Sorting Out Right to Work Laws, Collective Bargaining Rights and Democrat Hysteria

The mass hysteria involving labor union rights escalated with the Wisconsin recall election of Gov. Scott Walter. One would have thought June 5, 2012 was the equivalent of 9/11 by all the media apoplectic and angry indignation over Scott Walter who was utterly vilified for the crime of being re-elected by the people in Wisconsin, again. Clearly, the hype was super charged and at a feverish pitch because the Wisconsin recall election was a voter referendum on big spending Democrats and public sector unions vs. the taxpayers and a governor who claimed to wipe out a multi-billion dollar deficit that he inherited from his Democrat predecessor.

If only my washing machine spun as fast as the media spin machine on the Wisconsin Gov. Walker recall election and the recent Michigan passage of a Right to Work law.

On the Walker recall election, Politico is reported that Walker decisively defeated Barrett 53.2 to 46.3, or 1,334,430 votes to 1,161,870 votes. It wasn’t even close, at least not close enough for the Dems to call in the heavy artillery of the Obama Department of Justice and Eric Holder. The Huffington Post even ran a headline suggesting that Republican vote fraud was a relevant issue. Well, there was no vote fraud and while the media probably did hang out at solidly Democratic precincts to document its spin machine exit polls, Walker won because the voters in Wisconsin turned out in massive numbers to reject higher taxes for the pampered overpaid public sector.

What precisely did Gov. Walker do to earn the wrath of public sector employees, the media and the Democrats? That question is best explained by a Democrat, albeit a solid card carrying Dem who actually supported Gov. Walker. Democrat.  Policymic.com journalist David Asche writes, here.

It is no secret to people who know me, and to people who read my articles, that on many issues I am a democrat. I am socially liberal, support higher taxes on the top earners in the country….So it may surprise people that in today's recall election in Wisconsin, I will be pulling for Republican Gov. Scott Walker to keep his job.

If there is one thing that really annoys me about democrats, it is their love affair with unions who I believe have run their course in this country....

Here is what is at the heart of the Wisconsin recall: when Gov. Walker came into office, Wisconsin was facing a $3.6 billion budget shortfall. Walker believed that one of the solutions to this problem was to force members of the state's public employee unions to put 12.6% of their paycheck towards their health care and 5.8% towards their pensions (far less than what private sectors pay into theirs). Prior to Walker's reforms, public union members were paying next tonothing for their health care and pensions and it was being funded primarily by the taxpayers of Wisconsin. Walker also eliminated collective bargaining rights for all public employee unions with the exception of firefighters and policemen.

These reforms were absolute no brainers. Why should public employee unions be exempt from paying into their own health care and retirement while everybody else in the state (and in the country) has to pay into theirs? Democrats love to talk about a shared sacrifice, but they certainly do not apply it to their union allies.

Astoundingly, 38% of Voters from Union Households Voted for Walker, a fact that left the left babbling incoherently as they plunged into a state of disbelief.  But many Wisconsin union employees were happy.  Why?   Because they got an automatic pay raise.  Besides requiring public sector employee to pay a higher share of there substantial benefits, Walker also signed into law a measure banning non-voluntary and the forced withholding of union dues from their paychecks.  The law does not affect the collective bargaining rights of unions, just their right to extort union dues from workers.

It's no secret that public and private sector unions are nothing more than a mechanism to extort forced contributions from workers for the Democratic Party fundraising machine.  It's a non-consensual campaign contribution.  Even worse, the federal government does in fact use tax dollars to fund union bosses who run the union dues extortion rackets.

REPORT: TAXPAYERS PAY $4.8M FOR UNION BOSSES' SALARIES IN SINGLE DEPT.

The ALG report used documents the group obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) showing that taxpayers are actually paying these 35 union officials’ salaries. Only three of them make less than $100,000 per year, and the average taxpayer-funded union boss salary is $138,175 per year. Eight of the union bosses on the taxpayer payroll at the Department of Transportation make more than $170,000, too.

The union officials taxpayers are paying for come from various labor unions, too. They include the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) and the AFL-CIO affiliated Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS).

ALG president Bill Wilson said in a release announcing the report that it’s “obscene that in one Department alone, taxpayers are being stuck with almost $5 million in public employee union salary costs, these unions collect member dues and should pay for their own employees.”

Moving on to Michigan, we need to start with labor union driven ballot box initiatives that went down in flames on election day.  The Michigan Protect Our Jobs (Prop 2) ballot initiative was a labor union driven project to change the Michigan constitution to effectively give labor unions more power than elected officials and legislators, as well as the absolute power to override all local collective bargaining agreements between local government entities and unions.  Protect Our Jobs also banned Right to Work.  Another union supported initiative, Prop 4, would have forced all home healthcare workers into joining the SEIU and forced these workers to pay SEIU union dues.  Both Prop 2 and Prop 4 went down badly with only 42% and 43% respectively, and way short of the 50% required for passage, here.

With the ballot box defeats of union power, the path was cleared for the Michigan legislature and the governor to pass a Right to Work law, which they did.  Michigan became the 24th state to pass a Right to Work law, here.  Right to Work states have strong economies, higher incomes and lower unemployment than states without Right to Work.

Right To Work States Have Lower Unemployment, Higher Income and Healthcare Coverage, NRTW President Says

In an exclusive interview with "The Right Views," Mix discusses the benefits Michigan will reap by becoming the nation's 24th Right to Work state and explains that the goal is to promote prosperity and individual freedom, not to bust unions:

"First of all, Right to Work is about individual worker freedom. It is wrong to think that, in this country, we could force a worker to pay a private organization for the privilege of working. So, on a fundamental basis, it's about individual freedom."

"But secondarily, it's pretty demonstrable that economic benefit comes to those states that pass Right to Work Laws.

"Indiana, I believe, has led the nation in new private sector job growth since they passed the Right to Work law in February. The economic development department out in Indiana has indicated there have been 90 new deals of companies that have come and said 'we're interested - now that you're in a Right to Work state - to either expand or relocate in your state.' So, it has had a dramatic impact on the economic activity in the state of Indiana."

Mix notes that workers in Right to Work states not only tend to have as much as $4,300 more purchasing power, but also are more likely to have health insurance:

"And if you look at the other 22 Right to Work states, you find when it relates to private sector job growth, when it relates to increase in private sector per-capita purchasing power, or adjusted for cost of living, you find those states are doing much better.

"So, there's lots of data out there that talks about this, including a study from the George Mason Department of Economics. They did a study when, adjusting wages for cost of living, they found workers in Right to Work states have about $2,300 more to spend than workers in forced-unionism states.

The taxpaying voters in America are indeed sick and tired of being plundered by Fedzilla in the District of Crime, their governors and their state legislatures, especially considering that most folks are finally and angrily rejecting the burden of higher taxes when they are monumentally suffering because of a busted economy.

There just comes a time in every voters life when the two bit whore is just too darned expensive, and I do indeed apologize to whores who engaged in a far more honest and honorable profession than the plundering political class and their labor unions.

Americans are simple basic folks. They want to go to their neighborhood Thai dive where they find real value for their money. Government at all levels no longer even harbors the delusion of a decent bang for the buck.

Voters are finally beginning to see the union extortion racket, especially in public sector unions, for precisely what it is - a job killing, economy killing and a very costly taxpayer ripoff.

With so much suffering in America, it's downright arrogant and selfish of public sector employees to demand a perpetual license to steal from the taxpayers, many of whom are suffering profoundly themselves from the loss of jobs and benefits. They don't have a taxpayer funded slush fund to plunder.

Public Sector Unions and How They Have Destroyed the West

In his outstanding book, Boomerang, Michael Lewis was spot on in his analysis of Greece:

As it turns out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past twelve years the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms – and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a years. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance….pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. “We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension…..and there isn’t a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.”

For more on Greece:

Greece: Yes, Life Does Go On When the SHTF

Suffocating Athena: Public Sector Unions Kill Greek Salvation — Again 

Greece’s finances are spinning out of control. If nothing is done, public debt could reach 179.3 percent of GDP by next year. But this does not concern unions. They are fighting the austerity measures that could give Greece its first budget surplus in 10 years.

Hardly a day goes by when we aren't greeted with youtubes and photos of civil unrest in Greece, Spain and other European nations reeling from the big punch of economic misery. These folks are protesting austerity measures that includes proposed cuts in compensation, pensions and benefits. In Europe, public sector unions are an incredibly powerful force because they literally control nearly all vital infrastructure like power plants, transportation and much more. Over the decades, these union have managed to vote themselves huge salaries and benefits that far exceed private sector pay for comparable skills.

Spain is another country facing severe financial and economic problems. Spain has mountains of debt and a hugely bloated socialist public sector.  Spain, like other European nations with busted economies, has proposed a solution that will only magnify the problem:  higher taxes.

Time to Burst Spain's Public-Sector Bubble

Among this week's measures—which Spain's cabinet will officially approve today—is a hike in the rate of VAT to 21% from 18%. Civil servants' wages are being slashed by 7%, unemployment benefits beyond the sixth month will be reduced by 15%, and some bureaucratic expenditures and subsidies will be cut by a third.....

Until now, the Rajoy government had tried to maintain the oversized public sector by raising taxes on families and enterprises.....

The sad part of this story is that the bloat in the Spanish public sector is actually quite recent. Government spending swelled thanks to the extraordinary revenue growth provided by the housing bubble. Between 2001 and 2007, total revenues grew by 67% while expenditures increased by 57%. Spain ran modest budget surpluses for a few of those years, but those vanished as bubble revenues ran out while spending continued to grow. A 1.9% surplus in 2007 turned into an 11.2% deficit in just two years.

By the end of 2011, public expenditures were 75% higher (33% higher after adjusting for inflation) than a decade before.

The Economist chirped in on the severity of the situation which is far more complicated than a mere localized capital vs. labor dispute. Even the statist and socialist leaning Economist observed that public sector unions have been literally feasting at the expense of the much lower paid private economy that, incidentally, works to pay the taxes to feed the bloated public sector.

The battle ahead

LOOK around the world and the forces are massing. On one side are Californian prison guards, British policemen, French railworkers, Greek civil servants, and teachers just about everywhere. On the other stand the cash-strapped governments of the rich world. Even the mere mention of cuts has brought public-sector workers onto the streets across Europe. When those plans are put into action, expect much worse.....

People in the private sector are only just beginning to understand how much of a banquet public-sector unions have been having at everybody else's expense...

While union membership has collapsed in the private sector over the past 30 years (from 44% of the workforce to 15% in Britain and from 33% to 15% in America), it has remained buoyant in the public sector. In Britain over half the workers are unionised. In America the figure is now 36% (compared with just 11% in 1960). In much of continental Europe most civil servants belong to unions, albeit ones that straddle the private sector as well. And in public services union power is magnified not just by strikers' ability to shut down monopolies that everyone needs without seeing their employer go bust, but also by their political clout over those employers.

Many Western centre-left parties are union-backed. Britain's Labour Party gets 80% of its funding from public-sector unions (which also, in effect, chose its new leader). Spain's sluggish state reform may be partly explained by its prime minister's union membership. In America teachers alone accounted for a tenth of the delegates to the Democratic convention in 2008.....

Public sector unions claim they enshrine middle class values and that they they indeed represent the working class man.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Public sectors really don't care about a damn thing except their license to steal at the expense of the common man. In bankrupt California, it's a crisis of public sector tyranny.

Who Runs California? Follow Public-Sector Union Money

California: A century ago, a railroad dominated the Golden State. Now government workers are in charge. A look at funding marshaled against a reform initiative tells the story.

Public employees want us to think they're members in good standing of the struggling middle class, but they sure manage to pony up the cash when elections come around. Maybe it's strength in numbers. Maybe it's union strong-arming. Whatever the reason, California's teachers, firefighters, police, prison guards and other government workers are, as a group, the richest and most powerful in state politics.

The public sector unions have become a noose around the necks of government and taxpayers. Socialist governments everywhere bred them, fed them and now are faced with the abject horror that nobody can afford them.

So as we witness the protests on an almost daily basis, the protesters are all pampered public sector union employees just raising hell at the prospect that their gravy train is in jeopardy.

For public sector unions, it's austerity for everybody except for them. Compounding the situation is the fact that European nations borrowed heavily to fund their un-affordable cradle to the grave entitlement states. However, there are indeed severe problems beside the public sector unions which include that fact that taxpayers are being forced to bailout the failed banks that are swimming in bad loans. The dual edged sword of socialism for public sector unions and banksters will continue to impede economic recovery while intensifying the misery of stagnation.  In fact, together they definitely have the power to guarantee the death of Western Civilization.