Either way is a bad thing. Give the state too much power and we’re slaves to the state. Let corporations get out of hand and we become slaves to the oligarchy.
I don’t think asking public workers in Wisconsin to contribute a relatively trivial amount to their own pensions and removing the ability for their unions to make the state their bagmen for collecting dues is tantamount to turning the clock back to the 19th century.
In fact, I think a lot of that rhetoric is what did the public unions in. Many of us have family and friends who are teachers and got a full dose of the “it’s the end of the world” rhetoric when in fact that even with Walkers changes, the public unions are still way way ahead of the private sector (and private sector unions).
The public was served with months of melodrama – teachers in the streets, sometimes drafting their students on “field trips” to protest. Sit-ins. Violence. And over what? A slight rollback of benefits that most people in the private sector could only dream of?
The most effective campaigners for Walker were the union protesters.
And which countries have been most successful in combating both of those? Right, the Nordics. Whose populations are just as individualistic as Americans.
is tantamount to turning the clock back to the 19th century.
No, it goes FAR further. It’s making basic rights like free speech (workers talking to other workers) entirely conditional. In this case on who you work for. But once they’re conditional, the bar is broken - those rights need to be negotiated for in all situations. Legal fictions (Corporations) have more rights and less responsibilities than real people…
Except now they don’t. It’s conditional. They can’t get together and say “deal with us”. That’s a plain and simple restriction on free speech, which can be used as leverage for all kinds of other things like restricting the free speech rights of school kids, and…
This is the type of over the top BS rhetoric that WI voters heard for almost two years and wisely rejected. This battle had absolutely nothing to do with Free Speech. How many of the tens of thousand of government workers who protested, went on strike and compared Walker to Hitler lost their jobs because they exercised their 1st amendment rights?
Without refighting a 70 page thread (too much), as Brad said removing the “right” for Public Union to bargain collective for benefits “rolls them back” to point which is on par with many state and is exactly the same as Federal worker who have never had the right for collective bargaining for benefits.
The end result is WI public employes ended up with benefits which far exceed almost all private sector workers, and probably better than 95% of the workers of the world.
Stated the way you did in your post, you’d think Romney and Friends would have left their current jobs to join the public sector because of how much better it was when obviously this was NOT the case.
Does anyone know a teacher who has ever been fired? Or just plain laid off?
These are the bread and butter issues that are working against the public unions. It’s easy to get lost in the rhetoric but what the majority of voters know is that it’s virtually impossible for a public employee to get fired and it’s rare for them to be laid off and they can retire at a relatively young age with a 90% pension.
People working in a factory or in a private sector office can only dream of such job security and benefits. And having the former cry and scream about how their rights are being destroyed rings a little hollow and gets a little old.
If you talk to the “typical” voter in most states (including San Jose and San Diego) the public employees themselves are their own worst enemies.
I’m sure I’m not the only one here who has a Facebook account whose newsfeed is filled with friends and family who are public school teachers who are making out the events in Wisconsin as the end of the world, completely oblivious to how the economy has been for the rest of us. It’s that lack of empathy that turns people against them.
Younger teachers do have poor job security- though that could be a function of the unions- Unions tend to shaft newer employees in favor of older ones.
I know this from experience , and folks I met when considering Troops to Teachers. I decided I’d make a bad teacher and better weatherman, so I went that route, but younger teachers don’t have it nearly as easy as people think.
That said, I think the private sector folks- the right is playing to their jealousy over the public sector advantages.
Given Brad’s comments about power: for a free market to function, you need a balance of power. Between consumer and producer, between labor and capital. The natural state of capitalism heads towards market failures, which is where you need the government to step in to delay the inevitable failures.
It works, and will continue to work, given how few people are in the public sector versus the private (or unemployed). Simple math is against the public sector at this point and it is getting worse for them as the public sector continues to trim employees. At some point it’ll come between fulfilling obligations to the public sector by raising taxes (on public and private alike) or defaulting on some or all of those obligations and, if it goes to vote, it usually ends badly for the public sector.
So, either there’s an evil behemoth from which nobody can be fired, and has actual pensions. OR it’s a sector which is constantly trimming employees. Make your mind up!
It’s amazing how many people are happy to make sure ALL workers are screwed over with a lowest-common denominator approach, while corporate welfare rolls on as usual. The term is “useful idiots”.
SnowBlue - “Wage fairness”. It’s like “right to work”, which is actually in English “fire at will”. It’s a deceptive and scummy practice. Call it what it is, “lowest common denominator wages”.
Given I probably grew up poorer than most of the posters here, I think I might have some worthwhile perceptions to add to the discussion.
I paid for my own college, started my company to help pay for school and have been very fortunate. And along the journey have seen economic processes that I judge as fair and unfair. I’d like to think that these experiences might be relevant to the topic.
I have a lot of friends and family that are public school teachers. Facebook today was an interesting place, to say the least. And while there are plenty of phenomenal teachers out there, my experience, and this is by no means, atypical, with them is that their skills do not merit the pay, job security, benefits or pensions they receive.
Or put another way, people with experience with public employees often conclude that their compensation is not competitive. And when, as we just saw, it’s put to a vote, the public sector employees lose.
Obviously, 40%+ of the population (in Wisconsin) don’t see it that way. But a majority do.
Yeah - nobody is jealous of teachers. Shitty pay and they have to deal with asshole children AND their asshole parents.
I have a lot of friends and family that are public school teachers. Facebook today was an interesting place, to say the least. And while there are plenty of phenomenal teachers out there, my experience, and this is by no means, atypical, with them is that their skills do not merit the pay, job security, benefits or pensions they receive.
Even if we assume that all teachers are glorified babysitters, they’re still not paid what a typical babysitter makes on a per-child per-hour basis. And instead of telling us about how terrible public school teachers are, why don’t you go tell your facebook friends how little you think of them.
I think the general public doesn’t agree with that…though, I agree with the latter part of your statement. ;)
Wisconsin residents were certainly informed, ad nauseum, on this issue and still voted to keep Walker.
Now, ironically, I have to end my participation here for the evening since I have to get ready for bed to get up bright and early to volunteer at my daughter’s school tomorrow.
