Our very own Christian Schneider from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute is featured at National Review Online’s The Corner to explain what is really at stake in the battle in Wisconsin between Gov. Walker and Big Gummint Labor as well as other states (H/T to Steve at No Runny Eggs):
[T]o say these protests are merely about collective-bargaining rights is to say The Godfather is a movie about Italian food.
Since the early 1970s, public-sector unions have been a powerful political force in Wisconsin, as they are in many states. The unions collect dues from their members (up to $1,100 per member per year), which they then use to elect members sympathetic to their causes. In the last two elections, the state’s largest teachers’ union spent $3.6 million supporting their candidates.
Walker has attempted to change that framework, allowing government workers to opt out of paying union dues — which, he has said, he thinks may offset the increased health and pension contributions he’s asking of employees.
And it is this provision that has the unions most up in arms. They know that, given the option, many of their members would choose not to write out a check for union dues. This, in turn, would strangle their election spending, leaving them scrambling for funds and, consequently, influence.
In other words, Da Union will no longer be able to use the state as its collection agent to forcibly take money — about $1,000 annually — from members and funnel it to Da Union to be funneled to Democrat candidates. The slush fund for those Democrat candidates will become much smaller.
There’s more:
Unions have consistently used their clout to negotiate contract items that have no direct, quantifiable cost to taxpayers but end up benefiting their members financially.
For instance, in the mid-1970s, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) agreed to begin paying health-care benefits even after employees retired. This was done in lieu of larger pay increases; it appeared not to have any immediate cost. Yet new accounting rules passed just two years ago have shown that MPS will soon have an unfunded liability of $4.9 billion — more than four times the district’s entire annual budget. If MPS were to make the annual required contribution to pay down the liability, it would eat up nearly 20 percent of their total budget — for teachers who no longer even teach.
This is a budgetary trainwreck waiting to happen. As Steve points out, this is exactly what brought about the downfall of GM and Chrysler, to the point where both automakers are run by the federal government and the United Auto Workers.
Taxpayers cannot afford to pay generous retirement benefits to gummint workers who retire in their mid-50s and live 25-30 years after retirement. These workers should have been squirreling away money for retirement like people who work in the real world.
But then the taxpayers never had a voice or a seat at the table when these generous contracts were negotiated. There was just a union thug on one side of the table and a politician bought and paid for by the union thug on the other.
