Sorry, I just can’t get past the point where public employee unions who endorsed Walker are not subject to the new rules.
I have yet to see anyone respond to the assertion that there would be no ‘crisis’ without the tax cuts this very governor implemented. Here’s the primary source - actual budget analysis (pdf) of the whole “Wisconsin version of the CBO” thing. They could have easily had a surplus this year. This is an invented crisis.
Step 1 - Eliminate Funding Sources
Step 2 - Slash Government Employee Benefits
Step 3 - Eliminate Collective Bargaining Rights
Aren’t they also the unions that are not allowed to strike? Cops and firefighters usually are not allowed to strike for example.
We seem to have at least 4 different issues here:
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Wisconsin’s fiscal situation. **Elucidator’s **links (and others) appear to show that Wisconsin is not in as bad of shape as they might claim. I think that the crisis nature is overblown.
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Wisconsin’s tax rates. I personally think they are taxed plenty based on the Tax Foundation information I cited earlier.
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Union collective bargaining. Unions exist for a reason, but at the same time a review of their collective bargaining rights is warranted. ETA: Eliminated collective bargaining is bad, IMHO.
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Public employee pay. Public employee pay is tougth to measure and compare for a variety of reasons. That said, in a recession where private sector employees are getting hit left and right - they are not going to get a lot of sympathy. My wife is a public employee and was hit with furlough days. Several of her colleagues were at my house complaining about them and I mentioned that I took an 8% pay cut, and had to lay off 3 people in my department. I asked them how many people they had cut - the answer was zero. They all admitted that they HAD people they wanted to cut, but that it was too difficult.
I was under the impression that all public employee unions weren’t allowed to strike.
Barring the tax cuts/spending the governor put in which created the “crisis” Wisconsin would have had no trouble paying all its employees at their current negotiated rates. No one would need to be fired either. Wisconsin had a budget surplus till the governor gave it away.
I have a question relating to the original topic: I received an e-mail from one of my conservative friends this morning that maintains that public sector unions are not regulated by federal law but are regulated by the states and in fact in some states, such as Virginia, no collective bargaining power is granted to government unions.
This information was from an obviously slanted e-mail, but I am curious if the fundamental point is true. It seems like if it is, then the situation in WI is a state matter and federal labor law has no influence.
All unions are subject to the terms of the National Labor Relations Act and its amendments. Subject to certain limitations, states are free to supplement those terms.
I am not sure.
From a thread in GQ this was posted:
In addition to the above, it is true that several states, I believe all in the South, either do not have collective bargaining rights, or prohibit them for public workers. I can’t find the cite right now though.
While it is a state matter at that moment, I don’t know if that would preclude federal legislation like the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act - which I should note only applies to public safety workers, not all state employees. And which ironically, are the only groups safe from this legislative attack in Wisconsin.
I also just posted this in the other thread, but bears repeating here:
Wisconsin Academics Get Expansive Bargaining Bill
I limited my editorial comments in that thread, but I should say here that the governor probably picked the worst political battle possible to start his new term. Let’s piss off a group that has been fighting this issue for two generations, finally won major concessions, and now the idiot wants to go another round with 20,000 academics and their students. How did this guy manage to win the election? Was this issue even raised in the election?
Not peer reviewed.
Comes from a biased source.
Does not tell us how they calculated the benefits value.
Does not tell us the discount for fewer hours worked.
Does not tell us the relevance in including racial and gender information in a comparison of pay data.
If we are going to just post un supported numbers from biased sources, here is the Heritage Foundation’ opinion from a blog. It should be given the equivalent level of credence:
Thanks to those who answered my question.
I am now wondering if something similar may occur in MN where the republicans took over the legislature during the last election and we have a huge deficit. However, our new governor is a Democrat. Could be quite a battle. Seeing how many more holidays the state employees I deal with get compared to the private sector and having my property taxes go up 17% largely due to underfunded city employee pensions makes me open to the idea of reducing public employee benefits.
Big difference between the two.
What I linked cites its sources throughout. I see no source info in your link.
As for peer review it was published a week ago. Not sure how long peer review takes but I am sure anyone who reads it in the world is free to review it for accuracy and post their findings.
Basically your typical “attack the messenger and not the message” smoke and mirrors bullshit. It is fine to note the group has an agenda so the data should be approached with caution. If there is something wrong with their analysis feel free to point it out or admit you got nothing.
It is not just about union busting, but specific unions. The ones that lean Dem are being hammered. The police and firemen are not, at least for now.
The teachers lean Dem. The Repubs have long said that teachers are underpaid when they camapign. They when elected, they fight them tooth and nail. Now the claim is beginning teachers who work much cheaper should be put in while experienced teachers should get broomed. That of course indicates how much they are interested in public education.
The protesters will eventually face serious actions. The police will make the old claim “someone threw a bottle”. That always seems to work.
You need to learn what peer review is. Hint - it does not come from posting a .pdf on a site with a mission that is NOT education. I attacked both message AND messenger, and specified the issues (which you conveniently ignore once again).
I read their footnotes, and then said my issues. However, to respond to your personal attack: From THEIR .pdf:
“The Employer Cost of Employee Compensation ECEC) data, part of the National Compensation Survey, was used to calculate total compensation costs as a markup on wages.”
That is not telling me what their formula is for determing the VALUE of a pension. The cost of the pension system is not the point when making a total compensation comparison - it is the value to the employee. Telling us that they determined this by adding up how much the State set aside makes no effort to determine if the pension fund of the state is fully funded, what their actuarial tables are, what their investment return is, and what the average worker can expect to collect.
It is bad math, from a biased site, with no real sourcing of actual data and listing of methodoligies used. It is fine to use as one of many sources from various points on the spectrum, but to consider this as anything more than a cherry picked analysis by a pro-union organization is foolish.
This is not smoke an mirrors bullshit (your words). This is looking at a source. Get a real source, and quit trying to peddle information from the head of the union as Cecil’s Own Truth.
Better news out of North Dakota. North Dakota House rejects closing state pension funds.
Was there a memo I missed during the last election about attacking unions?
The police are apparently marching in solidarity with the teachers.
While the police are not on the chopping block this go around they are not so stupid to miss the general attack on unions and they could be next.
As such I doubt the Governor can really count the police as on his side in this.
Yes it is smoke and mirrors.
What are you demanding here? A six month long research project by the Congressional Budget Office to submit a 700 page exhaustive analysis?
What will you accept? From who?
Usually around here when someone cites numbers from (say) the NRA others cite numbers that may refute the NRA analysis. We then argue alot on what the numbers are telling us and what is more reliable.
You note possible issues with the numbers but actually do not show numbers yourself much less argue why your numbers are better. You simply attack the people who compiled them.
If Andrew Breitbart wrote that the sun rises in the East he is not automatically wrong because he is a partisan bullshit artist. (Although if he said that I’d probably get up early tomorrow to make sure the sun was indeed still rising in the East.) Certainly he would be a case where you need to take a hard look at any claims but it is wrong to simply say, “Well, he said it therefore it is a lie.”
When a biased institution posts a position paper that credits another source that is not the same as directly linking the source data.
Putting that aside, you should understand that pensions are a big draw for many union and government jobs.