The Heritage Foundation sent a team to Madison, WI, to cover the union-backed protest against Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal.
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I want to say “Hi” to my friend Pete from Wisconsin. Since you emailed this morning, I have decided to start posting my series on Wisconsin and the Union debate. By the way, way to go Packers. I told you about the time a few years ago with former Greenbay Packer Keith Jackson brought his son to the movies and sat next to my son Wilson and I. Actually I have several friends that knew him from Parkview High School where he was a standout in both basketball and football. I also got to hear his testimony at Paul Jackson’s church. Reggie White stayed after him until he shaped up!!!
A tribute to Reggie White, a great part of Packer’s history and an even greater person.
Negotiating, however, wasn’t what Gov. Walker had in mind. His goal was union-busting. Refusing to meet with union representatives, he proposed a bill basically abolishing the collective-bargaining rights of public employees first established in 1959.
He pre-emptively threatened to call out the National Guard if union members didn’t like it. There would be no compromises and no negotiation.
“He campaigned on this,” wrote Washington Post columnist George Will. His little heart going pitty-pat for this latest right-wing heartthrob, Will compared Walker to such conservative foes of organized labor as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
Except, no, Walker didn’t run on decertifying public employee unions during his 2010 campaign. Moreover, he’d probably never have been elected governor if he had.
A poll commissioned by the AFL-CIO found that even with partisan passions fully engaged, less than one-third of Wisconsinites favor abolishing public employees’ right to collective bargaining — particularly not, one imagines, in so peremptory and dishonest a manner.
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My observation is that who would believe a poll by the AFL-CIO anyway?
Chris Edwards wrote an excellent article “Madison Protest: Unions are Angry– but Wisconsin Should Go Even Further,” Feb 18, 2011, Cato Institute and I will posted portions of that article the next few days.
Chaos in government. Tens of thousands of angry protesters in the streets. Schools closed. Yes, Wisconsin looks a lot like Egypt this week. But while Arabs are fighting to end extraordinary overreach by government, Wisconsin union protesters are fighting to preserve it.
At the heart of the dispute is a bold plan by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) to curtail collective bargaining by most but not all of his state’s public-sector workers, including teachers. That is a long overdue reform — but the governor’s plan doesn’t go far enough! A dozen or so states, including Virginia, where I live, do not allow collective bargaining in the public sector at all, and these states are doing just fine without it.
The government union issue is coming to the forefront because states, facing huge deficits, are desperate to reform their budgets and cut pensions. Wisconsin is just one of several states where legislatures, empowered by Republican victories last fall, are finally tackling one of the root causes: the ability of public-sector unions to squeeze taxpayers for exorbitant benefits. In states that have unionized workforces, needed reforms are facing huge and aggressive anti-reform lobbying campaigns by the unions.
I remember like yesterday the summer of 1978 when the Memphis City Police went on strike for 8 days. There was a curfew every night and basically many upstanding police acted like criminals themselves. It was a sad time. There are reasons that many public sector unions do not have the right to strike. More on that in my next post.
The Daily Hatch 