The movement has been set back for now, but the standoff in Madison captured labor’s political imagination. Although the Republicans have cynically used the “nuclear option” to ram through the anti-union bill, the battleground will now just shift to other states.
Ohio lawmakers are mulling a bill similar to Wisconsin’s, which would restrain the collective bargaining rights of some 360,000 state and local employees.
Ohio does not need as many votes for a quorum. This means Democrats cannot hold up the voting process by going AWOL, as they did in Wisconsin and are still doing in Indiana (where unions are fighting proposals to further erode union rights and public education). But in Ohio’s case, Madison-style people power could be deployed in a more concrete way, according to some lawmakers. House minority leader Armond Budish told Bloomberg News that even if the bill initially passes, he and other Democrats will mobilize citizens to thwart the legislation through other channels, through public pressure and perhaps ultimately, the ballot box:
Too few to block Republicans from having a quorum, Ohio Democrats are asking for more public involvement and hearings on the bill in an effort to sway opinion and will seek a ballot issue to repeal it if necessary, Budish said.
“If I have to take the lead on a statewide referendum, we will fight until we win,” Budish, the House minority leader, said in a telephone interview from Columbus….
With Republicans holding a 59-to-40 seat advantage in the House, Democrats should focus on a repeal referendum, said Representative Robert Hagan, a Democrat from Youngstown.
“What we’re doing now is performing a charade,” Hagan said in an interview. “They should get it over with, and we should put this on the ballot as soon as possible.”
With passage in the House all but certain, Ohio could now overtake Wisconsin as a bellwether for the struggle. After the fireworks in Madison, labor activists recognize that the partisan gridlock over collective bargaining rights is merely a proxy battle for a new kind of class antagonism that has emerged from the Great Recession.
Ohio’s referendum process offers a form of direct democracy that Wisconsin Republicans stridently denied to protesters by ignoring, vilifying and shutting out demonstrators at the capitol.
Bloomberg reports that voters can launch a ballot initiative..
if petition forms with more than 231,000 voters’ signatures are filed within 90 days of the law’s approval, according to the secretary of state’s office. The number of signatures is 6 percent of the total vote cast for governor last year.
Gathering that many petitions in three months is no small feat, though the required number of signatures equals just under two-thirds of the number of workers potentially impacted by the bill. More importantly, the spirit of protest across the Midwest has truly gone viral, inspiring parallel demonstrations in Indiana, Ohio and other states, and cheers across the Twitterverse, pizza from Haiti, and picketing from Cairo. And on top of potential court challenges, there are rising calls for a general strike to paralyze Gov. Walker’s administration. In the wake of that outpouring of solidarity, a conventional referendum seems almost too easy.
In many ways, it is. Which is why the temporary defeat in Wisconsin should have a more enduring influence on the campaign to protect union rights than any other tactic. The battle for labor’s integrity won’t be won or lost on the political chessboard of a state legislature.
As activists regroup and take stock of what they’ve gained these past few weeks, they can still claim one victory: they never gave an inch. And by standing their ground, they gave workers across the country the momentum to push ahead to November and beyond.
By: Michelle Chen, In These Times, March 11, 2011
March 13, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Democracy, Economy, Governors, Ideologues, Jobs, Middle Class, State Legislatures, States, Unions | Anti-Union, Ballot Box, Democrats, GOP, Gov John Kasich, Gov Scott Walker, Indiana, Jobs, Ohio, Recalls, Republicans, Wisconsin, Workers Rights |
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From the debates in Wisconsin and elsewhere about public sector unions, you might get the impression that we’re going bust because teachers are overpaid.
That’s a pernicious fallacy. A basic educational challenge is not that teachers are raking it in, but that they are underpaid. If we want to compete with other countries, and chip away at poverty across America, then we need to pay teachers more so as to attract better people into the profession.
Until a few decades ago, employment discrimination perversely strengthened our teaching force. Brilliant women became elementary school teachers, because better jobs weren’t open to them. It was profoundly unfair, but the discrimination did benefit America’s children.
These days, brilliant women become surgeons and investment bankers — and 47 percent of America’s kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers come from the bottom one-third of their college classes (as measured by SAT scores). The figure is from a study by McKinsey & Company, “Closing the Talent Gap.”
Changes in relative pay have reinforced the problem. In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.
We all understand intuitively the difference a great teacher makes. I think of Juanita Trantina, who left my fifth-grade class intoxicated with excitement for learning and fascinated by the current events she spoke about. You probably have a Miss Trantina in your own past.
One Los Angeles study found that having a teacher from the 25 percent most effective group of teachers for four years in a row would be enough to eliminate the black-white achievement gap.
Recent scholarship suggests that good teachers, even kindergarten teachers, increase their students’ earnings many years later. Eric A. Hanushek of Stanford University found that an excellent teacher (one a standard deviation better than average, or better than 84 percent of teachers) raises each student’s lifetime earnings by $20,000. If there are 20 students in the class, that is an extra $400,000 generated, compared with a teacher who is merely average.
A teacher better than 93 percent of other teachers would add $640,000 to lifetime pay of a class of 20, the study found.
Look, I’m not a fan of teachers’ unions. They used their clout to gain job security more than pay, thus making the field safe for low achievers. Teaching work rules are often inflexible, benefits are generous relative to salaries, and it is difficult or impossible to dismiss teachers who are ineffective.
But none of this means that teachers are overpaid. And if governments nibble away at pensions and reduce job security, then they must pay more in wages to stay even.
Moreover, part of compensation is public esteem. When governors mock teachers as lazy, avaricious incompetents, they demean the profession and make it harder to attract the best and brightest. We should be elevating teachers, not throwing darts at them.
Consider three other countries renowned for their educational performance: Singapore, South Korea and Finland. In each country, teachers are drawn from the top third of their cohort, are hugely respected and are paid well (although that’s less true in Finland). In South Korea and Singapore, teachers on average earn more than lawyers and engineers, the McKinsey study found.
“We’re not going to get better teachers unless we pay them more,” notes Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust, an education reform organization. Likewise, Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform says, “We’re the first people to say, throw them $100,000, throw them whatever it takes.”
Both Ms. Wilkins and Ms. Allen add in the next breath that pay should be for performance, with more rigorous evaluation. That makes sense to me.
Starting teacher pay, which now averages $39,000, would have to rise to $65,000 to fill most new teaching positions in high-needs schools with graduates from the top third of their classes, the McKinsey study found. That would be a bargain.
Indeed, it makes sense to cut corners elsewhere to boost teacher salaries. Research suggests that students would benefit from a tradeoff of better teachers but worse teacher-student ratios. Thus there are growing calls for a Japanese model of larger classes, but with outstanding, respected, well-paid teachers.
Teaching is unusual among the professions in that it pays poorly but has strong union protections and lockstep wage increases. It’s a factory model of compensation, and critics are right to fault it. But the bottom line is that we should pay teachers more, not less — and that politicians who falsely lambaste teachers as greedy are simply making it more difficult to attract the kind of above-average teachers our above-average children deserve.
By: Nicholas Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, March 12, 2011
March 13, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Education, Employment Descrimination, Professionals, Teachers | Achievement goals, Budgets, Deficits, Earnings, Gov Scott Walker, Governors, Income Gap, Schools, Students, Talent Gap, Unions, Wisconsin |
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Congratulations to whoever had “less than two months” in the “conservative overreach” betting pool. There was never a question about whether the Republican Party, awarded huge political gains last year by voters, would let ideology outstrip political reality. The issue was when. And the new faces of conservative overreach have been preening recently.
Here is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who sparked an old-fashioned national labor controversy by trying to break his state’s public unions. His assertion that he’s merely trying to achieve fiscal responsibility is belied by the fact that while rolling back government workers’ collective bargaining rights itself saves no money, the tax cut he pushed through upon taking office costs an amount strikingly similar to this year’s budget gap; and the fact that when the unions offered to accede to his budget demands in exchange for keeping their bargaining rights, the governor wouldn’t accept that “yes” for an answer.
Indeed, while he has tried to imbue his power grab with the voters’ imprimatur by claiming that union-busting was part of his campaign agenda (it was not), Walker, speaking with a liberal blogger pretending to be billionaire supporter David Koch, described the actual unveiling of the policy as akin to dropping a “bomb.” In that same call, he added a phrase to the lexicon of overreach. “This is our moment,” he told faux-Koch, “this is our time to change the course of history.”
Away from Wisconsin, members of the Tea Party Patriots, meeting in Phoenix recently, gave that sentiment more guttural voice. When Texas GOP Rep. Joe Barton tried to brag that the $61 billion in spending cuts the House recently passed were the “largest . . . in the history of America,” they booed him, shouting “More, more!” One Tea Partyer told the Associated Press that she and her fellow activists were displeased with the House GOP for failing to follow through on their campaign pledge to slice $100 billion from government outlays this year: “Have we seen that? No. But we’ve heard excuses.” Another warned, “If they don’t [live up to their promises], we’re going to pull up another candidate to run against them.” Why shouldn’t they? This is their moment.
That even the conservative House Republicans are unable to conjure more than $61 billion shows both the hollowness of their $100 billion campaign pledge and the governing corner into which they have painted themselves. And, the Tea Party activists will no doubt be pained to learn, negotiations with the White House and Senate Democrats won’t get them any closer.
Not for lack of trying, to be sure. Congressional Republicans have demonstrated an unstinting commitment to an economic philosophy that can best be described as cutting for cutting’s sake. It’s certainly not for the sake of fiscal responsibility. The same party that brought you the Reagan budget deficits and Bush budget deficits certainly speaks the language of fiscal responsibility. But Republicans concern themselves only with the spending side of the ledger, perhaps forgetting that deficits come not from spending in isolation but when spending and revenue are out of balance.
So they piously speak of dealing with the deficit with their $61 billion in proposed cuts (or even the $100 billion Tea Party standard) while trying to repeal President Obama’s healthcare reform law, a move that would add more than $200 billion to the deficit over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And all of those numbers are dwarfed by the $4 trillion hole they would blow over 10 years if they successfully managed to make the Bush tax cuts permanent.
And they’re not focused, campaign rhetoric aside, on jobs. A recent Goldman Sachs report estimated that the $61 billion in spending cuts that the House GOP passed would reduce economic growth by 1.5 to 2 percentage points. This would not help spur job growth. Moody’s analyst Mark Zandi (who has advised both parties) weighed in last week with an estimate that the Republican spending cuts “would mean some 400,000 fewer jobs created by the end of 2011 and 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2012.” And last Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke put that number at “a couple of hundred thousand jobs,” adding, “It’s not trivial.”
In other words, the Republicans’ spending cuts legislation is the very definition of, to borrow their phrase, a job-killing bill. And the Tea Party gang doesn’t think it goes far enough. Is the GOP really willing to sacrifice economic growth at the altar of their cutting obsession? Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, the George W. Bush budget director-turned-spending hawk, was asked on NPR whether budget cuts are worth it if they cost a lot of jobs. “The answer is yes,” he said.
This view bespeaks the kind of market fundamentalism the Tea Party GOP has embraced. It involves a blind faith in the free market: cut taxes, gut regulations, cut spending, gut labor unions. The market is always right. And if that means the loss of a few hundred thousand jobs, then, in the instantly immortal words of House Speaker John Boehner, “So be it.”
But the GOP has gotten so lost in its own philosophy that they have made the mistake of believing their own rhetoric about the United States being ideologically conservative. It is surely true that the electorate prefers a government that is in some senses limited; but so too do they want the free market limited, its rough edges softened.
It may be, in Governor Walker’s words, their moment. But overreaching conservatives will learn that the more tightly they embrace it, the more quickly it will pass. In self-consciously trying to change history, they will become it.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U.S. News and World Report, March 11, 2011
March 13, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Deficits, Economy, Ideologues, Income Gap, Jobs, Middle Class, Politics, Teaparty, Unions | Budget Cuts, Bush Tax Cuts, Congress, Conservatives, Gov Scott Walker, Koch Brothers, Republicans, Wisconsin |
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Ideologues make lousy politicians, even worse office holders. The ideological straight jacket does just what you would expect–it constricts movement. Everything is nice and neat and tight but not conducive to serious efforts to move forward. Politicians such as Scott Walker, who put themselves in ideological straight jackets, either live to regret it or are thrown out on their ear, or both.
Intellectuals sometimes make good ideologues, cultural commentators make very thought provoking arguments, philosophers have the luxury of being way out on the edge at times, but those who go into office find that they are rejected very quickly by the public when all they have is their ideology.
Scott Walker is the latest example of an ideologue–combined with a self righteous, bullying approach, not backed up by intellectual rigor.
My guess is that the events of the last month will not only harm him politically in the short run but will result in a serious problem for those who follow in his footsteps.
First and foremost, his approach to governing won’t work. Cutting taxes for ideological reasons, rather than pragmatic ones, prohibiting local governments from paying for education with their own decisions on local taxes, cutting services to the bone, breaking collective bargaining with unions, making them a scapegoat, just won’t wash.
Look at the governors who are putting forth a balanced, reasonable approach to focusing on the dual realities of too much spending and too little revenue. They are not engaging in a hard and fast ideological battle. They are pragmatic. They do not focus only on slash and burn cuts but, rather, are flexible enough to include tax and fee increases.
What was Walker thinking, cutting taxes by $117.2 million as his first act when his state faced a deficit of $137 million? I guess I get the million dollars he included to encourage businesses to move to Wisconsin but I sure as heck don’t understand a $49 million tax cut for health savings accounts. The rich will take advantage of that boondoggle and it won’t create jobs.
That was ideology, not pragmatism.
Look at Gov. Jerry Brown in California, or Mark Dayton in Minnesota, or John Kitzhaber of Oregon, John Lynch of New Hampshire, Pat Quinn in Illinois, or Andrew Cuomo in New York. These are governors, many of whom have a lot tougher problem than Wisconsin, who are struggling and succeeding, not resorting to hard ideology, not refusing to look at the revenue side of the equation.
If members of Congress take lessons from the states, they should learn a whopper from Wisconsin. Don’t follow in Walker’s footsteps, look to the governors listed above.
In fact, they can even look to Ronald Reagan who as governor way back in 1967 raised taxes by $1 billion in California as well as cut the budget. As president, he raised taxes in every year but one, when it was necessary. He learned very quickly about “never saying never.” He didn’t put himself in the ideological straight jacket that many now fantasize about. I am not a Reagan fan, but I do recognize he was pragmatic.
Walker is in way over his head. Sadly, he has been a train wreck for his state. Let’s not let his style and approach be a train wreck for the nation.
By: Peter Fenn, U.S. News and World Report, March 11, 2011
March 12, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Budget, Class Warfare, Deficits, Economy, Governors, Ideologues, Jobs, Middle Class, Politics, States, Unions | Businesses, Congress, Gov Scott Walker, Governing, Politicians, Pragmatism, Pragmatists, Reagan, Spending Cuts, State Government, Taxes, Wisconsin |
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Karl Rove’s secretly-funded Crossroads GPS is spending $750,000 airing a terribly misleading ad attacking public-sector labor unions. With declining support for the GOP’s anti-union stance, Rove’s group is looking towards the 2012 elections and aiming to counteract that slide by unfairly demonizing unions.
The ad also attempts to lay the blame on President Obama and tell viewers to tell him “you’ve had enough.” The group spent at least $17 million in the 2010 midterm elections, and along with Rove’s American Crossroads PAC, is planning to spend $120 million in the 2012 elections. Here is what the ad says, and why it is wrong:
“Why are Democrats shutting down state capitols to protect a system that pays unionized government workers 42% more than non-union workers?”
False. As CMD has reported, an Economic Policy Institute report finds that, when controlling for education, and taking benefits into account, “full-time state and local government employees in Wisconsin are undercompensated by 8.2% compared with otherwise similar private sector workers.” In other words, it is unfair to compare compensation for an unskilled worker with a teacher who holds a master’s degree.
“A system that collects hundreds of millions in mandatory dues to back liberals who support government unions . . .”
False. See the U.S. Supreme Court decision Communication Workers of America v. Beck, 487 U. S. 735 (1988): nonunion employees cannot be required to pay dues to support political activities. In a unionized workplace, employees who choose not to join the union still reap the benefits of union representatives bargaining on their behalf, but they can only be required to pay dues towards that representation.
“One union boss explains . . .” the ad says, quoting from a July 2009 speech by National Education Association General Counsel Bob Chanin that, taken out of context, makes unions sound like money-sucking power-hogs.
False–through misleading editing. The full quote is actually a reminder to teachers that their interests and those of their students will not be guaranteed by the dignity of the profession, or their passion for teaching:
So the bad news, or depending on your point of view, the good news, is that NEA and its affiliates will continue to be attacked by conservative and right-wing groups as long as we continue to be effective advocates for public education, for education employees, and for human and civil rights. And that brings me to my final and most important point. Which is why, at least in my opinion, NEA and its affiliates are such effective advocates. Despite what some among us would like to believe, it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children. And it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.
In light of the present attack on educators and other public employees by the likes of Scott Walker and Karl Rove, Chanin was correct. The integrity of public education is not being protected by good ideas, sacrifices by teachers, or by widespread recognition that education is an investment in the future. The primary defenders of public education and public educators are unions.
The same goes for unions defending the integrity of other public services against right-wing attacks. The real motivation for Rove, Walker, and the like is to crush union political power. Wisconsin’s Senate majority leader has boasted about this partisan political strategy today. And in our post-Citizens United world, the only counterweight looking out for middle-class interests are labor unions. And only labor unions are powerful enough to attempt to counterbalance corporate interests and speak on behalf of working people in the election process. Despite losing one battle today, the fight to protect America’s middle class andw working people has only just begun.
By: Brendan Fischer, Center For Media and Democracy, March 10, 2011
March 11, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Democracy, GOP, Income Gap, Middle Class, Politics, Unions | American Crossroads, Anti-Union, Corporations, Crossroads GPS, Democrats, Gov Scott Walker, Karl Rove, Labor, media, President Obama, Public Employees, Right Wing, Teachers, Wisconsin |
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