The Attack on Public Employee Unions

Today I watched Fox News Meghan Kelly ( otherwise known as the worst " journalist" in the world) talk to Micheal Reagan about the battle in Wisconsin over the Republican Governor's plan to remove most collective bargaining rights from the state employees.

Reagan commented that " the teachers unions are ruining these country." Talk about being a demagogue.

I consider myself a moderate Democrat. My wife is a teacher. And a great one at that. So I certainly have a dog in this hunt.

State budgets are a mess. Little or no help is coming from Washington. Pensions for State employees are in massive shortfalls all over the country. However it seems to me that that if you or I were part of a union that negotiated a contract and pension that gave us benefits it would be hard to blame us for what we receive.

My wife sees the bad things in the educational system. There are poor teachers and they keep teaching. In a perfect world they would not. However in the same vein if you did not have the tenure system teachers of tenure and this higher salary would consistently be let go to higher younger, cheaper teachers. In a time of budget crisis this would be the first thing to happen. Anyone who does admit that would happen and happen regularly is either not informed or not telling the truth.

During the President's State of the Union address he advised young people watching that they could find few nobler career paths than being a teacher. If a young person is to become a teacher and see him and his cohorts become a punching bag whenever the budget gets tight, or opposite that know that his or her salary rises that their chances of losing their jobs increase why would they want to become teachers.

At some point we have to decide if we just give lip service to placing a value on education or if we really do.

It is not just teachers. Targeting any and all public employees as the problem is simplistic and untrue. It is easy to understand that they are an easy target. Times are hard and many people are suffering. Stating that " all we are asking is for public employees to pay more of their insurance and pension" sounds fine. And truthfully maybe their will have to be negotiation.

However stating that they must accept a proposal or else to try to push through a bill that limits collective bargaining is a joke.

Since FDR Republicans have been attempting to move back union rights, social security or anything else. They continue to do so.

Personally a concern for me is that if these contracts were negotiated in good faith why are these pensions so far behind in their revenue. Certainly there have been market downturns ( and consider what the social security system would be if GW Bush's plan to privatize had happened).

If we all need to buck up and help the system collect itself fine. My wife will pay for more insurance. Incidentally the same people who are saying the cost of insurance increases must be borne by the employees are the same people who are against single payer healthcare which is the only way to slow the long term growth of health care costs. To unilaterally take away collective bargaining rights is wrong.

Issues are legitimate and need to be discussed. But simple demagoguery is not going to accomplish anything.

This is not a new problem. Shared sacrifice has not been asked for in this country in more than a generation. It needs to be. But to simply go after the easiest and largest target is not going to create anything more than antagonism that will make long term answers harder to find.