to elect anti-regulation conservatives who will dismantle the regulations, reforms, and organizations (unions) that prevent them from extracting the maximum profit from their business enterprises.

A world where the Koch brothers have their way would be similar to feudalism where we all work in menial jobs at a poverty level while a few kings live in their castle.  We have no worker rights, no protections, and none of the benefits that our parents and grandparents fought for.

You may not like unions, but think of the benefits we all enjoy because of them:

• 40 hour workweek
• Paid time off and sick leave
• Anti-discrimination laws
• Child labor laws
• General safety and security at your work and knowing that your company can't hire thugs to come in and beat you up whenever you don't work as fast as they think you should

[Wonk]

Every now and then I hire contractors on elance and odesk for different types of jobs.  The great thing about those sites is that I have my pick of labor with little to no regulations.

A casual observer might assume I bid out a job to the lowest price.  Not so at all.  I find it more efficient to evaluate the whole picture: price, language barriers, work history, etc and hire where I think I find the best value.  Often it's not near the bottom of the pack.  Why?  Because it takes 2x as much work to assess a bad worker, find out what went wrong and reassign to a new worker than it does to pay at the higher end of market value the first time.

My wife works for a pharmaceutical company that had a disastrous experience with business process outsourcing (BPO).  The bottom line was so compelling but they failed to assess the hidden costs of cultural and language inefficiencies.  An entrepreneur I highly admire, Tony Tsieh (of Zappos) has had a policy to overpay customer service reps in an effort to make the customer experience unforgettable.  He just sold it for $1B to Amazon.

The market is constantly assessing value.  To smart business people, cheaper is not always better.  Better value is better.  Likewise, unsafe working environments, lack of benefits, toxic culture, etc are often self-destructive to successfully growing a company.  It may work in the short term, but almost always backfires in the long term.  If you can't keep good employees, turnover is expensive and will kill you.

In a free market for labor, the problems that unions claim they solved would be fixed through the natural process of destruction.  We are entering an age where free agent labor is going to be the norm because of digital technology.  We're practically there already.  This bodes well for everyone who is productive.  Those who are productive will be rewarded accordingly and those who are inefficient and lazy will find themselves without a job.

For the pro-union folks out there, I'll ask you a question.  Let's say unions were allowed to organize and bargain collectively for the group, but business owners (and governments) retained the right to fire ALL the workers if a settlement couldn't be reached, would that be a fair compromise?  Before you respond, keep in mind it costs a tremendous amount of money to hire and train an entirely new workforce.  Out of necessity, management would be forced to bargain in good faith to avoid such an expensive scenario.  On the other hand, if union demands were so out of touch with reality, it would be increasingly favorable to explore the nuclear option.

[moda0306]

Wonk,

I think that's a perfectly reasonable compromise... but to analyze further... It's the inherant cost of the nuclear option that makes me doubt the sharp "tilting of the scales" effect that the "in good faith" regulations have on the negotiating process.  It would be interesting to see what would happen to unionized businesses if they removed that rule.  I think probably not much, as the cost would simply be too high for most companies. 

If the turnover you speak of happened in a lazzais fair economy, we wouldn't have had ultra-unsafe workplaces in the past to begin with.  Now I think it's more of a way to sustain a middle class than Storm's view of avoiding disaster-prone workplaces and bosses beating up employees.  I think we're past those days (in the U.S.)

[Storm]

If the turnover you speak of happened in a lazzais fair economy, we wouldn't have had ultra-unsafe workplaces in the past to begin with.  Now I think it's more of a way to sustain a middle class than Storm's view of avoiding disaster-prone workplaces and bosses beating up employees.  I think we're past those days (in the U.S.)

But it's precisely because we had unions to fight for our rights, and I mean literally fight, that we are even to this point now.  You realize that when the first unions formed, they were made illegal, and police and mercenaries were brought in to literally bust up picket lines and people were killed.  Management knew that if they just made an example of one or two people, killing or beating them, the rest would fall back in line.

Trade unions were not originally created to start strikes:

Besides acting to raise wages and improve working conditions, the federations espoused certain social reforms, such as the institution of free public education, the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and the adoption of universal manhood suffrage. Perhaps the most important effect of these early unions was their introduction of political action.

Sounds terribly unreasonable, right?  The abolition of imprisonment for debt?  Everyone can vote?  What kind of communist policies are these?

I also refer you to this page on wikipedia for the storied history of the US military being used to bust union strikes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... tary_force

[fnord123]

The Koch brothers benefit by using their billions to elect anti-regulation conservatives who will dismantle the regulations, reforms, and organizations (unions) that prevent them from extracting the maximum profit from their business enterprises.

What is the left's fascination with the Koch brothers anyway?  The objection cannot be to large donations being used to influence elections - if it is, please see: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?type=A
11 of the top 17 are unions
13 of the top 17 contributors money wise give more to democrats.
The 4 of the 17 that remain give money evenly to both democrats and republicans.
By the way, the Koch brothers would show up somewhere around slot 200 or so on the list.

Why don't people on the left object to these very large union contributions?

Are large donations to political campaigns such as the Koch's (although small in comparison to union contributions) only bad if they advocate positions the left disagrees with?

Do people on the left advocate that contributions to non-leftist positions should be banned?  If not, what's the problem with the Koch brothers?

[Pkg Man]

You may not like unions, but think of the benefits we all enjoy because of them:

• 40 hour workweek
• Paid time off and sick leave
• Anti-discrimination laws
• Child labor laws
• General safety and security at your work and knowing that your company can't hire thugs to come in and beat you up whenever you don't work as fast as they think you should

• I don't have a 40 hour workweek, more like 50-60
• Paid time off and sick leave is something that employers offer to attract workers.  It is part of the compensation that induces someone to get out of bed in the morning in the first place. Remember that health insurance came about after WWII as a way for businesses to attract workers.  
• Anti-discrimination laws are from Congress, not unions
• Same as above for child labor laws (which, by the way, implies that government knows better than parents, which may or may not be true)
• Again, safety laws come from Congress, not unions.  I believe hiring someone to beat the crap out of someone else is already illegal.  And on a personal note, I knew of one management person who, while driving a company truck during a strike, was run off the road by a striking union "thug".  The manager died at the scene.  So I find the idea of "knowing that your company can't hire thugs to come in and beat you up whenever you don't work as fast as they think you should" a not-so-humorous joke.

I'm not totally anti-union, they did serve a purpose in the past, such as the West VA coal mines where the mine owners had monopsony power as the only major employer in town.  And certainly for a union member does receive a higher wage than he would otherwise be paid.  But we need to realize these things come with a cost.  The more labor markets are distorted the more business will try to substitute capital for labor, which means fewer jobs will be available.  And by making labor more expensive they promote off-shoring of jobs, and make US exports less competitive.

Unions do not help to make the pie bigger, they merely try to get a larger slice for their members (and carve out a slice for themselves in the process).  If you would like to see what extensive labor union membership can do to an economy just look at a typical European country, where average growth in the economy is about 2/3rds that of the US and unemployment rates stay near 10% even when not in recession.

[radar]

Yet another angle on this...

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/02/ ... ators.html

as reader petrograd indicates, an analysis of the state’s finances shows this shortfall to be entirely the result of spending increases planned by Walker. The state ran a modest surplus in the latest fiscal year and the projected falls in tax receipts over the next two years were less than $200 million cumulative. So this budget hysteria is a gross distortion of the state’s true condition

Not to mention, this governor also refused over $800 million in federal aid.  It seems like he has ulterior motives here.  Busting unions has been his focus for many years now, and he found an opportunity to do it.

Interesting political discussion on the site...I know this is a little late, but story below gives insight into 'modest surplus' claimed above.  And what exactly is the ulterior motive in refusing $800M in federal aid for 'high' speed rail?  Is this another way for him to bust the union?  Not seeing the connnection.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011 ... et-crisis/

[Wonk]

Update on Wisconsin:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Wis-GOP-s ... et=&ccode=

One of the funniest comments on this article went something like this:

"Now that we know that legislating can be done quicker with half the legislators, let's start by firing half of all politicians."

[fnord123]

But it's precisely because we had unions to fight for our rights, and I mean literally fight, that we are even to this point now.  You realize that when the first unions formed, they were made illegal, and police and mercenaries were brought in to literally bust up picket lines and people were killed.  Management knew that if they just made an example of one or two people, killing or beating them, the rest would fall back in line.

Unions did help to improve the condition of the worker.  However, that doesn't mean that without collective bargaining rights that the condition of the worker would go down.  Federal government employees, for instance, are prohibited by law from collective bargaining for pay increases, and yet they have some of the highest pay of public sector workers. 

[brajalle]

But it's precisely because we had unions to fight for our rights, and I mean literally fight, that we are even to this point now.  You realize that when the first unions formed, they were made illegal, and police and mercenaries were brought in to literally bust up picket lines and people were killed.  Management knew that if they just made an example of one or two people, killing or beating them, the rest would fall back in line.

Unions did help to improve the condition of the worker.  However, that doesn't mean that without collective bargaining rights that the condition of the worker would go down.  Federal government employees, for instance, are prohibited by law from collective bargaining for pay increases, and yet they have some of the highest pay of public sector workers. 

They're also some of the highest educated workers out there, and carry extreme responsibility.  Also, I'd not consider the armed forces to be highly paid.  Yet, the private sector typically has them beat in pay for similar education/responsibility (the non-unique ones, like FBI agents).

[fnord123]

Unions did help to improve the condition of the worker.  However, that doesn't mean that without collective bargaining rights that the condition of the worker would go down.  Federal government employees, for instance, are prohibited by law from collective bargaining for pay increases, and yet they have some of the highest pay of public sector workers. 

They're also some of the highest educated workers out there, and carry extreme responsibility.  Also, I'd not consider the armed forces to be highly paid.  Yet, the private sector typically has them beat in pay for similar education/responsibility (the non-unique ones, like FBI agents).

Do you have data or studies that show this?  From the article linked below, federal employees earn more than their private sector counterparts and other public sector workers (state, local), even for jobs that don't carry "extreme responsibility" - dental assistant, graphic designer, and janitor being three examples.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/201 ... -pay_N.htm

[MarySB]

I am a retired teacher from the state of Alabama.  Thought some of you might be interested in an article published in the Retirement Systems of Alabama's March 2011 newsletter:

The Shameful Attack on Public Employees
(written by Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration)

In 1968, 1300 sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. came to support them. That was where he lost his life. Eventually Memphis heard the grievances of its sanitation workers. And in subsequent years millions of public employees across the nation have benefited from the job protections they have earned.

But now the right is going after public employees.

Public servants are convenient scapegoats. Republicans would rather deflect attention from corporate executive pay that continues to rise as corporate profits soar, even as corporations refuse to hire more workers. They don't want stories about Wall Street bonuses, now higher than before taxpayers bailed out the Street. And they'd like to avoid a spotlight on the billions raked in by hedge-fund and private-equity managers whose income is treated as capital gains and subject to only a 15% tax, due to a loophole in the tax laws designed specifically for them.

It's far more convenient to go after the people who are doing the public's work---sanitation workers, police officers, teachers, social workers, federal employees---to call them "faceless bureaucrats" and portray them as hooligans who are making off with your money and crippling federal and state budgets. The story fits better with the Republican's Big Lie that our problems are due to a government that is too big.

Above all, Republicans don't want to have to justify continued tax cuts for the rich. As quietly as possible, they want to make them permanent.

But the right's argument is shot-through with bad data, twisted evidence, and unreported assertions.

They say public employees earn far more than private-sector workers. That's untrue when you take account level of education. Matched by education, public sector workers actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts.

The Republican trick is to compare apples with oranges---the average wage of public employees with the average wage of all private-sector employees. But only 23% of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48% of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be---all need at least four years of college.

Compare apples to apples and you'd see that over the last fifteen years the pay of public-sector workers has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education. Public-sector workers now earn 11% less than comparable workers in the private sector, and local workers 12% less. (Even if you include health and retirement benefits, government employees still earn less than their private-sector counterparts with similar educations.)

Here's another whopper. Republicans say public-sector pensions are crippling the nation. They say politicians have given in to the demands of public unions who want only to fatten their members' retirement benefits without the public noticing. They charge that public-employee pensions are out of control.

Some reforms do need to be made. Loopholes that allow public-sector workers to "spike" their final salaries in order to get final annuities must be closed. And no retired public employee should be allowed to "double dip", collecting more than one public pension.

But these are the exceptions. Most public employees don't have generous pensions. After a career with annual pay averaging less than $45000, the typical employee receives a pension of $19000 a year. Few would call that overly generous.

And most of that $19000 isn't even on taxpayers' shoulders. While they are working, most public employees contribute a portion of their salaries into their pension plans. Taxpayers are directly responsible for only about 14% of public retirement benefits. Remember also that many public workers aren't covered by Social Security, so the government isn't contributing 6.25% of their pay into the Social Security fund as private employers would.

Yes, there is cause for concern about unfunded pension liabilities in future years. They're way too big. But it's much the same in the private sector. The main reason for underfunded pensions in both public and private sectors is investment losses that occurred during the Great Recession. Before then, public pension funds had an average of 86% of all the assets they needed to pay for future benefits---better than many private pension plans.

The solution is no less to slash public pensions than it is to slash private ones. It's for all employers to fully fund their pension plans.

The final Republican canard is that bargaining rights for public employees have caused state budgets to explode. In fact there's no relationship between states whose employees have bargaining rights and states with big deficits. Some states that deny their employees bargaining rights---Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, for example, are running deficits of over30% of spending. Many that have bargaining rights---Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana---have small deficits of less than 10%.

Public employees should have the right to bargain for better wages and working conditions, just like all employees do. They shouldn't have the right to strike if striking would imperil the public, but they should at least have a voice. They often know more about whether public programs are working, or how to make them work better, than political appointees who hold their offices for only a few years.

Don't get me wrong. When times are tough, public employees should have to make the same sacrifices as everyone else. And they are right now. Pay has been frozen for federal workers and for many state workers across the country as well.

But isn't it curious that when it comes to sacrifice, Republicans don't include the richest people in America? To the contrary, they insist the rich should sacrifice even less, enjoying even larger tax cuts that expand public-sector deficits. That means fewer public services, and even more pressure on the wages and benefits of public employees.

It's only average workers---both in the public and private sectors---who are being called upon to sacrifice.

This is what the current Republican attack on public-sector workers is really all about. Their version of class warfare is to pit private-sector workers against public servants. They'd rather set average working people against one another---comparing one group's modest incomes and benefits with another group's modest incomes and benefits---than have Americans see that the top 1% is now raking in a bigger share of national income than at any time since 1928, and paying tax at a lower tax rate. And Republicans would rather you didn't know they want to cut taxes on the rich even more.

[fnord123]

The first several paragraphs all complain about CEO pay and are misleading.  CEO pay may be an issue, but it has almost nothing to do with state and local employee union compensation and benefits.  Ditto for hedge fund managers usage of carried interest to avoid paying income tax rats.  Even if one fixed all these things, it would make a tiny dent in the state and municipal deficits.  The "deflect attention" here is by the writer of the article - they are talking about a completely different and unrelated problem.  

As for public sector employees being less well paid based on education level, there are questions about that.  Anecdotally, almost every teacher I know received a degree in the humanities or social sciences.  Conversely, most of the people I know who received degrees in engineering or the hard sciences went into the private sector.  If you compare the salaries of the PhDs, MS, and BS that I know, the private sector people do indeed earn more - but they also picked disciplines that pay more in general.  The humanities folks I know who did end up in the private sector earn a lot less than the engineers, for instance.  Furthermore, if you look at productivity data, private sector employees worked an average of 2,050 hours in 2008, 12 percent more than the 1,825 hours worked by the average public-sector employee.

Finally, the article by Reich doesn't address some fundamental points about public sector unions:

• Unions were created to protect against greedy capitalist bosses who were exploiting workers to maximize profits - but in the case of the public sector, the boss isn't a capitalist trying to maximize profits, so why do we need a union?
• Many public sector unions have pushed crazy work rules like seniority/tenure.  E.g. given a young energetic teacher with great reviews and a more senior teacher who everyone agrees is incompetent, unions require we fire the young energetic teacher.  Note that this isn't just a "nasty Republican" thing - the liberal Democrat mayor of LA wants to change this too: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/11/133684819 ... m-Reviewed

The article closes with another call for more taxes for the rich - which again is a totally unrelated issue.  Even if we do raise taxes on the rich, it still doesn't address the issues with public sector unions.

[fnord123]

Other things Reich said that were misleading:

• He claims $19K pension is not generous - most private sector employees have ZERO pension - they are on 401K programs.  $19K, even if the figure is correct, is generous compared to $0.
• Public sector pension funds are less underfunded than private - Again, most private workers do not have pension funds, so comparing underfunding isn't a good comparison
• Reich mentions that public employees don't get social security - but omits the fact that they don't pay into it, saving them ~6% of their salary