Wisconsin recall debacle casts negative light on labor unions

 

Commentary by James H. Shott

Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, and three of four Republican state senators won the election last week against a public sector labor union-fueled recall movement.

Walker and Kleefisch both won handily against Democrat opponents, 53-46 percent and 53-47 percent, respectively, approximately the same margin by which Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008.

It was a much bigger victory, however, than some news outlets would have you believe. [begin ital] The New York Times [end ital] and [begin ital] The Washington Post, [end ital] for example, said Gov. Walker “survives” recall, as if he won by a point or even a single vote. Some media called Mr. Obama’s 2008 seven-point victory a landslide, but with a seven-point victory, Gov. Walker merely “survived.” Six- or seven-point margins are solid wins, but not landslides, even when Mr. Obama is the winner.

At the root of this upheaval was Wisconsin’s adoption last year of sweeping reforms that curbed collective bargaining rights among government workers, brought the state’s pension system into line with private sector pension systems, and empowered public sector workers to choose whether or not to pay union dues. This bill was passed to save Wisconsin some $30 million in the 2011 fiscal year, helping to reduce a substantial budget deficit.

This was an exercise in union excess. The fact that Scott Walker won the General Election and did what he promised to do in the campaign is not sufficient reason to demand a recall. Given the frequency with which campaign promises are forgotten after the election, one could make a case that the Governor’s performance is reason for celebration.

And speaking of his performance, it has been pretty good.

When he took office on January 3, 2011 the labor force was 3,068,342 strong, 2,828,816 people were working, 239,526 were unemployed, and the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

As of April of this year, BLS numbers showed marked improvement: the labor force was about the same at 3,068,900 workers, but 2,863,590 were employed, the number of unemployed had fallen to 205,310, and the unemployment rate was 6.7 percent. Approximately 34,000 of the unemployed had found a job. Is that level of improvement in little more than a year bad, or good?

The recall election is a mechanism designed to remove officials during a term of office, but is not a method intended to undo an election because some political faction is unhappy with the results. The people at-large made their decision, and the union faction did not prevail. Barring some illegal activity by those duly elected, everybody should just take a deep breath and wait until the next election.

The ill-conceived recall cost the state millions of dollars and distracted everyone in state government from doing the work they were elected or hired to do. According to polling data, many Democrat voters recognized that the recall was a bad idea, and voted against it because they disagreed with the recall movement more than they disagreed with Gov. Walker’s performance.

This effort is a black eye on the union, conjuring up images of children stamping their feet when they don’t get their way. It epitomizes what is wrong with labor unions, particularly public sector unions: excess.

There is nothing inherently wrong with organized labor, and indeed, there were very good reasons for labor to organize in the past. However, labor law has evolved to a point where laws now mostly control the relationship between employers and employees, eliminating the abuses that were the reason for unions to have originated. Unions simply are no longer needed to protect workers from abuse, and they now focus not on a safe and fair work environment, but on pay levels that are higher than market value and special perks, all of which boost costs for employers.

And that is particularly so in the case of public sector unions. Since government determines the labor climate and is the arbiter of labor disputes, to have a union representing government workers against the government is totally nonsensical.

The problem posed by the Wisconsin recall madness is far less the responsibility of rank and file union members, many of whom have no choice whether to join a union or not, than of union leadership – which uses political donations and pressure to gain excessive pay, benefits and special perks for members – and the politicians who were more responsive to the lure of financial support and votes than to their responsibility to the taxpayers for whom they work.

It is not the members’ fault if they have an unrealistic level of job perks, and they do feel they are treated unfairly when someone wants to take something away from them. Their position is understandable, even if their level of protest is not.

But the reality is that the level of pay and benefits of public employees places an unfair burden on the taxpayers, and has to be fixed to help restore fiscal stability to the state, and Scott Walker’s first responsibility is to all the people of Wisconsin, not the public employee union.

It is the first step in restoring balance to the realm of public employment.

Cross-posted from Observations

The Celebration of Class Warfare

By Findalis of Monkey in the Middle

On October 2, 2010 so-called Labor Leaders, Progressives, Socialists, Communists, Code Pink, and other Moonbat Idiots Members of the far-left gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to condemn the United States, Glen Beck, The Tea Party, and the people who attended and supported the Restoring Honor event with the One Nation Rally.

I was not at either event but Robert Ringer was.  These are his observations on the October 2nd rally:

The weather was perfect — 72 degrees and sunny — for the "One Nation Working Together" rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Oct. 2. I was determined to go with an open mind because I wanted to try to understand what would motivate someone to attend an event sponsored by unions and self-proclaimed socialist and communist groups.

The first time I heard about the rally the thought crossed my mind how embarrassing it was that union bosses and their counterparts in a wide variety of extremist, left-wing organizations would put on an event to counter one sponsored by a television commentator, Glenn Beck. It was like a third-grader trying to one-up a popular rival on the playground.

Of course, the organizers would now deny they were responding to Beck’s 8/28 Restoring Honor event, but that in itself would be embarrassing given that they’ve been talking about it being their answer to his hugely successful rally since they first came up with the idea. On Saturday, I only heard bits and pieces of a few speeches, but at least one of the speakers shouted, "Somebody tell Glenn Beck there are more people here than at his event."

The rally started at noon and, as planned, I arrived in Washington just before 2:00 p.m. As I entered D.C. from the Virginia side, the first thing I noticed was that people were walking away from the rally site in droves. Not a good sign for an event that was scheduled to last until 4:00 p.m.

As I stopped at the first light after coming across the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge, I glanced to my left and was surprised to see a number of vacant parking spaces on 23rd Street — something unheard of in a city where you can drive around for an hour in search of a parking spot. I did a quick left onto 23rd and promptly backed into one of the available spaces.

My wife and I then started walking toward the Lincoln Memorial, an easy trek compared to the exhausting walk we had endured for the 8/28 Restoring Honor rally when the closest parking we could find was at the Willard Hotel on 14th Street. As we walked toward the Lincoln Memorial, people wearing T-shirts emblazoned with logos and wording in keeping with the theme of the rally continued streaming by us in the opposite direction.

On arriving at the site the first thing I did was try to estimate the crowd size, which I’ve become pretty adept at. This particular case, however, was unusually difficult because of the nonstop flow of people leaving the event early. At any given time, however, I estimated that the density of the crowd ranged from one-fifth to one-tenth that of the Restoring Honor gathering.

At the Beck rally it was strictly shoulder-to-shoulder, virtually impossible to walk in most places. That crowd was no less than 500,000 — and perhaps as high as 750,000. But one of the many differences with the 8/28 event was that virtually everyone stayed until the rally was officially over. They were there by choice.

To be as fair as possible, I generously factored in the large number of people who had departed two hours or more before I arrived at the One Nation rally and came up with a crowd estimate of between 75,000 to 150,000 — far more than the 30,000 to 50,000 I had guessed might show up. Clearly, I had underestimated the power of union bosses handing down mandates to their rank and file to attend.

But to me the crowd size didn’t really matter, because they were two totally different events. Beck is just one individual — a radio and television personality — who produced a rally (primarily using his own money) with a theme of restoring honor to America and to honor fallen U.S. soldiers. By contrast, the 10/2 event was a political rally sponsored by a wide array of well-funded, far-left organizations.

The big question is not who had the largest crowd; that wasn’t even close. The more important question is why rally organizers like Al Sharpton would be so focused on trying to show the public they could outdraw a media personality.

To the crowd’s credit, though the signs and rhetoric were brazenly anti-freedom and anti-free market, people were generally well behaved, though clearly lacking in enthusiasm. To their discredit, however, trash was everywhere, which I have found to be a trademark of those on the left — especially the environmental crowd.

Again, by contrast, it was hard to find any trash on the ground at Beck’s 8/28 event. There are many conjectures I could draw from this observation, but due to space limitations, I’ll leave that psychological endeavor up to you.

Tabloid-size "newspapers" were all over the place. One was called The Militant, which featured the headline: "Public education is a birth right, not a corporate profit."

Another one, Challenge: The Revolutionary Communist Newspaper of Progressive Labor Party, sported a logo that read "Fight for Communism." Mind you, this was a rally called "One Nation Working Together" — in the capital city of the United States of America!

Then there were the signs:

* "Wages that are rightfully ours."

* "We demand $$$ for jobs and education."

* "The American Dream promises a free education."

* "Black Is Back."

* "Capitalism is failing. Socialism is the answer."

At one of the many tables where books were being sold I wrote down such titles as Bolshevism, What Is Marxism, The Communist Manifesto, Four Marxist Classics and Black Liberation and Socialism. Quite an array of reading material for an event titled "One Nation Working Together."

Then there were the pamphlets, with such patriotic verbiage as:

* "Fight for a Two-Year National Moratorium to Halt All Foreclosures and Evictions."

* "Jobs for All! Public-Works Program Now!"

* "Make the bosses pay for their crisis!"

I could fill a book with what I saw at the rally, but to me the bottom line is this: The Oct. 2 "One Nation Working Together" event was simply a celebration of that age-old disease, class warfare. Unwittingly, the hate peddlers who promoted it provided a public-service by letting us know they are still out there, alive and well. And they are poised and ready to bring down the American way of life — especially freedom and the free-market system.

As I walked back up 23rd Street after my short stay at the rally, the little security guard inside my brain whispered to me, "This was a reminder that America is irrevocably split into those who want to put a stop to the government’s policy of redistributing wealth and those who demand that the government use force to give them even more of other people’s wealth.

The latter group (which I estimate at nearly one-third of the current U.S. population) is fully prepared to sell their souls to a totalitarian regime in exchange for the "stuff" they think they deserve. I’m not sure how they define deserve, but it matters not. What does matter, sadly, is that they are nothing more than pawns in a power game that has existed probably since the Neolithic Age.

These pawns have long been referred to — by everyone from George Orwell to Alvin Toffler to Saul Alinsky — as the Have-Nots. This is what the "One Nation Working Together" rally was all about, nothing more and nothing less. It’s an old theme that will continue to be with us until the last breath of humankind has been extinguished.

And the truth that many people do not want to believe is that there is no solution to the problem. The only hope is containment. Right now, a majority of Americans are poised to push back and try to contain the radical left from bringing down the curtain on capitalism and individual sovereignty. But no matter what happens on Nov. 2, no one should be deluded into believing the war is over. The war will never be over.

Start preparing your mind now for what’s coming after Nov. 2, and teach your children what Ronald Reagan said back in 1964:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."

After what I saw and heard in D.C. on Oct. 2, I can vouch for the Dutchman’s words.

Although many news agencies and networks claim that the picture below is of the 10/2 rally, in reality it is of the 8/28 rally.  The left is losing on all fronts and can only produce lies to feed the people.

On November 2nd the people will tell the leftist elites a loud message.