The state of Wisconsin currently finds itself in a pickle with a $137-million budget shortfall in the fiscal year ending June 30 and an overzealous governor overreaching his power in an attempt to fix it.
Governor Scott Walker’s demonization of public workers – which includes teachers, social workers, public university staff and prison guards – is despicable. These individuals are by no means living “high on the hog” to begin with. Attempting to limit their unions’ collective bargaining rights is a crime against liberty.
It has become commonplace these days to degrade unions. A century ago, workers had few if any rights – forced to work long grueling hours in dangerous conditions for little pay. For over one hundred years, men and women have fought to gain rights for workers, such as the eight-hour work day and minimum-wage laws. And unions, whether in the private or public sector, have been an important part of fair treatment for American workers.
Walker is right that we do need to get the budget under control. However, this should not be at the expense of personal liberties or unfairly put on the shoulders of public workers who educate our children, take away our garbage, and guard our prisons.
Many saw a win-win situation when Walker ran for office on his specious promise of balancing the budget without raising taxes. In order to do this, he plans on cutting benefits and union bargaining rights for public workers, most of whom are middle or working class – as well as cutting programs for society’s most vulnerable and continuing to phase out public transit.
Milwaukee’s next county executive will have their work cut out for them to find consistent funding for the Milwaukee County Transit System. Whoever wins the election this spring can rest assured that no help from Madison will be forthcoming.
Milwaukee Public Schools are also currently in crisis. Despite recent growth in graduation rates, MPS still lags far behind in testing. According to the Journal Sentinel, in 2008 only 39 percent of MPS tenth graders were proficient or advanced in reading, and a meager 28.7 percent were proficient or advanced in math. This is unacceptable, and something has to be done. This is the future of our city.
Teaching is by no means an easy job, especially in schools located in low-income areas where many parents aren’t involved, street gangs hold principal influence and, at times, one’s life may be in danger. To say that these individuals do not deserve their salary and benefits is ridiculous. It is time to rethink the way public schools are funded. Aside from deterring quality teachers from coming to Wisconsin, Walker also plans to cut state funding for public schools. This will be disastrous for cities like Milwaukee and Racine and put more stress on their meager property taxes.
Being funded by property taxes puts poorer communities like Milwaukee at an extreme disadvantage as opposed to wealthier municipalities such as Brookfield or Whitefish Bay. Pulling state funding in an attempt to even out the playing field could spell ruin for poorer districts.
Cutting teachers’ benefits and salaries is only going to make the situation worse. Without bargaining power for unions, job security goes out the window and throws workers 10 steps backwards. Although Walker has stated that he will still allow unions the right to negotiate salaries, taking away their right to negotiate benefits is a blatant attempt to weaken and phase out unions.
The advantage of Walker’s war against public employees is a supposed $30 million towards the state’s budget deficit, but at what price? That is not to mention some job loss in the private sector, because state workers will have less disposable income.
If Walker gets away with this crime against liberty, what’s next? There are other ways to balance the budget, and yes, this may include raising some taxes. However, a balance between tax increases and cuts to funding is a logical choice. Everyone may have to sacrifice something.
Nevertheless, isolating one segment of the population – especially one comprised of teachers, prison guards, public university staff, and public hospital workers – is shortsighted and erroneous, only hurting our state in the long run, as quality workers flee elsewhere.
Whatever the case may be, if one is wealthy and can afford to send their children to private schools and universities, Walker’s plan is a great one. But Wisconsin public universities, such as UW-Milwaukee, are already low-paying institutions for professors, and this makes it hard to gain and keep quality employees. There is no simple answer to the budget deficit, but it seems the most justified way to solve the issue would be to split the burden across the population, instead of creating scapegoats for political gain.
“Without bargaining power for unions, job security goes out the window”
Nothing is wrong with that unless you are an under performing worker. Employment should be based on merit, not the union behind you.
“According to the Journal Sentinel, in 2008 only 39 percent of MPS tenth graders were proficient or advanced in reading, and a meager 28.7 percent were proficient or advanced in math. This is unacceptable, and something has to be done.”
These numbers are simply unacceptable. Hardly a compelling case to continue insulating the people running our schools.
“Attempting to limit their unions’ collective bargaining rights is a crime against liberty”
What about the civil liberty of people who don’t want to be in the union? What about their right choose whether or not to pay hundreds of dollars a year to the union?
I don’t like the way Scott Walker is doing this, but I also have complaints about public workers unions. Walker should leave them some of their collective bargaining agreements — but people should be able to opt out of the union.
In the end the union’s should have to stand on the merits of their achievment — not on their size.
After this show by bully Scott Walker people would be a fool if they didn’t want to belong to and support their union. This will make unions stronger because it woke up complacent people as to how important unions are.
I agree that people should be able to opt out of the Union if they want to. But why would they want to? The union is the reason they have good benefits in the first place. Many others are hating on this. People organized Unions to keep things fair and its because of Unions that even non-Union employees receive more pay because corporations must pay people a competitive wage to attract good workers. If there were never any Unions the bar would be set much lower in almost every line of work.
So what do the union supporters think would be the best way to eliminate the state budget deficit?
Like the article said, balancing the budget should not fall on a small segment of the population. It should be balanced throughout the population and this “may include raising some taxes.” Government workers may even agree to some cuts within reason, to balance the budget. However, Walker’s dictatorial, bull-headed tactics are out of line.You can not demonize and ostracize one segment of the population. Mark my words he is not going to stop at public workers and his strong-arm,W-on-steroids, tactics are going to make a lot of people angry before the end of his first-term.
Thank you for the response, Brian. I look forward to what you and other commentators will say in response to my editorial espousing a somewhat different approach.
I look forward to reading it, Joe. I am happy that someone is writing a differing viewpoint. It makes the editorial section more interesting.
Wake up Brian!! Fixing this mess is going to hurt everyone. Public and private. I’m not getting raises….and I can’t hide behind Tenure. You think Walker is doing this for political gain? He is doing it so that your children and grandchildren have liberty for their futures!
Private businesses keep good employees because firing them means that the company will lose profit. There is a strong economic incentive to keep good employees.
In public sector jobs, there is no such economic incentive. Without the due process that unions require (they just require that documentation be given that the employee is bad in order for him or her to be fired, and they encourage firing bad employees if there is that documentation) there is nothing keeping public sector bosses from firing public sector employees, regardless of performance, for any reason.
If we’re looking at public education:
Without due process provided by the union, if the principal of a school wants to fire Mr. Jones (a great teacher) and hire his own nephew (a poor one), it doesn’t matter whether or not Mr. Jones is a great teacher and the principal’s nephew is terrible. There is no incentive for the principal to keep Mr. Jones instead of hiring the nephew, because the principal does not lose his job or earn less money if his school is lower performing. A private business would think twice before letting a good quality worker go, but public institutions aren’t subject to market forces in the same ways.
Removing unions and the process they have for getting rid of bad teachers will make it very easy to fire bad teachers. It will also make it very easy to fire good ones, and there is no system of incentives in place to hire good ones other than an intrinsic desire to have good teachers in the building–hardly a strong incentive, especially if good teachers cost more. We will likely see schools simply hiring teachers who are willing to work for the cheapest wages instead. Unfortunately, lowering teacher pay even more means that it will be more difficult to attract new talent to the profession: who wants to spend 5 years in college learning to be a teacher when you know you’ll never be able to make more than a few thousand dollars more than the poverty level for a family of four?
Bad teachers will be fired. Unfortunately, with the passage of the budget bill, it isn’t likely that very many people will be choosing teaching as a profession in Wisconsin in the future–especially the more qualified college students who can earn lots more working in the private sector in different careers. Arguably, we want highly qualified college students teaching our children, but very few of our smartest college students will voluntarily choose to go into a career that will never pay well and where they could be fired at their principal’s whim regardless of their performance in the classroom.
This budget bill fixes the budget, but it creates a lot of other problems, and it does not address solutions for fixing them.