Rejecting what unions want in Wisconsin
Image by Getty Images via @daylife...There is much more.
Wisconsin residents realize what an historic opportunity they have. Even with the landslide conservative victories last November, Wisconsin was the only state in the country where Democrats lost the governorship, a Senate seat, and an entire legislature. The message from Wisconsin voters was clear — restore common sense to government: don’t spend more than you make; smaller government is better government; people and businesses create jobs, not government. The return to fiscal sanity in Wisconsin is no more complicated than that. While the MSM is painting the standoff in Madison as the end of collective bargaining and the union equivalent of Custer’s Last Stand, the truth is far less dramatic.
Wisconsin and the nation have watched as schools across Wisconsin closed due to teachers participating in a “sick out”; unions bused in people from other states to inflate their mob numbers; and Democrat legislators literally ran away to neighboring states to avoid the vote on Governor Scott Walker’s budget repair bill. Understanding the events unfolding is important.
Two areas of state law — one for state workers (Chapter 111 of the Wisconsin Statutes) and one for local government and public school employees (Section 111.70 of the Wisconsin Statutes) — give public employees the ability in Wisconsin to collectively bargain. The law issues a mandate to both the employer (the government, through its taxpayers) and the collective bargaining group (employees represented by a union). The two sides must “meet and confer at reasonable times, in good faith, with the intention of reaching an agreement” on wages, hours, fringe benefits, and conditions of employment. In other words, public employees, unlike the rest of the planet, are given extraordinary leverage to determine what they are paid or given in those areas. They do not have such a say under civil service rules.
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The stakes are higher for the Democrats and the unions. Losing means they will also be losing much of the funding for their future elections. Unions may also be losing much of their membership too because if union members opt out, they can get back some of the money they will have to contribute to payments of health care and retirement by no longer paying union dues.
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