Union-busting in Wisconsin turns volitile
 

Union protests.
Absentee Democrats.
Police dragnets.

One volatile vote.

A bill is about to be passed to—among other things—ban collective bargaining for public workers in Wisconsin.

Help me out here. First, I'm a bit shocked at the hostility against unions in the U.S. I know there is a long history, but, in this day and age, it seems extreme to hobble a public worker's union like this.

Second, Democrats are a no-show. This stalls the vote. Police are searching for them. How does this work? What are the legal ramifications of this? What will happen?

What do you think of the current status of unions in the U.S. in general?

This is a blatant attack on unions, which means an attack on workers' rights. It's entirely unacceptable. I keep trying to tell myself that it's not yet reached a point where a workers' revolution is necessary in the United States, but situations like this are starting to make me wonder if I'm just making excuses.

I think the time is fast approaching where a national strike will be necessary to wrangle power away from the corporate right and restore a balance of power. Unions cannot be allowed to die off.

it's amazing the level of historical blindness that's been descended upon the land here in reactionary valley regarding unions. it's like people who sell their labor power for a wage have been convinced that being utterly powerless is the natural order of things, that it's bad to organize. collective bargaining---and a strongly unionized workforce---was the motor that allowed for the transformation in consumer banking that enabled access to mortgages for working people, then other debt-generating instruments.

because it guaranteed steadily rising wages. so people could acquire debt and have some hope of fucking paying it without being reduced to debt peonage.

the news-speak of the neo-liberal set...the various idiotic propositions concerning unions repeated ad nauseum by the corporate "yay capitalism" press since the reagan period...the lack of historical memory....ach.

the is an instance of class warfare american-style.

it's like the place has regressed to some pre-1848 notion of capitalism.

*They aren't going to raise taxes, except for the the public workers. Is what they should have said. (Although I think they should be paying more into the pension fund if they are going to get a lot back out.) Or will teacher salaries just increase 5%, so they will be able to 'choose' which 401k to invest in...

Scratch Wisconsin off the list of places I would want to live. And yes, the history of Unions is distorted, but I enjoy not living in a caste like society like India or being a wage salve in China. I'm not sure if the GOP/tea party wouldn't enjoy transforming America into that type of society, either knowingly, or as a survival of the fittest type of thing.

I just wish people saved a lot more money, so they could say screw this job, have fun finding hundreds of people and training them in the next week.

I had a conversation with someone whose office is across the street from the Statehouse this morning. He put the blame on years and years of poor financial management by the legislature. Told me that the newly elected governor and legislature ran on this platform last fall. He believes the public supports the actions being taken by the governor.

Here's an interesting perspective Unions want to overturn election result - JSOnline

i can understand that people want to protect workers rights and all that, but why should we let the unions override good economic sense and control the state budgets?

I can't help but find it a little ridiculous that the 'Republican Assembly Speaker' is accusing democratic lawmakers of not representing their constituents by not showing up for a lost cause vote that, obviously, most of their constituents would not support. I commend that collective action. It's refreshing to see democrats united and uncompromising, even if its only for a day.

Personally, I'm sick of thinking the word 'reprehensible.' This country is losing its collective mind. Honestly, I didn't foresee the level of crazy that would start taking over once Obama was elected. Instead of the country becoming more moderate, the political climate has become exponentially more alarming.

That's really all I have to say. News on the state level has been sickening since the new terms began in January, not the least of which here in Florida. I hate to think things like 'Americans are so stupid,' but I need someone to throw me a bone here. How can the devaluation of education, good health, clean environments and what is becoming the society with the widest income disparity in the first world ever be quantified as 'smart politics'? The problem with Americans is that they have no fucking appreciation for the future. They want what they want and the only good time for it is now, now, NOW!

Sorry to be all rant-y rave-y, but every day I give more serious consideration to packing up and abandoning this country once I am done with school. Why should I contribute my skills and hard work to a society that shares none of my values?

/end. sorry.

Who wrote this article, a journalist or a hack for the teacher's union?

What I gather from reading the articles is that the citizens of Wisconsin are fed up with government spending and voted in a governor and legislature that are about to cut spending. If that's what the voters wanted, then that is exactly what the government should do. Unions and their response of 'just raise taxes' is unacceptable.

It's about time somebody is willing to run government more like a business where you have to live within your budget.

I also read that so many teachers called in sick in some cities that schools were closed, resulting in essence in a strike, where that strike is illegal. Why aren't those teachers fined, jailed, or fired for participating in an illegal strike?

Unions are in decline in the US. Latest figures I saw for private sector were somewhere around 8% of the workforce and slightly higher for government.

Thanks to the union's history of violence, intimidation, fraud and some unions involvement with the Mafia, they deserve every bit of flack they get.

I hadn't posted here because I've been down at the capitol marching for the last few days, when I wasn't at work or school.

The majority of teachers I've spoken too understand that the budget is a mess, and that concessions have to be made. They're generally willing to make those concessions.

They're not willing to give up the right to bargain for those concessions, instead of just being handed whatever their employer likes.

The bill in question removes the public workers unions right to negotiate collectively for anything other than wages, and wage bargaining is only allowed to within a certain price index set by a third party (I do not recall what the index is off the top of my head) unless allowed to do so by a public vote.

It also removes the unions ability to require members to pay their union dues, and makes it so all union members have to vote to keep the union in force yearly. If the union doesn't get a majority vote, it's dissolved.

That sounds like union busting to me, pure and simple.

I may be entirely wrong, but it seems to me this is a straight ploy by the republicans in this state to remove the democratic power base.

The republicans are funded, for the most part, by corporate business. They are the business party, in simple terms.

The democrats are funded by the unions. They're the worker's party (again, in very simple terms).

How this is part of a budget repair bill, I do not understand. While the budget may be in disarray, it's not caused by what we're paying our teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police. (BTW, the firefighters and police unions are exempt from all of the above in the bill.)

I don't agree with the tone of the above, but his point is a sound one. Legislative mismanagement is the issue here. Doing this to our public servants won't fix it.

So, I march. I may head back there again today.

I guess libertarianism goes out the window when the law is to prohibit unions from doing something, huh?


The "unions'" history of violence? Talk about re-writing history.

Sorry to pick out one quote, but I find that the attitude expressed here is pervasive amongst some folks. I just want to point out that businesses frequently spend more than they take in, and that when they find that they need more income, they frequently raise their prices.

If the government were to truly start running like a business, we'd be taxed even more and see even less benefit because this would be the most direct way for a government to maximize its profits, which is what it would be attempting to do if it were running like a business.

It's ridiculous to expect the government to behave like a business- the two organizations serve different purposes.

say what? do you run or own a business?

Do you?

How many years did it take for Amazon to turn a profit? Has twitter started making money yet?

Want to know what my cell phone company does when they want more money? They raise their prices. So does my gas company.

yes, I have. and my experience tells me that if i'm losing money, raising prices is not going to cover it. one has to cut their expenses so that you're not spending more than you take in.

I don't follow them, but i'm sure that they had quite a bit of capital cash from investors to follow through on their model.

want to know what happens to my cell phone and gas company when they raise prices higher than their competitors? they lose customers. then they lay people off. Its what they call reducing your expenditures.

So? No business can spend more than it brings in. Aside from semantic issues, the real question here is whether accumulating debt is an acceptable way of bringing in money.

You don't think they accumulated any debt?

That's weird, my cell phone company just tacked on an extra $10 dollars to their data plans and it hasn't seemed to get in the way of their profit (as far as I can tell).

Really, though, my point in this threadjack was that businesses frequently utilize debt when it benefits them to do so. Our government is no different. Further, businesses are motivated by profit, and it would be massively stupid for us to motivate our government officials using profit.

filth-

Wisconsin has a constitutional amendment preventing unbalanced budgets. I believe that is why your suggestion of borrowing to cover the shortfall is not possible.

there's no semantics here, wherever that came from. bottom line, if a business outspends itself, it goes out of business. as i stated earlier, if it's a publicly owned business on the stock market, there might be tons of capital cash available to maintain operations while a business alters their model, but a mom and pop business that raises prices to make up for lost revenue is only going to succeed as long as there's no competition and there is demand for their product.

again, didn't follow them. but being big companies, i'm sure that, like other big companies, the amount of assets they had allowed them to get appropriate loans, up to a point. the governments of 46 states are very close to that point.

because you, and many others, didn't seem to mind paying that extra fee. if that fee caused thousands of their customers to move to another service, i'll bet that fee gets removed very quickly.

yes, those business' utilize their debt because they have the assets to do so through loans. our government has been doing that also and for far too long. it's catching up to them now and at a very bad time when the majority of the population demands no more raising taxes, but cutting spending.

as to governments using a profit model, i'm with you. governments of any sort in this nation are not constitutionally authorized to operate on a profit scale. they don't produce anything, they just consume.

They should take a lesson from Minnesota and use complicated accounting tricks to pass the deficit a few years down the road *cough* Pawlenty *cough*.

Word on the street is that WI had a surplus until the current Gov came into office and started working his magic.

dk, all I'm saying is that if an organization with the motivations of a business was suddenly placed in a situation where it had all the power of the government, the situation would end very badly and debt would be the least of our problems (and would likely remain a problem given the capacity of the government to accumulate debt without consequence).

I understand the sentiment behind the idea that the government should be run like a business, however, I think it's an idea that falls apart when subject to any amount of scrutiny.

This situation isn't complicated. Wisconsin's small budget problems were in no way caused by unions, but rather in large part to Special Session Senate Bill 2, which gives preferential tax breaks for health savings accounts, and Assembly Bill 7, which is a tax break for small businesses. These pieces of state legislation turned a state surplus into $120m deficit. Just like every other Republican in the past generation, this is about spending money without increasing taxes and then cutting workers' rights in the name of fiscal responsibility. Wisconsin Republicans are using this opportunity to achieve an ideological objective.

Part of the ongoing Republican Crime Organization at work. I have watched this developing all my working life. This is not some accident of fate happening here. This is another step in a long range plan to destroy every last vestige of unionism in America. Once you take that step back and look at it from that perspective a lot of things make sense. Unfortunately many people believe that unions are the enemy. It is not unions destroying the American economy it is Republican policy makers that work for the richest ones who create the most opportunities for themselves to have more power and to consolidate more and more of the wealth. What is happening now is the inevitable result of policy decisions that have been taking place steadily over the last 30 some years. No big surprise at all. The gaining of wealth has no conscience. When the people themselves remove the obstacles to their own financial destruction that shows me all the proof I need that the Republican Crime Organization will succeed. The historical facts that somehow get overlooked is the real results of this kind of out of control profiteering
are sad to the extreme. The results are: civil war, poverty, exploitation of all kinds, and ultimately we will have dictatorship. Thanks a lot Republicans.

And when business raise their prices to the point where they are not competitive, customers go elsewhere unless there's compelling reasons to keep doing business with the company.

I'm tech lead on a small team in the company I work for. My company is profitable. I have 6 people, including myself to get the work done. I've probably got enough work for 8 people. Management understands I have enough work for 8 people but they have no budget to give me 8 people. So I get to figure out how to live within the budget and decide what may not get done.

Government needs to be run like this kind of a business. Government employees work for the taxpayers. A large number of taxpayers in this country are fed up with high taxes and are demanding the government cut spending. If the government employees lose a few benefits, well, welcome to the real world.

Government, at any level, is not in the business to make a profit.

[quote=dippin;2874227

The "unions'" history of violence? Talk about re-writing history.[/QUOTE]

Rewriting what history?

I worked as non-union office staff at a manufacturing company a number of years ago. The union at that company went on strike for four months. I still had a job to get to, and I was chased by pickets a couple of times because I dared to try to get to my job.

Then there's these references. Feel free to prove they never happened.

Union violence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Union Violence Victim Wins Settlement Against Teamsters Union | National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation

The SEIU and Union Violence: When will the violence stop, Mr. Stern? | RedState



---------- Post added at 06:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:54 PM ----------

No, but it has to live within the budget that taxpayers are willing to support. Obama and his buddies are discovering that now.

If you look objectively, I think you will find the list is much longer on the management side.

---------- Post added at 06:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:54 PM ----------


It goes beyond the scope of this particularly discussion, but conservatives seem to think that slashing state and federal budgets will solve the problem...with no adverse impacts (economic and social) resulting from those cuts.

It wont. Tax increases also have to be part of the mix and until the Republicans in state houses and Congress accept it, there will be no meaningful debt reduction.

Forget 'violent', Washington's state employees unions are just plain useless. They're seemingly in place simply to collect involuntary union dues. You know, because this wonderful safeguard for the 'rights' of workers is popular enough to need the force of law to retain its members.

This idea and the idea that government doesn't produce anything are two big problems in the Right's thinking.

I have no problem with the government making money, maybe it is collecting tolls, entrance fees at national parks, giving VIP tours to NASA/FBI/historic sites, collecting taxes and increasing the taxes if it will help save money by reducing gas, healthcare expenses, or environmental problems.

tax increases on who? the people are tired of taxes being raised. raising a tax right now guarantees a loss in the next election.

---------- Post added at 06:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:56 PM ----------

government only consumes.

please show examples of where government makes profits?

So in a couple of centuries worth of unionizing the "history of violence" is a murder and a broken wrist?

The fact is that there is really no comparison between the "violence" employed by unions and the use violence by the national guard and militias to bust unions. There is a reason why many of the cases of union busting have "massacre" in the name.

---------- Post added at 07:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:42 PM ----------

By the way, let's be clear here. This isn't about the importance of balancing a budget, this isn't about whether unions have problems or not, this isn't about big government vs small government.

It is about union busting and ideology. The budget shortfall didn't exist until the passing of further tax cuts, and the law isn't about just trimming back benefits or reducing spending. It is about making it illegal to bargain on benefits or to ever request a wage increase above inflation.

Let's stop trying to dress this bullshit up as some sort of libertarian small government deal. This government passed very targeted tax cuts and in order to pay for them they are not only changing benefits and all that, but also reducing workers rights. No matter what your view of unions is, there is no other way to describe this as something other than taking away the rights of some people. Oh, but the unions that endorsed Walker are exempt of all of this.

Thanks, dippin.....no one here talks about the tax-cuts that Wisconsin just passed in January. So they cut taxes and then a month later panic about a budget shortfall? Doesn't pass the smell test.

"Solutions" to these budget issues always starts with bending the workers over, not cutting entitlements to businesses and campaign contributors.

needs to be shouted from the rooftops.

if there is any hope for this country remaining a 'beacon' of anything good in the world, folks will have to open their eyes and see.

Koch Brothers Behind Wisconsin Effort To Kill Public Unions - Rick Ungar - The Policy Page - Forbes

least shocking news of the day

The blaming of unions is ironic in that the creation and administration of a labour union in the first place is usually the result of poor management.

The worst part is that this is such a blatantly political move that the 4 unions that endorsed Walker are exempt from this. Can anyone here defend that? This is clientelistic politics at its worse, the sort of stuff that you'd expect from mid 20th century Latin dictators. Tax cuts for one republican constituency, protections for the republican unions, and a major, major kick in the nuts for all the other unions that didn't endorse Walker.

And what about the rights of the public to not have the government take so much of their income in taxes? The response attributed to unions in one article was that the state needed to increase taxes. That's idiotic.

Show me the part of the constitution that enumerates the "right of the public to not have the government take so much of their income in taxes"

It's called the right to vote, as in voting out the politicians who don't understand the public is fed up with taxes. If the current politicians don't understand it, they will be replaced until we do get a government that understands that.

for the life of me i cannot figure out how this one-dimensional petit-bourgeois view of taxation as taking-away-my-shit persists, even on the net which presupposes publicly funded electrical and mixed public-private telecommunications infrastructures, on computers that you would not have were it not for publicly funded railroad and highway systems, the consistency of which are conditions of possibility for the walmartization of commodity prices that this same one-dimensional view of the world would simply impute to a fact of nature or the Virtues of Exporting Captialist Exploitation to Places Where Labor Is Cheap. there's no way to move from this petit-bourgeois know nothing-ism coherent views of unions or states or redistributions of wealth. amazing.

Taxes aren't even that high in Wisconsin.

Except that the tax cut wasn't for the "public," but for a specific group of business. Just like the issues go beyond just cutting the current amount of benefits, but about completely eliminating any form of collective bargaining for the unions that didn't endorse this specific government.

No amount of hand waving will eliminate that. This sort of oversimplification of the good public interest versus the bad teacher is so stupid and misleading I can't keep repeating myself over and over again. But here it goes:


But hey, how about we pass a tax cut for union employees, and to pay for that we take away from a core constituency of the republican party? After all, that would be essentially the same, except we'd be flipping the winners and losers based on their support last election.