With Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Republican-led Wisconsin Legislature (with Wisconsin Senate Democrats running away to avoid the vote) looking end collective bargaining for most public employees. This measure has been labeled “anti-union” by mainstream media and those on the left (forgive the redundancy).
Not true, let’s not lump all unions in with a measure that protects taxpayers from public union overreach. This isn’t about a company negotiating with a union over pay based on how it may impact their profit margin. This is about a state government that has no profit margin, funded by money that is not their own, being held hostage by employees who don’t want to realize that there is not enough money to fund their benefits and pensions… unless you want to hose taxpayers.
There should not be public unions – period, and I’m not alone in that sentiment. Ben Smith points to a poll that shows an overwhelming majority of Americans, 64%, don’t believe government workers should be represented by unions – including 42% of Democrats.
This is because your average American realizes that there is a disconnect between the average private sector worker and those who live off of the government. Public employee unions in Wisconsin are unwilling to make any concessions unlike what you have seen in the public sector, and it is just really hard to sympathize with that.
Shane Vander Hart
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Teaching needs to be competitive in the job market in order to attract the best and the brightest college graduates. Bitter fights between unions and government do not help the future of the teaching profession. It’s easy to experience frustration with teachers unions and the government at the same time during a dispute like this.
Take for example, a program like Teach for America. They plug college graduates in temporarily to low income areas across the country. The teachers in these programs spend a couple of years in the schools and go on to become doctors, lawyers and other important members of the community. If there is a passion for teaching among these graduates already, why can’t we make the compensation and benefits be more competitive so that teaching can be a more desirable vocation?
A political party is a union of political interests. One “republican” standing alone can do little, but with other republicans standing in solidarity with him his voice carries more authority. Why is it okay for republicans to use their collective power in their government work, but not the government worker? A political party is a union, and the members of that party are unionized government workers. How about we deny them the collective bargaining right. On the basis of the logic of this article, the republican and democratic parties should be dissolved.