New Wisconsin governor tries to bust unions

Maybe it's already been mentioned somewhere here, but could someone explain to me how ending collective bargaining helps ballance the budget?

The paying more for health bennies, I certainly get.

The paying more into the pension I sorta get, even though the pension is 100% employee funded, and the .gov doesn't pay anything in to begin with.

But the collective bargaining, which Scott seems to be important enough to throw out the other two in order to get passed, I don't get.

It doesn't. It's simply "payback."


*Though I suppose someone could argue that ending collective bargaining reduces the chance of employee salaries rising too quickly in the future.

You have something of a point here. Union leaders often have more in common with political and business elites than their members. But to try to ascribe the whole thing to that is wrong. And if anything, that has a moderating effect on the protests.

I was under the impression that it had more to do with working conditions and such and less to do with salaries.

That can't be right...I believe wages is the one thing they can still collectively bargain for.

Dunno. But if "working conditions" includes class size, then that's a way to save money as well. Make each class a third larger, that's a lot fewer teachers to pay.

It isn't going to balance the budget. What it hopefully will do is prevent future agreements with government employee unions that the states simply cannot afford.

Right now the retirement packages and benefit packages some unions have negotiated simply are not sustainable and are unreasonable.

They will still be able to negotiate salaries.

I don't know about the benefit packages, but the pension is 100% employee funded. How does that cost the State anything?

You are correct to a certain extent. Unlike things like a 401k system, when their retirement benefits come up short do to poor investments on the part of the state, the state covers those losses. Employees are guaranteed they will see a certain amount of return on their retirement no matter what the market is like. Additionally, state employees are guaranteed a retirement until they die. When the money they have contributed is exhausted, the state covers their retirement until they are gone.

Basically the Union uses collective bargaining to force districts to buy the higher cost benefit plans offered by the union themselves.

Link

No.

That's exactly what they want you to think. Keep you fighting amongst yourselves.

Okay, that makes sense, but seeing as how the Unions agreed to the Governor's requests on that vein, it's kind of moot.

I don't think it is. I think its to prevent this type of thing from continuing and from happening again in the future.

Here's the bottom line to me. These government employee unions are out of control. They need to be reigned in now. If they aren't, states will see similar problems to the ones Greece has experienced in recent months.

Even after everything that Greece has gone through, the union's out there continue to demand more.

They only started agreeing to things after they saw they were going to lose this vote. That is bullshit and not good enough. If they had been willing to work with the governor and others from the start this might not have happened.

They can lay off teachers by merit rather than seniority - that is, they have to lay off the least senior (read: cheapest) teachers first under the current arrangement.

Most public unions pensions are not paid into by the employee. Some employees in certain cities do contribute some pay to their pension but a lot get it paid for by the state/local government they work for.

Where I work I pay nothing into my retirement account.

If I'm not mistaken the government employees in Wisconsin don't pay anything either.

Because any concessions made now when the GOP has power can be "negotiated" right back when the Dems take over.

The idea is to fix the incestuous relationship, not to do the budget a temporary solid.

I don't see how

the situation here is blindingly obvious - Fat-cat union heads keep unscrupulous Dems in power in politics, who in turn keep the union heads in power in the unions by giving away the store at the "bargaining table"

the union heads can say to the somnambulant membership "we got you a great deal, vote for us" and they do, and "this politician is on your side, vote for him" and they do....and the politician knows that said leaders can turn out those votes.

Most of the membership has no reason to object to this relationship because they get a better contract as a side effect of the mutual back-scratching...but they are merely pawns.

the tax-payer, meanwhile, gets royally fucked and if they dare to protest they are said to be "against teachers and firefighters" - THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

It's a practically perfect racket - until the money runs out.

you have it right backwards.

Walker's bill doesn't END collective bargaining, it LIMITS it. And it limits it specifically to the kinds of things (like working conditions) they legitimately need to be able to negotiate.

What is does do is limit the growth in wages and benefits to a rate scaled to the economy ([-]GDP IIRC[/-]? EDIT: It's the Consumer Price Index) instead of whatever amount they can "negotiate"

otherwise, they have all the same bargaining rights they always had.

and again, this is already the case with Federal workers and half the states in the union.

what's going on here is a PR power play by big labor, not a REAL affront to rights.

If it were, then you have to ask where are the protests in all the other states which already have restricted bargaining rights? where are the protests in Washington?

not really, there are other costs associated with class size than teacher salary.

especially if you don't have the infrastructure for it.

I follow a blog on Seattle Area Transit. On there there are more than a couple bus drivers. I don't feel like looking up links, and I could be getting a few things wrong but my info comes from here if you want to check:
http://seattletransitblog.com/
and here:
http://pstransitoperators.wordpress.com/
A blog of some of the aforementioned bus/train drivers. Go look up some of the posts/threads about the last contract negotiations if you want to see a union boss tell workers to shut up and calling them liars (and then get schooled when said workers post the sections of contract to back them up).

So Seattle has a pretty extensive transit system. Not the best in the world, but being the 8th largest system in the US, and only the 13th largest Metropolitan Area, it punches a bit above it's weight. Considering that until 09 it was bus only (largest bus only system in US) that means lots of drivers (buses don't scale like trains). Which means operations costs are pretty high and eat up a large chunk of revenue. Metro is also funded almost exclusively through Sales Tax. So the recession hit it pretty hard. Fares have increased four times in the last four years, but not enough to make up for the shortfall.

So here comes contract negotiations. A conservative think tank (Washington Policy Center) does some research, finding out that Seattle has the 3rd highest paid bus drivers in the Nation. Also discovers that over 30 bus drivers made over 100k the year before. ATU 587 and it's boss Paul Bechtel start going into war mode.

A couple of drivers both on Seattle Transit Blog and PSTO start explaining the system and why so many drivers make so much. Turns out that there are two classes of drivers, full time and part time. You've got to do about 8 years on average of PT to move up to FT (b/c once you make FT, you never leave until retirement). Also there is a step system where your pay is based on how long you've worked for Metro. Also, another relevant fact, Seattle's most heavily used routes are Electric Trolley Bus Routes.

Sorry for all the back story, but you wanted to know how collective bargaining outside of wages led to budget problems, and it's complicated. Anyway.

So turns out the contract says that all OT first has to go FT drivers, and only if none of them pick up the hours can it go to PT. So big costs right there. Instead of giving the hours to some who need it (and are the cheapest drivers) instead the hours have to go to the most expensive drivers AND they have to be paid time and half.

But it get's better. All ETB routes (the busiest, most frequent routes, meaning most potential for OT) can only be driven by drivers with ETB experience. And thanks to the contract ETB training is seniority based. So your ETB routes are all your oldest, most expensive drivers, who are the only ones that can pick up those hours.

Throw in the fact that pensions are based on a percentage of your last couple years before retirement and what you get is your oldest most expensive drivers picking up 20-30 hours OT a week their last couple years, raking in over 100 grand (some over 115) and then retiring like fat cats.

Not a bad gig. However thanks to collective bargaining, ATU 587 refuses to change the system.

Unions are good for those that have 'got their's' but suck for those outside the system (like the PT drivers, who don't even get a full workload) and everyone else. The taxpayer gets fucked (more money), and the user gets fucked (less service hours, not to mention how safe is a driver that's been working 70 hours that week?).


And don't get me started on the Seattle PD (who is under DOJ investigation BTW) and their relationship with SPOG. Check it out here:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014393267_spogprez04m.html
Cops not killing and beating the shit out of the citizenry is NOT something that needs to be 'hashed out at the bargaining table.'

I'm looking for what, specifically, is affected by the new law and this is the first explanation I've found:

In another explanation I saw the other day, and can't find now, all the matters of working conditions and so forth that private unions bargain for are already protected by statute and have never been subject to collective bargaining.

The argument Walker and the Republicans make is that local jurisdictions need this in order to deal with budget cuts.

long article in the Weekly Standard, admited right-of-center viewpoint:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/wisconsin_554095.html

Yeah, you do. You just want to blame Democrats and all the usual bogeymen.

Union leaders are acting to contain anger at these cuts from amongst their membership. The idea that they're capable of somehow manipulting the entire situation so that they can get paid more is pretty stupid.

^^^
Consider me stunned and speechless. I couldn't be more at a loss on how to process that if you'd told me...hell I can't even come up with a ridiculous enough example...

You must be the most blindly naive person on the face of the Earth.

Remedial primer for Rick and those who share his views:

[yt=Andrew Klavan]su4PwZCWUdg&feature=player_embedded[/yt]

Gotta love Lefty Logic:

http://veracitystew.com/2011/03/12/wisconsin-firefighters-take-a-stand/

A. so in order to defend the rights of "the working man" these folks are more than willing to crash a bank, thus putting hundreds of working class bank employees out of work?

B. One wonders if these geniuses have scouted out a new bank that has a board made up of those who did NOT contribute to Republicans?

C. TWO firefighters withdrew $600,000 - THESE are the oppressed public workers we're supposed to sympathize with?