Working Families Under Attack - Again!

There is a battle being waged in Wisconsin against the public workers and the unions that represent them. The governor, underthe guise of rescuing the state budget, is trying to gut the right forthese public employees tocollectively bargain for wages,benefits, and a better standardof living. The bill he is proposingto the legislature is basically thatpublic workers would now berequired to contribute to theirpension funds as well as theirpersonal health care.Some of you might be saying,“So, what’s the big deal, right?”Well, there is one other proposalthat doesn’t get mentioned asmuch. That being that theycould only collectively bargainfor pay increases less than theConsumer Price Index unlessapproved in a local referendum. In other words, he wants thestate to be the “grand puba” who makes the final decision on if these working families deserve a decent, livable wage or not. The governor and his cronies who control the state legislature want to be the final authority on the quality of life for teachers,nurses, EMTs, and other public workers.This governor believes that the unions are the biggest factor increating the budget mess in Wisconsin, and he wants to get rid ofthem. All these public workers want is to be able to bargain forfairness in the workplace, something that the Wisconsin governorand the state legislature want to take away.Brothers and sisters, this is union busting plain and simple.They use tired old stereotypical words like “union bosses”,“thugs”, “slackers”, “lazy”, and other derogatory labels designedto create a knee jerk reaction from both sides and to try toinflame the public.Now, what are these workersdoing about this? They arestanding up and being heard. Asof this writing, they have beengathering in massive numbersat the Wisconsin State Housefor the past seven days. Theirnumbers have ranged from25,000 one day to 75,000 on aweekend day. So far the rhetoriccoming from the governor’soffice is, “This is a platform Icampaigned on. I said I was going to change the way publicemployees collectively bargain.” In other words, he wants to bethe supreme boss man, the big Kahuna in charge of doling outthe money!Now in order for this bill to be voted on, the state senate needs tohave a quorum. In Wisconsin, that basically means that theremust be at least 20 out of the 33 senators present in order tohave a vote on this bill, and for the bill to pass. The 14 membersin opposition of this bill (known as the budget-repair bill) have leftthe city of Madison. In fact, they have left the State of Wisconsinin order to try to stop a vote on the bill. They have vowed not toreturn until the vote is stopped. The governor has been sendingthe state police out looking for these 14 senators to force themback to the state house. Wow, talk about your democracy!Now here is the rub. The unions, over the weekend, agreed tocuts in health care and retirement benefits that would reducetheir take home pay by eight percent. The governor’s response:No Deal. He wants to control the collective bargaining rights. Infact not only would he not compromise, he predicted Wisconsinwould pave the way for other states to follow suit. I don’t knowabout you, but that scares the hell out of me.This same situation is starting to take place in Ohio, andgovernors in Nevada and Florida are promising to be next. Whenthe unions compromised to help solve the budget problem, thegovernor of Wisconsin got exactly what he had originally sought,but that wasn’t enough for him. His true colors are now showing:he wasn’t just looking to fix thedeficit, he was looking to destroycollective bargaining. To quoteformer Michigan GovernorJennifer Granholm, “Theconversation should be aboutdeficits, not collective bargaining.In fact, there are states in thiscountry that have massive deficits that have no collective bargaining, and there are states that have very low deficits that do have collective bargaining. Don’t combine the two. They are separate arguments.”It should be noted that as of this writing, the unionshave now urged all teachers to return to work.Brothers and sisters, this malicious attack on workingfamilies has to stop. The middle class is in peril and itcould be coming to a state near you in the future. Iask that we all stand together to ensure that it doesn’t.

In Solidarity

mike.cernosek@twu555.org