Wrestlin' in Wisconsin

georgeob1 wrote:

And yet the press is filled with stories of unfunded public sector pension had health care obligations that are concentrated in stated with public sector unions.

Gosh ! Perhaps we're all wrong !

You are because you are missing cause and effect. The reason the pensions are unfunded is that the governments involved did not fund them. Private companies are legally obligated to fund their pensions so they have been funding as they go instead of allowing the problem to build so they can cut taxes.

Oh ! Now I understand. All the states have to do is raise taxes and everything will be OK. Still, I'm curious, why didn't they raise their taxes when they unionized the state workforces and bargained away all those pension and benefit increases?

engineer wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:

And yet the press is filled with stories of unfunded public sector pension had health care obligations that are concentrated in stated with public sector unions.

Gosh ! Perhaps we're all wrong !

You are because you are missing cause and effect. The reason the pensions are unfunded is that the governments involved did not fund them. Private companies are legally obligated to fund their pensions so they have been funding as they go instead of allowing the problem to build so they can cut taxes.

Oh ! Now I understand. All the states have to do is raise taxes and everything will be OK. Still, I'm curious, why didn't they raise their taxes when they unionized the state workforces and bargained away all those pension and benefit increases?

After a week of upheaval in Madison, Wis., where the thumping din of protesters has turned almost celebratory, the battle moved to Ohio, where the Legislature held hearings on a bill that would effectively end collective bargaining for state workers and drastically reduce it for local government employees like police officers and firefighters.

Several thousand pro-union protesters filled a main hall of the state courthouse in Columbus and gathered in a large crowd outside, chanting “Kill the bill,” waving signs and playing drums and bagpipes. There were no official estimates, but the numbers appeared to be smaller than those in Madison last week. One Democratic state legislator put the figure at 15,000.

In Indiana, nearly all of the Democratic members of the state’s House of Representatives stayed away from a legislative session on Tuesday in an effort to stymie a bill that they say would weaken collective bargaining. By late Tuesday, they seemed to have succeeded in running down a clock on the bill, which was to expire at midnight. Representative Brian Bosma, the speaker of the Indiana House, said the bill would die when the deadline passed.

Fleeing was not an option for Ohio Democrats because the Republicans had enough members on their side for a quorum. Republicans have a 23-to-10 majority in the Ohio Senate, and the bill needs 17 votes to pass. It was not clear when it would be voted on.

The bills have amounted to the largest assault on collective bargaining in recent memory, labor experts said, striking at the heart of an American labor movement that is already atrophied.

“I think we are looking at the future of the labor movement being defined in rotundas in several states,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, specializing in labor issues. “This is a structural change with profound repercussions.”

Kinda reminds me of the Reagan era when he fired all the controllers.

When the congressional Republicans' attack on the board is considered alongside the union-busting offensives of Republican governors, it's clear that a working majority of the Republican Party is bent on abolishing unions. As union membership has declined to a mere 6.9 percent of the private-sector workforce, resentment toward unionized public-sector workers, who have retained the benefits that private-sector workers had when they were unionized, has grown - creating a political opportunity for Republicans to mount their assault. But why bother to defund the NLRB when private-sector unionism is so low?

The answer is that unions remain the most effective part of the Democratic coalition in turning out minority voters come election time and in getting working-class whites to vote Democratic. As such, they are the linchpin of progressive change in America. Taking them off the political map isn't about budgets. It's about removing a check on right-wing and business power in America.

As Cantor once suggested, even if he didn't mean it, unions are a necessary part of any functioning democracy. Not that that seems to matter to today's Republican Party.

am fully believing that this is a corporate class backed effort run through the GOP to end Labor once and for all. It very well might work.

think it is all going to be academic history unless you get your national debt under control .

engineer wrote:

You are because you are missing cause and effect. The reason the pensions are unfunded is that the governments involved did not fund them. Private companies are legally obligated to fund their pensions so they have been funding as they go instead of allowing the problem to build so they can cut taxes.

Oh ! Now I understand. All the states have to do is raise taxes and everything will be OK. Still, I'm curious, why didn't they raise their taxes when they unionized the state workforces and bargained away all those pension and benefit increases?

That is an excellent question that has come up before on several tax threads. We are in a situation where if the government has excess, they fund tax cuts instead of funding pensions or saving for a rainy day. If the government has deficits, they attempt tax cuts to provide "stimulus". This means they end up cutting taxes in all situations and develop an unsustainable budget situation. Illionis recently finally sucked it up and raised taxes to bring them back in line with normal tax rates and it made national news headlines.

Am I the only person who thinks that even if there isn’t a larger more sympathetic feeling towards unions in the country as a result of the current actions of various GOP governors that just the loss of votes from union households might be disastrous for the GOP in 2012. Most everything I see suggests that in national races Democrats don’t currently pick up even 60% of union household votes. If that were to go from small minority as it is now to 2:1 split or worse isn’t that really, really bad for Republicans.`

I’m just trying to see their long game here.

The concept that Independents support what's going on in WI simply is not supported by any data whatsoever, on either the local or national level.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

The concept that Independents support what's going on in WI simply is not supported by any data whatsoever, on either the local or national level.

Cycloptichorn

It is certainly not supported by the data you provided - as you say, but you have offered no basis for anyone to believe there "is no data whatsoever" suggesting independents favor restricting union monopolies on a share of worker's wages.

We will both have to wait to see what unfolds in Wisconsin, but right now it looks as though the draft legislation regarding public employee unions in Wisconsin will pass.

The very fact that a draft right to work law, like those that have existed in about 22 other states for the past 40+ years is being considered in Michigan, the former bastion of the UAW and the American labor movement, is a telling fact concerning public attituded towards labor unions.

There is generally a lot more to the detection of trends in this country than just the poll data you rely on so avidly.

This 'movement' sure isn't spreading to other states the way that Conservatives were hoping it would, is it?