Who Killed the Unions?

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s victory in a recall election last week has sent a strong message to labor unions, particularly public employee unions (i.e. - police, firefighters, and teachers) that the mood of America has changed resoundingly. No longer are union members perceived as the downtrodden who had been taken advantage of and abused for decades and needed some sort of legal protection. Collective bargaining laws were designed to be the great equalizer in negotiations with municipalities and state officials.

Public workers yielded the prospects for higher salaries and chances for advancement in exchange for health insurance, a defined benefit pension plan and job security. They chose steady dime over the seldom dollar economics because they felt that they selected a career where they could make a difference- to protect the citizenry and to educate the nation’s children.  But the recent economic downturn derailed that continuum.

Governors, including Walker, Chris Christie of New Jersey, and Ohio Governor John Kasich, in an effort to curry favor with conservatives,  began a frontal attack on unions, cutting benefits, tenure laws, and chastising the unions  for “ breaking the backs’ of state treasuries with their demands and pensions.

The unions are not without fault. In New Jersey for example, it has been next to impossible to fire a tenured teachers who has lost effectiveness. For the school district it was a lengthy and expensive process and many would rather forgo that street fight.  A number public employee unions formed PACs (Political Action Committee) to raise funds for and campaign for favored candidates.

But now the paradigm has shifted markedly to the right. In an effort to remain solvent, states are reneging on their promises to save money. Public safety and public education are two issues that should never be compromised by politicization.  But that is indeed the case. But the public ( i.e.the voters) don’t seem to understand that they can’t have it both ways. Why would someone want to become a teacher in this environment- not knowing if something that was promised to them on the day they started teaching would still be valid on the day they retired? The public can’t stand there and scratch their collective heads wondering why education in the US had dropped precipitously in the world rankings when because of the current hostile environment, the best and brightest college graduates shun teaching as a career option. The voters cannot complain about an increase in the crime rate or of people dying because an ambulance could not get there fast enough on the one hand and refusing to even negotiate with public employee unions on the other.

America has become mean spirited and its politicians have been invoking a double standard, demanding for example that Israelis and Palestinians negotiate a settlement to their differences while refusing to do so at home with their public employee unions. At some point compromise must be the order of the day.

NOTE TO READERS- We are going on hiatus for a week or two as we relocate for the summer. We hope to be blogging again soon.