Truth in Advertising: Wisconsin

[howeird]

I do not like unions. Since I have been old enough to understand basic economics I have not liked unions.

Yes, unions started out as a brilliant idea, fighting the abusive practices of greedy corporate employers who squeezed blood out of employees who had no voice. Unions helped elect legislators who changed the laws to protect the safety and jobs of employees and guarantee a fair wage.

But that was 70 years ago.  This is now.

Now, many thanks to the UAW, Garment Workers' unions, Teamsters, AFL-CIO, etc.,  we have OSHA and all the work safety laws we need. Companies have long ago realized the advantages of a healthy work force and promote "zero accidents" policies, and offer membership in group rate health insurance and retirement plans. 

What unions do now is collect dues which fund their leaders' lavish CEO-like lifestyles. The legislators which used to be bought only by the rich corporations are now up for bid to the unions as well. And the unions have the money to buy them.

Rachael Madow on MSNBC has been crowing about how Wisconsin gave us the 5-day work week and the 8-hour day and a whole raft of other union-driven goodies.  No, not really. Those mostly came from next door in Michigan, Detroit to be specific, thanks to Walter Reuther and the United Auto Workers in the 1930s-40s.  Some of that also was a result of actions in New York City by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union as early as 1909. And the amusing fact that while most of the workers and corporate executives celebrate Sabbath on Sunday, the early union negotiators celebrated it on Saturday. Had there been Muslim union officials back then, we  may have had a 4-day work week.

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I promised smallship1 some research and links to facts. Here they are:
From the US government's 2010 census http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/55/5548000.html
The per capita annual income for Wisconsin in 1999 was $21,271. In Madison it was $23,498. This is not counting benefits
The census does not show breakdowns by employment, so I went to http://teacherportal.com/salary/Wisconsin-teacher-salary to find:
The average annual salary for Wisconsin teachers in 2010 was $46,390. Again, that does not count benefits. More than twice the state average.

The following data comes from the Wisconsin's Governor's office, http://www.transition.wi.gov/journal_media_detail_print.asp?prid=5625&locid=177,  and heavily relies on sources which I have not been able to find online, such as State Budget Office Memo 2-9-11, which I suppose is an internal memo from the SBO to the Governor:
 In 2011, state employees paid $64 million toward their health insurance, or about 5.6% of the total cost. (ETF Health Care Analysis).
Survey data finds that private employer HMO plans in Wisconsin typically require a co-pay of $18 per office visit, $45 per specialist visit, $75 per emergency room visit, or $175 in-patient treatment.  The average health insurance premium for these plans averaged $108 per month for single coverage and $261 for family. (State Budget Office Memo 2-9-11)

Wisconsin taxpayers currently make nearly a 100% payment for the employee portion of the public sector pension contribution.  Illinois and Indiana taxpayers contribute the entire employee portion as well, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio pay 0% of the employee contribution. (State Budget Office Memo 2-9-11).

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IMHO, regardless of the depth, or lack thereof, of Wisconsin's state budget debt, it's reasonable to require their state employees to pay 12% of their health care premiums and 5% of their pension contribution. I personally pay between 33% and 100% of my health care premiums, plus co-pays, plus certain deductibles, and 100% of my retirement contribution. But then, I don't belong to a union, and never have.

Comments

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Accepting your figures, as obviously I must...is it your idea that the unions have now done everything they need to do and so can go away?

Again, a British perspective may help. Since 1979 various governments have been actively abetting the bosses in trying to dismantle the power of the unions and to roll back as many as they could of the beneficial changes that union activism has brought about. Whether, prior to that year, some of the unions in Britain had become excessively powerful, had abused that power, and therefore needed to be curbed, is up for debate; I personally distrust that view, since I encountered it in the Conservative propaganda newspapers my dad read. But in the years since Thatcher it has become obvious to any ordinarily perceptive person who works in the lower levels of the British workforce that strong unions are needed now as much as they ever have been, and that the existence of strong unions is vital as a deterrent as long as the bosses regard their employees as enemies or slaves. Which--let me assure you--they do.

Union leaders who enjoy lavish CEO-style lifestyles, if they exist, are abusing their personal power and their members should call them on it, because the next stage is reaching "accommodations" with the bosses in return for favours and at that point principle goes out of the window. That the unions are now as capable of buying politicians as the bosses I regard as a good thing, till the buying of politicians is outlawed for everyone.

A minor point; you've now used teachers as an example of public employees twice. I don't know about there, but over here teachers earn a hell of a sight more than most public employees, and could quite possibly afford to take a pay cut (though they would probably not think so, and their union is obliged to represent their views, not yours or mine). So if it's just teachers you're talking about, then I see your point, but if it's people like me, grunts who worked at the coalface and whose wages had to be hastily increased when the government (who employed us) brought in a national minimum wage so that they weren't breaking their own law...then no, I think the union's doing the right thing.

I'm really glad you've never needed to belong to a union. I hope that happy state of affairs continues.

Oh...and I would have said "Had there been Muslim union officials back then, we might have had a 4-day work week." "May have" implies that possibly we did, you aren't sure. Minor niggle, but as I've remarked before, it kind of bugs me.

[howeird]

is it your idea that the unions have now done everything they need to do and so can go away?
Yes, I think so. Especially for public employees, who in many states are protected by civil service frameworks.

in the lower levels of the British workforce that strong unions are needed
Not so much here, where sanitation workers are among the highest paid people. The US has federal and state minimum wage laws which help. Unions here don't tend to do much for minimum wage workers or youth workers.

Union leaders who enjoy lavish CEO-style lifestyles, if they exist, are abusing their personal power and their members should call them on it
Absolutely. But their members don't have the power to do so. Sometimes one leader can oust another (do you know about Jimmy Hoffa?) but that just replaces one abuser with another.

You've now used teachers as an example of public employees twice
I was just trying to be consistent, apples to apples. In the US, teachers are definitely not among the highest paid public employees. That honor goes to firefighters, police, executives (like the Governor) and legislators. Some college professors, such as those who teach surgery, are up there, but the numbers I quoted do not include higher education.


Oh...and I would have said "Had there been Muslim union officials back then, we might have had a 4-day work week." "May have" implies that possibly we did, you aren't sure. Minor niggle, but as I've remarked before, it kind of bugs me.
"Might have" is correct, thanks. It says the possibility would have existed under those circumstances. And I hope I was respectfully pointing out that the number of days in the work weekend is an artifact of an earlier time in history when there was a very tiny percentage of American workers who call Friday the Sabbath.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Well, it sounds as if your unions are not necessarily pulling their weight at the moment. However, I think your view that they are no longer needed is immensely privileged, and I think if your desire came to pass you would probably find out in very short order that whoops, that wall was load-bearing after all.

I could be wrong, but I don't believe so.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

My opinion on this: your rationale could be paraphrased, "First they came for the public employees in Wisconsin, but they had a better deal than I did, and I said 'So What?" Then they raised everyone's insurance to 200% of income, but I had Medicaid and access to a public hospital, so I said, "So What?" Then they closed the public hospitals and ended the Medicaid program, and I died from lack of medical care, and there was no one left to say "So What?"

You are arguing in favor of people whose goal seems to be mass death for the underclass - and anyone taking in less than a million a year is the underclass.

Here's some info: http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/02/18/koch-brothers-behind-wisconsin-effort-to-kill-public-unions/

[howeird]

Gosh BLC, I hope you didn't pull a groin muscle or anything stretching for that analogy.
I opted out if the greed cycle when I was 19 and have negotiated my own wages & benefits ever since. I've done as well as my union-member friends, except I have not been able to afford a house to see go under water.

What is that famous quote about those who tradie freedom for security?

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

While you yourself may be a shining poster boy for free-market economics, that does not prove to me that it works for everyone else. And how is giving up the freedom to belong to and organize a labor union trading freedom for security? It's actually giving up both and letting the bosses stomp your head in with their giant jackboots. Consider this: one of the reasons you and I have been able to go through our careers without requiring union representation is that the unions have raised the standards of wages and working conditions for everyone, union or not. In a free-market unionless economy, it is entirely possible that the employers may see that since those high-paying union jobs don't exist, they don't have to compete and they can cut or renegotiate to pay less for labor. Granted, this is more true for unskilled and semi-skilled workers than professionals - for example, while supermarket employees in many states get close to minimum wage, here in Colorado they have a union and actually make enough to almost scrape by.

Do you really think these people will be content to stop with the first steps of their overall plan to eliminate the middle class? What's next to fall after unions and health care? Social Security? Medicare? They may be after public employees in Wisconsin now, but what if the next thing is retired public employees in Colorado, or diabetic technical workers on the West coast? I'm not paranoid - they really are out to get us.

The only thing I'm not sure of is whether you're being deceived, or you're deceiving yourself.

[howeird]

the unions have raised the standards of wages and working conditions for everyone, union or not.
My original post is quite clear that I recognize this.

Do you really think these people will be content to stop with the first steps of their overall plan to eliminate the middle class?
I think they have no such plan, because they *are* the middle class. The way I see it, your complaint is they wish to keep the working class from becoming the middle class. Or maybe more accurately, they wish to kick the working class out of the middle class.

But that is all a smokescreen. The issue at hand is whether a union which refuses to accept modest concessions for its members ought to be forced by the representatives of the taxpayers - who are their employers - to accept such a contract.

If they don't like it, they are free to go to any of their neighboring states, where they won't find anywhere near as good a deal. And inferior cheese.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I'll let our disagreement stand, but add one observation: it seems to me that, one way or another, budget-cutting republicans are targeting educators and universities for a simple reason: uneducated people tend to vote heavily for republicans.

[howeird]

Sounds fine to me.
uneducated people tend to vote heavily for republicans.
I'll have to look into that. Billionaires tend to vote heavily for republicans, and none of them I know of are uneducated.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I'd be perfectly content if all the billionaires in the country voted republican and no one else did. The rank-and-file who elect republicans are generally not billionaires. There are actually not enough billionaires to make a statistical impact on voting, unless you count the impact of the money they donate to inflict lies and propaganda on the voting masses to scare them into voting against their self-interest. By the way, one of the largest reasons - perhaps the largest - they're going after unions in Wisconsin is that the unions are a major source of funding for democratic candidates. The budget cut thing is very likely a smokescreen for their real intentions. Republicans don't care about balancing the books - if they did, they wouldn't give out tax dodges to all their pals. They have a not-so-hidden agenda, and it scares me.

[howeird]

Good point about the billionaires. And yes, MSNBC has been shouting early and often that Wisconsin has no budget crisis, but they have not provided any numbers to back it up. The numbers are all public record, so I doubt that claim.

But regardless, of course the agenda is to suck power out of the unions. I take that as a given. I think our major point of disagreement is I think the public employee unions in Wisconsin are out of line insisting on free pensions and medical insurance for their members.

You of course know far better than I do that payroll is a whole different beast than benefits when it comes to taxes, and that's why benefits make such a fun bargaining chip.