Star One Smart Blog's

Tennessee Trumps Wisconsin: Kills Teacher Collective Bargaining. Dead.

To fix public schools, you have to control public schools.

And there’s little control when teachers unions, with their self-serving agendas, question every cost-cutting proposal and reform on the table.

That’s why so many state governments have taken swift action to limit the power of organized labor in public schools. Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Idaho and Michigan were the first, and Tennessee added itself to the list on Wednesday.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam affixed his signature on House Bill 130 and Senate Bill 113, ending collective bargaining and giving local school boards the full authority to operate their districts in the manner they choose.

...

Nobody elected the unions

Tennessee lawmakers were careful to leave a few key items off the discussion table, including personnel and staffing decisions, how to use grant money, the evaluation process for employees and whether or not payroll deductions can be made for political purposes.

That means the end of the road for the treasured union concept of seniority, particularly when it’s applied at layoff time.

[Radio Interviewer] Salcedo pointed out that union membership was split by their votes in 2010, 49% for Democrats and 47% for Republicans, nearly an even split. But unions donated 93% of their total contributions to Democrats in 2010, and 7% to Republicans or others. The question was asked if the assemblyman could understand why Republicans were not in favor of having tax payer funded dues go to fund Democrat campaigns?

The assemblyman contended that public employees can opt out of the unions. But when pressed about how even those that opt out must pay union dues, the assemblyman suggested that those people that didn’t want to be part of a union could find other work.

According to Challenger, layoffs spiked in February to an 11-month high.

It was the first year over year increase since May 2009.

The municipal sector was particularly weak.

The largest portion of layoffs last month came from government and non-profit employers, which announced 16,380 job cuts, up 154 percent from 6,450 in January and 196 percent higher than a year ago when 5,528 job cuts were announced in February. While most of the cuts occurred at the state and local level, the United States Postal Service announced that it reduced its headcount by 5,600 in recent months.

Reporting from Madison, Wis. —
As hundreds of protesters clamored to be allowed into a locked-down Capitol, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker outlined a plan that would balance the state's budget by cutting heavily from schools and local governments.

The spending plan released Tuesday for the next two years follows Walker's budget repair bill for the current fiscal year that would severely curtail collective bargaining rights for most of the state's public employees. The governor said the clampdown on unions would be necessary to give local governments the means to deal with cuts in state aid in his proposed budget.

"The facts are clear: Wisconsin is broke, and it's time to start paying our bills today, so our kids are not stuck with even bigger bills tomorrow," Walker said.

The initial budget measure has spurred massive protests, including a two-week occupation of the state Capitol by activists, and has led all 14 Democratic senators to flee the state to deny the Senate a quorum to act on the bill. It has also set off recall campaigns against Walker, the missing Democrats and state Senate Republicans.

Just another 'relaxed' Union thug.

Members of the UW Teaching Assistants Association sent out a tweet shortly after 3 p.m. asking people to help clear out the hearing room they've been operating in for the last 11 days. The group will move operations to Democratic Party of Wisconsin offices off the Capitol for the remainder of the protests.

Obama’s Promised March With Union Workers Fails to Materialize

When candidate Obama was campaigning in South Carolina in 2007, he said he was proud to wear the “union label” and that if workers were denied rights to organize or collectively bargain when he was elected, “I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I'll will walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America.”

But as the protests over collective bargaining rights drag out in Wisconsin, President Obama has yet to join the demonstrators outside the Capitol building in Madison, and it appears his administration is trying not to get involved in the fight.

The president is now facing criticism from some within his own party about his unwillingness to be more engaged in the Wisconsin battle. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., asked Obama to travel to Madison and stand with the unions, but Carney says there are currently no plans for any travel to that state.

Texas demographer: 'It's basically over for Anglos'

Looking at population projections for Texas, demographer Steve Murdock concludes: "It's basically over for Anglos."

Two of every three Texas children are now non-Anglo and the trend line will become even more pronounced in the future, said Murdock, former U.S. Census Bureau director and now director of the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas at Rice University.

“Imagine that Governor Palin had become president. Imagine that she had announced that Roe versus Wade in her view was unconstitutional and therefore the United States government would no longer protect anyone’s right to have an abortion because she personally had decided it should be changed. The news media would have gone crazy. The New York Times would have demanded her impeachment.

“First of all, he campaigned in favor of [the law]. He is breaking his word to the American people,” Gingrich says.

“Second, he swore an oath on the Bible to become president that he would uphold the Constitution and enforce the laws of the United States. He is not a one-person Supreme Court. The idea that we now have the rule of Obama instead of the rule of law should frighten everybody.

“The fact that the left likes the policy is allowing them to ignore the fact that this is a very unconstitutional act,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich said it is absolutely critical for Obama to comply with Congress and the constitutional process.

Wis. Assembly passes bill taking away union rights

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly took the first significant action on their plan to strip collective bargaining rights from most public workers, abruptly passing the measure early Friday morning before sleep-deprived Democrats realized what was happening. ...

The Assembly's vote sent the bill on to the Senate, but minority Democrats in that house have fled to Illinois to prevent a vote. No one knows when they will return from hiding. Republicans who control the chamber sent state troopers out looking for them at their homes on Thursday, but they turned up nothing. ...

Tens of thousands of people have jammed the Capitol since last week to protest, pounding on drums and chanting so loudly that police providing security have resorted to ear plugs. Hundreds have taken to sleeping in the building overnight, dragging in air mattresses and blankets.

With the Senate immobilized, Assembly Republicans decided to act and convened the chamber Tuesday morning.

Democrats launched a filibuster, throwing out dozens of amendments and delivering rambling speeches. Each time Republicans tried to speed up the proceedings, Democrats rose from their seats and wailed that the GOP was stifling them.

Debate had gone on for 60 hours and 15 Democrats were still waiting to speak when the vote started around 1 a.m. Friday. Speaker Pro Tem Bill Kramer, R-Waukesha, opened the roll and closed it within seconds.

Democrats looked around, bewildered. Only 13 of the 38 Democratic members managed to vote in time. ...

Democratic Sen. Jon Erpenbach said he and his colleagues wouldn't return until Walker compromised.

Clever Jon Erpenbach hiding, hiding.

Frustrated by the delay, Senate Republican Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, Jeff Fitzgerald's brother, ordered state troopers to find the missing Democrats, but they came up empty. Wisconsin law doesn't allow police to arrest the lawmakers, but Fitzgerald said he hoped the show of authority would have pressured them to return.

Erpenbach, who was in the Chicago area, said all 14 senators remained outside of Wisconsin.

"It's not so much the Democrats holding things up," Erpenbach said. "It's really a matter of Gov. Walker holding things up."

Even if you acknowledge the importance of unions in representing middle-class interests, there are strong arguments on Walker’s side. In Wisconsin and elsewhere, state-union relations are structurally out of whack.

That’s because public sector unions and private sector unions are very different creatures. Private sector unions push against the interests of shareholders and management; public sector unions push against the interests of taxpayers. Private sector union members know that their employers could go out of business, so they have an incentive to mitigate their demands; public sector union members work for state monopolies and have no such interest.

Private sector unions confront managers who have an incentive to push back against their demands. Public sector unions face managers who have an incentive to give into them for the sake of their own survival. Most important, public sector unions help choose those they negotiate with. Through gigantic campaign contributions and overall clout, they have enormous influence over who gets elected to bargain with them, especially in state and local races.

As a result of these imbalanced incentive structures, states with public sector unions tend to run into fiscal crises. They tend to have workplaces where personnel decisions are made on the basis of seniority, not merit. There is little relationship between excellence and reward, which leads to resentment among taxpayers who don’t have that luxury.

But Walker repeated that he would not back down.

Photo taken by protein wisdom's bh

Barack Obama sides with the Unions. I wonder why?

Mr. Walker's very modest proposal would take away the ability of most government employees to collectively bargain for benefits. They could still bargain for higher wages, but future wage increases would be capped at the federal Consumer Price Index, unless otherwise specified by a voter referendum. The bill would also require union members to contribute 5.8% of salary toward their pensions and chip in 12.6% of the cost of their health insurance premiums.

If those numbers don't sound outrageous, you probably work in the private economy. The comparable nationwide employee health-care contribution is 20% for private industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average employee contribution from take-home pay for retirement was 7.5% in 2009, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute.

Mr. Walker says he has no choice but to make these changes because unions refuse to negotiate any compensation changes, which is similar to the experience Chris Christie had upon taking office in New Jersey. Wisconsin is running a $137 million deficit this year and anticipates coming up another $3.6 billion short in the next two-year budget. Governor Walker's office estimates the proposals would save the state $300 million over the next two years, and the alternative would be to lay off 5,500 public employees.

MADISON, Wis. – A group of Democratic Wisconsin lawmakers blocked passage of a sweeping anti-union bill Thursday, refusing to show up for a vote and then abruptly leaving the state in an effort to force Republicans to the negotiating table.

As ever-growing throngs of protesters filled the Capitol for a third day, the 14 Democrats disappeared around noon, just as the Senate was about to begin debating the measure, which would end a half-century of collective bargaining rights for most public employees.


Hours later, one member of the group told The Associated Press that they had left Wisconsin.

"The plan is to try and slow this down because it's an extreme piece of legislation that's tearing this state apart," Sen. Jon Erpenbach said in a telephone interview. He refused to say where he was.

Democrats hoped Republican Gov. Scott Walker and GOP lawmakers would consider revisions to the bill.

Walker, who took office just last month, urged the group to return and called the boycott a "stunt."

econamike said on: February 16, 2011, 4:04 pm
@hrt

Not to be cold, but welcome to the “real world”.

We’ve never had cable and only recently got our first TracPhone.

We’ve already been shopping at Walmart (and Aldi’s) for years. We only eat out (including fast food) a few times a year and go to movies far less than that.

We make less than $30,000, have no health insurance, no pension and don’t get Martin Luther King day off. If I were to take the health insurance offered by my company, I’d have to pay 40% of the premiums. On top of that, I took a 20% pay cut for over a year when we were knocked down to 4 days a week.

Yet 10% of my income is taken from me in the form of property taxes so that “you” can have all these things leaving me unable to afford them. And another 7% is taken from me so that I can pay for the people on Social Security & Medicare (that money is not set aside for my retirement), another 5% for sales tax…

What percentage of people do you think are in my situation?
And can you see why people like me see “you” as a bunch of ungrateful whiners?

You ask “Where will your private sector profits come from when you cut back on your spending?”


Here’s your answer: The $5,000 you won’t have doesn’t just disappear… it stays in the pocket of the original person that earned it. Wow, I bet you never though of it like that.

Believe it or not, other people will get to keep more of their paychecks and they will spend that $5,000 instead of you.

There are “tax payers” and “tax takers”. The “tax takers” need to understand that every dollar they receive is taken directly from someone else.

Is life easy? NO
Is life fair? NO

But if people like me can’t afford people like “you” all I have to say is sorry, the gravy train is slowing down – deal with it like the rest of us have had to for the last 2 years.