The Redhunter

Instead of doing their duty, Democrat lawmakers have fled so as to prevent a quorum, which prevents a vote on a bill designed to reign in the excesses of public sector labor unions.

The measure would increase the contributions of public employees to their own retirement and medical benefits. The plan, put forward by new Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wisc., would have public workers make equal contributions to their retirement funds (teachers currently contribute $1 for every $56.94 from the state) and increase workers' share of health insurance premiums to 12.6 percent. Teachers in most districts currently pay less than 5 percent of their insurance costs. The national average for workers is 27 percent.

While the increased contributions are a sore spot, the greatest anger among demonstrators is over the portion of the bill that would strip public workers of the right to bargain for higher wages, benefits and changes to job duties. Pay raises for public workers would be subject to voter approval. Under the law, the state would also stop withholding union dues from government paychecks and make due payments strictly voluntary.

I see little reason for public sector labor unions in the first place. They certainly should not have collective bargaining power, or the ability to require dues from workers.

Sure, if it was 1911 I'd not only be a big fan or labor unions, I'd be an organizer myself. You don't have to believe everything Upton Sinclair said about how terrible the situation was in factories to believe that workers needed unions to protect them. Labor unions have a history to be proud of, because they were once needed. And even today, I'm ok with labor unions for coal miners and the like. But for the most part unions have outlived their usefulness, and cause more harm than good.

Although they are not allowed by law to strike, it appears that many of them are doing just that with a mass campaign to "call in sick." Many teachers are protesting the proposed legislation "by taking sick days in massive numbers, shutting down schools across the state."

The obligatory comparison of a Republican to Hitler:

A few thoughts by writers I like. Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, quoting an email he received from a reader:

1)"What Walker is doing isn't unprecedented--18 states deny collective bargaining rights to some classes of public workers, or allow municipalities to do so. Virginia and North Carolina have outright bans on public sector collective bargaining. And nearly every state has some sort of restrictions on the scope of collective bargaining- for example, in New York, pension benefits are an excluded subject from collective bargaining."

2) "Boosting pensions is an especially attractive way for unions to increase members' overall compensation because pensions are commitments that come home to roost far in the future, when the politicians negotiating them will no longer be in office. Getting wage raises is harder because the must be factored into budgets immediately. So, reducing collective bargaining to wages only is a big deal."

Coming to a legislature near you?

Victor Davis Hanson, on the union thuggery in Wisconsin and Obama's hypocrisy on the issue of "civility":

When President Obama called for a new civility, I was somewhat confused. In 2004-7, the uncivil demagoguery of the Left damaged Bush; immediately after Obama's call for civility, someone wrote an "I hate Joe Lieberman" column; now, Governor Walker-Nazi signs have appeared in Madison. Given that the country polls center-right, the hysterical style is something that the modern Left uses to counteract public opinion; Obama has condemned a methodology that is predominately embraced by his own hard-core base. (Indeed, swarming someone's private home, or using terms like "enemy" and "punish," are not unknown to either the younger or older Obama.) The result is the hypocrisy of condemning the incivility that will only become more useful to the Left as the election nears.

More from Hanson's post:

At some point, Obama will have to see what Gov. Jerry Brown here in California has already realized: Out-of-whack public-employee compensation and pensions drain the treasury and preclude grandiose green projects and other dubious liberal programs. To put it rather crassly, the liberal calculus often works out as mostly older white guys wanting their unsustainable pension and benefit payouts while the "other" and the more needy are shorted from receiving proper public attention. Since the states cannot print money and often lose population to other states when they raise taxes, the reality is that the well-off are enjoying perks that younger and private-sector workers lack while social services and the green visions of an Al Gore or a 2008 Obama are defunded.

Of course, the teachers are recruiting their students to go and protest at the state capital. Think they'll face any discipline? Of course not.

On Valentine's Day, over 100 students in tiny Stoughton, Wis., marched out of their classrooms and into the unseasonably warm air. They had decided to protest Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's new bill to require higher pension and health-care contributions from state and local government employees.

As a student "union" leader barked into a megaphone in the background, one high-school junior expressed his concern for his teachers. "A lot of my teachers have been really concerned about this -- they don't know if they're going to have jobs next year or not," he worried.

Two days later, schools in Madison canceled classes so teachers could join 20,000 people in picketing the capitol building. A 700-student entourage from Madison East High School, urged on by their teachers, marched the three miles from their school to the capitol. Wisconsin's MacIver Institute, armed with a video camera, asked one of the students what the group was there to protest. "We're trying to stop whatever this dude is doing," he eruditely explained.

This "dude" is trying to fill a $3.6 billion hole in the state's budget by requiring state and local government employees to pay 5.8 percent of their salary towards their pensions (most currently pay nothing), and increasing their share of health-care premiums to 12 percent (double their current share). Governor Walker's plan would also eliminate collective bargaining for almost everything except salary for government employees.

States around the union are finding that the cost curve of generous benefits to unionized workers is simply not sustainable. Politicians, mostly liberal, promised the moon in return for votes and figured they'd be out of office when the bills came due. They are coming due now. The entitlements crunch is hitting us, and it's being played out before our eyes.

We can either cave to the unions and go the route of Europe, whereby we enter the long slow slide of ever slower economic growth with permanent high unemployment, or we can take the hard decisions, break the unions, and put our country back on a sound financial footing. I wish that Governor Walker and the Republicans didn't have to do what they are doing. But they won the election because the people in Wisconsin saw what was happening to their state, and they are trying to make good on their campaign promises. The labor unions are trying to subvert the vote. Let's hope that the governor succeeds, and the unions fail.