The Fight In Wisconsin Continues

John Nichols in the Nation has two great peices on Wisconsin:

Even Republicans are unsettled, with a senior GOP legistator, state Senator Luther Olsen, describing the governor’s announcement a “radical” move that threatens “a lot of good working people.”

Walker never discussed ending collective bargaining during a campaign in which he promised to work across lines of partisanship and ideology to create jobs.

Instead, he has chosen to play political games.

The governor’s budget repair bill, which includes the plan to gut collective bargaining protections for public employees, does not seek to get the state’s fiscal house in order.

Rather, it is seeks a political goal: destroying public employee unions, which demand fair treatment of workers and hold governors of both parties to account when they seek to undermine public services and public education.

Nichols points out that Wisconsin's budget history disproves Walker's arguements:

So why is Governor Walker rushing to act now? Why is he doing so with a bill that massively extends his own authority over cabinet agencies while creating new positions to be filled by his political cronies? And why is he claiming that it is necessary to take away the collective bargaining rights of state, county, municipal and education unions in order to address the issue?

The governor says that he is doing so because trend lines point to more serious shortfalls in the future. His concerns about those trends are broadly shared, even by the state’s public employee unions, which have agreed to dramatic concessions in order to help avert fiscal problems in the future. The governor anticipates a $3.6 billion deficit in the next fiscal year, while indepedent observers say it might be closer to $3.1 billion. That sounds pretty bad, until you recognize that the previous governor, Democrat Jim Doyle, had to deal with a $5.94 billion budget deficit.

Doyle proved that it is possible to deal with a serious shortfall without breaking unions or restructuring state government.

The Economic Policy Institute has reserach that disproves the myth that public workers get greater compensation then public workers:

The campaign against state and local workers is often justified with claims that they are privileged relative to their private-sector peers or have somehow been cushioned from the effects of the recent recession and slow recovery. These claims are clearly false.

In Wisconsin, which has become a focal point in this debate, public servants already take a pretty hefty pay cut just for the opportunity to serve their communities (Keefe 2010).  The figure below shows that when comparing the total compensation (which includes non-wage benefits such as health care and pensions) of workers with similar education, public-sector workers consistently make less than their private–sector peers.  Workers with a bachelor’s degree or more—which constitute nearly 60% of the state and local workforce in Wisconsin—are compensated between $20,000 less (if they just have a bachelor’s degree) to over $82,000 a year less (if they have a professional degree, such as in law or medicine).

People are fighting back with every tool they've got, writes Pat Schneider of the Capital Times:

It is, they insist, the first counter-strike in a class war being waged against workers.

The urgency for reform of an economic system that enriches the few from the labor of the many was a recurring theme as some 100 workers and friends gathered to pledge mutual support and strategize on how to build on the momentum loosed at the historic Capitol rally earlier in the day that drew more than 10,000 demonstrators.

Their weapons?

Protests, sit-ins, filibusters, work stoppages, boycotts of businesses that support Walker's legislation or that funded his candidacy. Civil disobedience. And most potent of all: Solidarity!

"What's happening now is political theater — let's keep it going as long as possible," said Scott Erlenborn, a Baptist pastor.

Will Wisconsin's Billionaires make a sacrifice?

Early in this epic battle, Wisconsin's Journal Sentinel's editorial board wrote, on February 12, "Walker is right to do this. He must insist that state workers pay a bigger share of their benefits. And he's right to take steps to compel them to do so. . . . Walker must fill a gaping budget hole of $137 million for the fiscal year that ends June 30 and a much larger imbalance in the next two-year budget. Something has to give."The hole by 2013 is expected to be around $3.6 billion, so a few more things are going to have to give if Governor Walker's going to crack that nut. But, hey, everyone's going to make a sacrifice, right? So says the Wisconsin Club for Growth. They're the outfit that says, "our leaders must stand up to the tax and spend mentality in Madison and work tirelessly to cut taxes and unleash the power of the free-market." The Club for Growth should be called the "Club for Greed"--that's what Mike Huckabee told The New Yorker magazine in 2007.