Should State Employees have Collective Bargaining Rights – No
They should not have bargaining rights for benefits. Collective bargaining is fine for wages, but where benefits are concerned, these are policy decisions and should not be held hostage by the collective bargaining process.
This is a battle that will be waged in many other states, in fact has already been waged in Indiana and is in process with Republican Gov. Chris Christi in New Jersey, and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In all of these cases, this discussion, or more aptly identified as the battle, is being waged because of huge budget shortfalls caused in large measure by the public sector pension benefits.
The public sector doesn’t seem to “get it” that their retirement pensions are in jeopardy and may not be there when they retire. The pensions are under funded and can not continue to be funded at this level. The states involved have very serious budget shortfalls. The states are broke. This is the truth of the matter.
Indiana had a 600 million dollar shortfall when Republican Governor Mitch Daniels was elected six years ago. On his second day in office, he issued an executive order revoking collective bargaining in the public sector. One year later the state had a 200 million surplus. This is a dramatic bit of information that Wisconsin and all states should publicize widely.
Wisconsin has become the poster child for a movement to change the playing field on public sector employees and the labor unions that represent them. It has also been a battleground for the issue. It is shameful that the Democratic members of the state Senate fled to hide in Illinois.
They are acting like a child who lost at a game of marbles, therefore picked up his marbles and went home. As President Obama reminded Republicans, elections have consequences. In politics, you may lose but you have an obligation to the voters who elected you to stay and play the game.
There is no constitutional right to collective bargaining. If there was, the Federal government would have collective bargaining also. They do not. President Obama jumped in the first day this confrontation began and characterized it as union busting.I guess he forgot momentarily that he put a freeze on federal government workers wages as one of his budget cutting measures.
Yet in the beginning, Organizing for America, an arm of the Obama campaign group was involved in this state issue. The Democratic National Committee helped organize the protests. Organizations like Move-On.org, helped bus protestors in from other states. The AFL-CIO, a private sector union, the Service Employees International Union were all involved and all have high visibility as Obama supporters.
This is an argument between taxpayers and the public sector unions in each of the states involved, not a Democrat versus Republicans issue. Wisconsin voters, normally strongly Democratic gave a majority to the House and Senate Republican legislators. Then they elected Republican Governor Scott Walker, who campaigned on exactly the same platform as he is attempting to pass in the legislature now.
The media has done a disservice in not giving more coverage to the center of Gov. Walker’s proposal on collective bargaining. State and local governments need certainty, knowing the unions can’t come back again next year and undo any beneficail budget adjustments actions done this year.
