This is the wildest. Remember the video of that great patriot
telling folks to protect the constitution and take back America?
Obama
calls this kind of talk disturbing, perhaps because he is a disturbed progressive Liberal with communist leanings.
This brings me to my next subject, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. I know, I can hear the Liberal teeth grinding, and the Media lies expanding as I write, but trust me its to no avail I'm saying it anyway!
Scott Walker is the greatest example of a near perfect leader, who sees like no other the great damage that private sector Unions cause in America. They leach BILLIONS from taxpayers to give it to well feed members at the expense of America's freedom to be great.
Myth:
Fact:
Unions advocate for laws which tilt the playing field in ways that are unfair to both employers and employees.
Those laws often impair economic growth and innovation, as well as destroy the freedom to contract, according to Randall G. Holcombe and James D. Gwartney, economics professors at Florida State University.
Over time, these labor laws actually cause a shift in employment from union jobs to nonunion jobs. In fact, research shows that the growth of labor unions during the Great Depression actually increased unemployment. Unions are still destroying jobs today.
“In the short run, because labor law has given to unions an advantage in the bargaining process, union contracts have had the effect of increasing the wages and benefits of union workers,” they wrote.
“In the long run, the higher cost of union labor brought on by those union contracts has resulted in a steady decline in private sector unionism, and has eroded U.S. manufacturing in unionized industries — most visibly, the railroad and auto industries.”
Myth:
Unions bargain on behalf of their members to get employees the wages and benefits they deserve.
Fact:
Unions “bargain” with the guns of government in hand, to get employees more wages and benefits than they deserve, with a little for themselves on the side.
By crawling in bed with government to pass laws which benefited the unions at the expense of employers — and, in the long run, employees — union leaders have drained American businesses dry.
The long, slow decline of private sector unions reflects the economic destruction they left in their wake as they searched for fresh blood to leech. And today they’ve found the biggest source yet, the government.
Armand Thieblot, an economic consultant who has written books on union corruption and violence, writes:
Myth:
Project labor agreements reduce project costs and delays and are good for construction workers as a whole.
Fact:
Project labor agreements increase costs and only help union workers.
PLAs are agreements between construction project owners and unions that contractors on the project must use union labor, even if they otherwise would not. David G. Tuerck, economics professor and chair at Suffolk University, cites numerous examples of how nonunion workers were harmed when they worked under PLAs, “first by forcing them to pay twice for benefits already offered their workers and second by forcing pay cuts on their workers.”
Then, unions use veiled threats to “labor peace” to intimidate project owners into accepting PLAs for “job stability.” Further, PLAs increased costs for every project studied which used them, sometimes as much as 20 percent.
“PLAs are motivated by a desire on the part of the construction unions to shore up the declining union wage premium against technological changes and other changes that make traditional union work rules and job designations obsolescent,” Tuerck writes. “Now the PLA has evolved into an instrument that the unions employ in tandem with the prevailing wage laws in order to reduce the competitive advantage of nonunion contractors.”
Myth:
Prevailing wage laws are good for competition, improve safety and quality, and help train new workers.
Fact:
Prevailing wage laws stifle competition, have no effect on job safety and quality, and do nothing to help train new workers.
The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, signed into law by President Herbert Hoover, mandates that on federal construction projects, workers be paid the so-called “prevailing wage” for similar local workers. In practice, the wage is set far higher than the actual prevailing wage, closely mirroring union pay scales. This virtually locks out nonunion construction workers from federal contracts.
George C. Leef, director of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, finds that all of the arguments for prevailing wage laws fail to stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. Worse, the Davis-Bacon Act was racially motivated:
“The hearings and debate on the legislation revealed some ugly racial overtones with comments on how ‘cheap colored labor’ was driving down wages of white workers.” Robert Bacon originally proposed the bill because he was upset that a construction firm from outside his district, employing black workers, built a veterans’ hospital in his district.
Myth:
Fact:
Unions have used racial discrimination as a tool to enrich themselves, and continue to do so today.
In 2008, Richard Trumka, who is now the president of the AFL-CIO, said, “We know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.” He should, because the unions have been doing it for their entire existence, and still are, as Paul Moreno, history professor at Hillsdale College, illustrates.
It isn’t — and probably never was — the employers oppressing the black, or the Chinese, or the Hispanic people. Most employers, as it turns out, really are color blind, as Martin Luther King, Jr., noted in 1957:
“With the growth of industry the folkways of white supremacy will necessarily pass away. Moreover, southerners are learning to be good businessmen, and as such realize that bigotry is costly and bad for business.”
As racism goes, unions made the KKK look like amateurs. Big Labor lobbied for, and got, special laws to make them completely immune for whatever they did — all the way up to outright murder. In United States v. Enmons, in 1973, the Supreme Court held that unions were immune from prosecution under the Hobbs Act if their violent acts were in furtherance of a “valid union objective.”
And Trumka?
He talked a good game about ending racism in organized labor, but whether anything will change remains to be seen.
Myth:
Unions help preserve manufacturing jobs.
Fact:
Unions were a contributing factor in the decline of American manufacturing, especially in the automobile industry.
Detroit makes a great example. At the start of the 20th century, Detroit was a boom town and its manufacturing jobs were paying 33 percent above the national average. Union organizers brought their message of capitalist greed and exploitation to already highly paid auto workers, where it largely fell on deaf ears. Until the Great Depression, when union organizers used a variety of underhanded tactics to force automakers, steel plants and other manufacturers to unionize.
(Interestingly, Henry Ford at the time threatened to break up his company rather than submit to union demands; he finally gave in when his wife threatened to leave him.)
Stephen J.K. Walters, economics professor at Loyola, explains what happened next. Companies, squeezed hard and struggling to survive, would move their operations out of Detroit and other cities, and later, out of the country entirely.
Myth:
Fact:
Public sector unions dramatically increase the cost of government to unsustainable levels.
The cost of employee wages and benefits accounts for half of the $2.2 trillion that state and local governments spent in 2008, and that number is set to grow dramatically as employees retire and generous pension packages kick in. Though, calling them generous is an understatement.
Moreover, according to Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, those pension obligations are grossly underfunded, which will make the fiscal crisis even more acute this decade.
Businesses can and do mitigate the inefficiencies of a unionized workplace, but governments are much more constrained and have less incentive to do so, driving up taxpayer costs even further.
And public sector unions use their large war chests to buy influence and protection. “So the problem with public sector unions is not just that they block compensation reforms, but that use their privileged status to control broader policy debates.”
Myth: Right-to-work laws harm employees and prevent employers from freely contracting with unions.
Fact: Right-to-work laws improve the economy, and employers freely contracting with unions is prohibited by the Wagner Act.
That Act forces employers to bargain with unions “in good faith,” which is interpreted to mean that employers must capitulate to virtually every demand of the unions or be accused of acting in bad faith.
This is hardly freedom of contract. Right-to-work laws mitigate, but do not entirely fix, this problem.
I have some experience with this, since I once worked in a non-right-to-work state and was forced to join the union. I would rather have negotiated my own terms; I’d likely have gotten a better deal.
It seems many Americans agree, as millions of them have moved from non-right-to-work states to right-to-work states in the last decade, a migration that shows no signs of stopping. Richard Vedder, economics professor at Ohio University, found that both predictive models and real world evidence show that right-to-work states experience more economic growth than non-right-to-work states.
Myth:
Labor unions support trade liberalization because it lowers the prices of goods that workers buy.
Fact:
This used to be true, but today’s labor unions oppose trade liberalization.
They believe that increasing globalization has directly led to the decline of their unions, and thus their power. This isn’t exactly true, according to Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.
“Although the evidence is lacking to implicate globalization as a whole, two aspects of the trend have been found to have significant negative effects on labor unions: inward foreign direct investment (FDI), and ‘social integration’ across borders.”
When foreign companies invest in the U.S., companies here realize that they can also invest in other countries. “The correlation of FDI and declining rates of union density suggests that ‘many workers feel greater insecurity from seeing capital mobility in their sectors, even if not in their own particular firms,’ Slaughter (2007: 344–45) concluded.”
And social globalization, “the spread of ideas, information, images and people,” a natural result of advances in communications and transportation, “reinforces what Dresher and Gaston (2007: 176) call a ‘growing normative orientation towards individuals rather than collectivism [which] makes collective organization more difficult.’
Adding to the trends are rising levels of immigration and perceptions of younger workers who view unions as old-fashioned and anachronistic institutions.”
Myth:
Paying workers higher wages will reduce unemployment and stimulate the economy.
Fact: The “high-wage doctrine” increases unemployment and drags down the economy.
This doctrine originated with a 1921 report that Hoover commissioned while he was Secretary of Commerce dealing with what was, in retrospect, a minor recession.
In addition to recommending higher wages, the report also said that government spending (now known as the stimulus package) can help the country recover from a recession. Neither is true, of course, and the report might have been completely forgotten had Hoover not become President. He put his disastrous ideas into practice, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Worse, proponents of these theories, which John Maynard Keynes gleefully signed on to, are more concerned with theories than facts, according to Lowell E. Gallaway, economics professor at Ohio University. That’s just a polite way of saying they’re full of crap. Galloway writes:
Unions currently operate in a free market.
Unions are heavily dependent on the government to provide them unfair leverage over employers and control over their members.
It is possible for unions to exist and provide valuable services to their members in a market free of government-sponsored violence and control, but those services would likely have to be geared toward helping employees improve themselves, rather than extracting undeserved compensation from employers.
Charles W. Baird, professor emeritus of economics at California State University, East Bay, examines what constitutes a free market, how existing labor laws destroy freedom, and what a union might look like in a true free market. It won’t happen any time soon, though, he says:
“It is politically impossible, at this time in America, to repeal the Norris-LaGuardia Act and the National Labor Relations Act and replace them with any sort of free-market union law. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to prepare the ground now for doing so in some future, more enlightened time.”
If you’re wondering why you’re out of a job, why Detroit is a wasteland, and why the economy is on the verge of collapse, don’t be so quick to blame Wall Street: Some of the blame belongs to the labor unions.
["AFL-CIO building, Washington, D.C." photo by Derek Blackadder; CC BY-SA 2.0]
“The whole process is pretty unusual. We had one of the local affiliates here [reporting] about someone signing it, proudly saying they signed 80 different recall petitions,” Walker said on “Fox and Friends.” “As we see it, you should only be able to sign it once and only once, and it should be for a legal citizen.”
Scott Walker is the greatest example of a near perfect leader, who sees like no other the great damage that private sector Unions cause in America. They leach BILLIONS from taxpayers to give it to well feed members at the expense of America's freedom to be great.
“Everything You Know About Unions Is Wrong: 12 Labor Union Myths”
Myth:
Unions work to ensure a level playing field for employees.
Unions advocate for laws which tilt the playing field in ways that are unfair to both employers and employees.
Those laws often impair economic growth and innovation, as well as destroy the freedom to contract, according to Randall G. Holcombe and James D. Gwartney, economics professors at Florida State University.
Over time, these labor laws actually cause a shift in employment from union jobs to nonunion jobs. In fact, research shows that the growth of labor unions during the Great Depression actually increased unemployment. Unions are still destroying jobs today.
“In the short run, because labor law has given to unions an advantage in the bargaining process, union contracts have had the effect of increasing the wages and benefits of union workers,” they wrote.
“In the long run, the higher cost of union labor brought on by those union contracts has resulted in a steady decline in private sector unionism, and has eroded U.S. manufacturing in unionized industries — most visibly, the railroad and auto industries.”
Myth:
Unions bargain on behalf of their members to get employees the wages and benefits they deserve.
Fact:
Unions “bargain” with the guns of government in hand, to get employees more wages and benefits than they deserve, with a little for themselves on the side.
By crawling in bed with government to pass laws which benefited the unions at the expense of employers — and, in the long run, employees — union leaders have drained American businesses dry.
The long, slow decline of private sector unions reflects the economic destruction they left in their wake as they searched for fresh blood to leech. And today they’ve found the biggest source yet, the government.
Armand Thieblot, an economic consultant who has written books on union corruption and violence, writes:
"When Samuel Gompers, then head of the American Federation of Labor, was asked in the early 1920s what unions wanted, he famously replied, “More.” At the time, everyone correctly understood that unions’ targets were the capitalists from whom additional wages and benefits would be wrested by force, and also that if unions were successful, capitalists would have to be content with “Less,” thus, just a transfer of economic rents within the system from one factor to another.
By the 1980s and 1990s, however, when unorganized capitalists had become thin on the ground and those already organized had mostly been rendered uncompetitive by past concession to union demands, unions’ new guiding trope became “More government.” To achieve it, unions became mordantly political. In economic terms, after unions had absorbed all of the readily available economic rents from their capitalist opponents, they have turned to seeking rents from new sources beyond the system — from the polity at large (from taxpayers), using government as the intermediary."
Myth:
Project labor agreements reduce project costs and delays and are good for construction workers as a whole.
Fact:
Project labor agreements increase costs and only help union workers.
PLAs are agreements between construction project owners and unions that contractors on the project must use union labor, even if they otherwise would not. David G. Tuerck, economics professor and chair at Suffolk University, cites numerous examples of how nonunion workers were harmed when they worked under PLAs, “first by forcing them to pay twice for benefits already offered their workers and second by forcing pay cuts on their workers.”
Then, unions use veiled threats to “labor peace” to intimidate project owners into accepting PLAs for “job stability.” Further, PLAs increased costs for every project studied which used them, sometimes as much as 20 percent.
“PLAs are motivated by a desire on the part of the construction unions to shore up the declining union wage premium against technological changes and other changes that make traditional union work rules and job designations obsolescent,” Tuerck writes. “Now the PLA has evolved into an instrument that the unions employ in tandem with the prevailing wage laws in order to reduce the competitive advantage of nonunion contractors.”
Myth:
Prevailing wage laws are good for competition, improve safety and quality, and help train new workers.
Fact:
Prevailing wage laws stifle competition, have no effect on job safety and quality, and do nothing to help train new workers.
The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, signed into law by President Herbert Hoover, mandates that on federal construction projects, workers be paid the so-called “prevailing wage” for similar local workers. In practice, the wage is set far higher than the actual prevailing wage, closely mirroring union pay scales. This virtually locks out nonunion construction workers from federal contracts.
George C. Leef, director of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, finds that all of the arguments for prevailing wage laws fail to stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. Worse, the Davis-Bacon Act was racially motivated:
“The hearings and debate on the legislation revealed some ugly racial overtones with comments on how ‘cheap colored labor’ was driving down wages of white workers.” Robert Bacon originally proposed the bill because he was upset that a construction firm from outside his district, employing black workers, built a veterans’ hospital in his district.
Myth:
Organized labor has worked to promote racial equality.
Fact:
Unions have used racial discrimination as a tool to enrich themselves, and continue to do so today.
In 2008, Richard Trumka, who is now the president of the AFL-CIO, said, “We know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.” He should, because the unions have been doing it for their entire existence, and still are, as Paul Moreno, history professor at Hillsdale College, illustrates.
It isn’t — and probably never was — the employers oppressing the black, or the Chinese, or the Hispanic people. Most employers, as it turns out, really are color blind, as Martin Luther King, Jr., noted in 1957:
“With the growth of industry the folkways of white supremacy will necessarily pass away. Moreover, southerners are learning to be good businessmen, and as such realize that bigotry is costly and bad for business.”
As racism goes, unions made the KKK look like amateurs. Big Labor lobbied for, and got, special laws to make them completely immune for whatever they did — all the way up to outright murder. In United States v. Enmons, in 1973, the Supreme Court held that unions were immune from prosecution under the Hobbs Act if their violent acts were in furtherance of a “valid union objective.”
And Trumka?
He talked a good game about ending racism in organized labor, but whether anything will change remains to be seen.
Myth:
Unions help preserve manufacturing jobs.
Fact:
Unions were a contributing factor in the decline of American manufacturing, especially in the automobile industry.
Detroit makes a great example. At the start of the 20th century, Detroit was a boom town and its manufacturing jobs were paying 33 percent above the national average. Union organizers brought their message of capitalist greed and exploitation to already highly paid auto workers, where it largely fell on deaf ears. Until the Great Depression, when union organizers used a variety of underhanded tactics to force automakers, steel plants and other manufacturers to unionize.
(Interestingly, Henry Ford at the time threatened to break up his company rather than submit to union demands; he finally gave in when his wife threatened to leave him.)
Stephen J.K. Walters, economics professor at Loyola, explains what happened next. Companies, squeezed hard and struggling to survive, would move their operations out of Detroit and other cities, and later, out of the country entirely.
Myth:
Public sector unions work for the general prosperity of their members and all Americans.
Fact:
Public sector unions dramatically increase the cost of government to unsustainable levels.
The cost of employee wages and benefits accounts for half of the $2.2 trillion that state and local governments spent in 2008, and that number is set to grow dramatically as employees retire and generous pension packages kick in. Though, calling them generous is an understatement.
Moreover, according to Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, those pension obligations are grossly underfunded, which will make the fiscal crisis even more acute this decade.
Businesses can and do mitigate the inefficiencies of a unionized workplace, but governments are much more constrained and have less incentive to do so, driving up taxpayer costs even further.
And public sector unions use their large war chests to buy influence and protection. “So the problem with public sector unions is not just that they block compensation reforms, but that use their privileged status to control broader policy debates.”
Myth: Right-to-work laws harm employees and prevent employers from freely contracting with unions.
Fact: Right-to-work laws improve the economy, and employers freely contracting with unions is prohibited by the Wagner Act.
That Act forces employers to bargain with unions “in good faith,” which is interpreted to mean that employers must capitulate to virtually every demand of the unions or be accused of acting in bad faith.
This is hardly freedom of contract. Right-to-work laws mitigate, but do not entirely fix, this problem.
I have some experience with this, since I once worked in a non-right-to-work state and was forced to join the union. I would rather have negotiated my own terms; I’d likely have gotten a better deal.
It seems many Americans agree, as millions of them have moved from non-right-to-work states to right-to-work states in the last decade, a migration that shows no signs of stopping. Richard Vedder, economics professor at Ohio University, found that both predictive models and real world evidence show that right-to-work states experience more economic growth than non-right-to-work states.
Myth:
Labor unions support trade liberalization because it lowers the prices of goods that workers buy.
Fact:
This used to be true, but today’s labor unions oppose trade liberalization.
They believe that increasing globalization has directly led to the decline of their unions, and thus their power. This isn’t exactly true, according to Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.
“Although the evidence is lacking to implicate globalization as a whole, two aspects of the trend have been found to have significant negative effects on labor unions: inward foreign direct investment (FDI), and ‘social integration’ across borders.”
When foreign companies invest in the U.S., companies here realize that they can also invest in other countries. “The correlation of FDI and declining rates of union density suggests that ‘many workers feel greater insecurity from seeing capital mobility in their sectors, even if not in their own particular firms,’ Slaughter (2007: 344–45) concluded.”
And social globalization, “the spread of ideas, information, images and people,” a natural result of advances in communications and transportation, “reinforces what Dresher and Gaston (2007: 176) call a ‘growing normative orientation towards individuals rather than collectivism [which] makes collective organization more difficult.’
Adding to the trends are rising levels of immigration and perceptions of younger workers who view unions as old-fashioned and anachronistic institutions.”
Myth:
Paying workers higher wages will reduce unemployment and stimulate the economy.
Fact: The “high-wage doctrine” increases unemployment and drags down the economy.
This doctrine originated with a 1921 report that Hoover commissioned while he was Secretary of Commerce dealing with what was, in retrospect, a minor recession.
In addition to recommending higher wages, the report also said that government spending (now known as the stimulus package) can help the country recover from a recession. Neither is true, of course, and the report might have been completely forgotten had Hoover not become President. He put his disastrous ideas into practice, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Worse, proponents of these theories, which John Maynard Keynes gleefully signed on to, are more concerned with theories than facts, according to Lowell E. Gallaway, economics professor at Ohio University. That’s just a polite way of saying they’re full of crap. Galloway writes:
In the intellectual world, the high-wage doctrine continues to have its appeal. Prior to his appointment as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ben Bernanke, collaborating with Martin Parkinson, noted:
“Maybe Herbert Hoover and Henry Ford were right. Higher real wages may have paid for themselves in the broader sense that their positive effect on aggregate demand compensated for their tendency to raise costs” (Bernanke and Parkinson 1989: 214).
More recently, Paul Krugman reiterated this view in a New York Times oped (3 May 2009), arguing, “Many workers are accepting pay cuts in order to save jobs.” He then asks, “What’s wrong with that?”
His answer refers to what he calls “one of those paradoxes that plague our economy right now . . . workers at any one company can help save their jobs by accepting lower wages, but when employers across the economy cut wages at the same time, the result is higher unemployment.” This is simply a reprise of Klein’s (1947) views.
Never mind the existence of more than a century of empirical evidence to the contrary. Krugman’s concern is not with the empirical problem, but with the theoretical connection between wage rates and employment.
The high-wage doctrine still lives. In all probability, this persistent adherence to an incorrect doctrine once again will prove to be detrimental to the U.S. economy, just as it was in the 1930s.Myth:
Unions currently operate in a free market.
Fact:
Unions are heavily dependent on the government to provide them unfair leverage over employers and control over their members.
It is possible for unions to exist and provide valuable services to their members in a market free of government-sponsored violence and control, but those services would likely have to be geared toward helping employees improve themselves, rather than extracting undeserved compensation from employers.
Charles W. Baird, professor emeritus of economics at California State University, East Bay, examines what constitutes a free market, how existing labor laws destroy freedom, and what a union might look like in a true free market. It won’t happen any time soon, though, he says:
“It is politically impossible, at this time in America, to repeal the Norris-LaGuardia Act and the National Labor Relations Act and replace them with any sort of free-market union law. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to prepare the ground now for doing so in some future, more enlightened time.”
If you’re wondering why you’re out of a job, why Detroit is a wasteland, and why the economy is on the verge of collapse, don’t be so quick to blame Wall Street: Some of the blame belongs to the labor unions.
["AFL-CIO building, Washington, D.C." photo by Derek Blackadder; CC BY-SA 2.0]
“The whole process is pretty unusual. We had one of the local affiliates here [reporting] about someone signing it, proudly saying they signed 80 different recall petitions,” Walker said on “Fox and Friends.” “As we see it, you should only be able to sign it once and only once, and it should be for a legal citizen.”
Not if your a Progressive Liberal, they can cheat, steal and get away with most Illegal stuff simply because of 'Rules for Radicals' protocols and the fact that Unions rule supreme, the ends justify the means so the rules are like water to them, they shift whenever it suits them.
"If we fail, I think it sets back courage in government by at least 10 years and maybe a generation. People will be too afraid to do the hard things." -Gov. Walker
If the American people do not put their foot down on the necks of these Union thugs soon, it will be to late to stop it. They are trying to gain control of private sector Jobs to the point there will be no more freedom for employers to hire or fire based upon BAD BEHAVIOR and that means a more dangerous world for the rest of us!
The FACTS about Governor Walker’s Responsible Budget Repair Plan, this man should get an award!
The current state of affairs is not a sustainable one for maxed-out taxpayers footing the bill.
The average Wisconsin state employee compensation (salary and fringe
benefits) in 2010-11 was $76,500. Employee salary and fringe benefits
comprises more than 60% of state government general fund operating
costs. The average Wisconsin teacher compensation (salary and fringe
benefits) in 2009-10 was $74,844. (Source: Department of Public Instruction website)
But the cost to taxpayers keeps growing.
Wisconsin taxpayers pay over $1 billion per year for state government
employee health insurance; more than double what was paid only 10 years
ago. But employees themselves pay only 6% of that amount.
Big savings are needed to fill a big hole this fiscal year.
Governor Walker’s Budget Repair Bill contains more than $30 million in
savings over a three month period by requiring state employees to
contribute to their pension and health care benefits.
Public protections for state employees will remain.
Wisconsin’s statutory civil service laws, among the strongest in the
nation, will remain in force to ensure Wisconsin can maintain a
professional and experienced state workforce. In addition, employee sick
leave, vacation, and retirement benefits will remain unchanged.
Fundamental reforms are needed for a sustainable path forward.
While pension and health care contributions are a vital part of solving
our current deficit problems, the long-term structural problems facing
the state and local governments cannot be solved without a fundamental
reform of Wisconsin’s labor relations.
As Governor Walker said today in a
national press conference, in the past public union contracts have
taken an average of 15 months to pass. With a $3 billion budget deficit,
we don’t have that much time.
Simply requiring pension and health
care contributions does nothing to solve crushing problems such as the
Department of Corrections out-of-control overtime costs, the Madison bus driver making more than
$150,000 per year, or the outstanding first year teacher who was laid
off by MPS because she lacked seniority. The time is now to put
Wisconsin on a sustainable path, and Governor Walker is the conservative
leader to do it.
During tough times, Walker is protecting our most vulnerable citizens.
As Department of Health Services Secretary Smith outlined in a memo on
February 8, 2011, alternative plans to achieve the type of savings
needed to balance the books would be dire.
Other alternatives would require:
- Eliminating services for 194,539 children on Medical Assistance; or
- Eliminating services for 92,599 adults on Medical Assistance; or
- Eliminating services for 16,284 elderly, blind or disabled persons.
Walker is saving thousands of public employee jobs.
To achieve similar savings in the state’s general fund over three
months would require laying off more than 1,500 state employees.
Governor Walker knows there have been enough layoffs across the state
already – 250,000 Wisconsin jobs have been lost since the beginning of
the recession.
No wage cuts, layoffs, or furloughs.
Governor Walker said in an email to state employees that both the
Budget Repair Bill and the 2011-13 Biennial Budget will contain no wage
cuts, no layoffs, and no furloughs for state employees.
That’s right, no more furloughs.
Walker’s sensible solutions effectively mean the 3% of state employee
wages lost through Jim Doyle’s unpopular furloughs will offset the
increased pension and health care contributions Governor Walker is
asking of public employees to help balance the state’s budget.
LIBERAL MYTH VS. THE FACTS!
HATE FROM THE RIGHT? RIGHTTTTT!
These protestors should be the ones who show shame, supporting Communists and America haters over common sense Budget cuts!
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