Budget fix strips unions of rights

While Gov. Scott Walker may have the right idea in asking some public employees to contribute more to their own health care and retirement costs, he is going about “asking” in the wrong way.


As part of his state budget repair bill, Walker has proposed requiring state employees to contribute 5.8 percent of their pay to their pension and requiring them to pay 12.6 percent of their health care costs. He says this fix could save the state $30 million of the $137 million deficit it faces this year, and $300 million of the $3.6 billion shortfall projected for the next two years.

He says this is necessary to avoid 6,000 state employee layoffs and the removal of 200,000 children from the Medicaid program. Legally, though, Walker cannot remove these children from the program, according to a Feb. 16 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article.

Walker is not asking state employees to consider these implications, though, when negotiating contracts – implications they most likely would take seriously. Instead, he’s trying to force these measures upon them by stripping unions of the right to negotiate on anything except wages. And increases in wages would be capped at the consumer price index unless approved through local referendums.

One big reason this country became an industrial and consumer giant is because of the deals negotiated by unions to get employees safe working conditions, fair wages and benefits suitable to a middle class lifestyle.

In recent years, as unions have been unfairly targeted and membership has dropped considerably, we’ve seen a dismantling of the middle class and entire industries moving to other countries so big corporations could make more money. While unions may have contributed to this by sometimes being inflexible, in recent years they’ve been forced mostly into a defensive mode, usually making concessions when management asks, or, tells, much like what Walker is proposing.

By stripping state employees of such union negotiating rights, Walker isn’t even giving them the dignity of choosing whether or not they want to help the state solve its budget woes. They deserve at least that much.

It gets worse, too. If approved, and should public employees protest it, Walker has said he’ll bring in the National Guard to stop any protests.

Maybe he’s never heard the adage “ask nicely and you shall receive.”