Monday, February 28, 2011

Unions Debate What to Give to Save Bargaining

As Wisconsin’s governor and public employees square off in the biggest public sector labor showdown since Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981, government employees’ unions in a range of states are weighing whether to give ground on wages, benefits and work rules to preserve basic bargaining rights.

It is not yet clear whether Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin will succeed in his quest to strip public employee unions of most of their bargaining rights. But by simply pressing the issue, he has already won major concessions that would have been unthinkable just a month ago.

Some of Wisconsin’s major public sector unions, faced with what they see as a threat to their existence, have decided to accept concessions that they had been vigorously fighting: they said they would agree to have more money deducted from workers’ paychecks to go toward their pensions and health benefits, translating into a pay cut of around 7 percent.

But Mr. Walker is not settling for that. He said that those concessions were “an interesting development, because a week ago they said that’s not acceptable.”
Read the rest here.

3 comments:

Atlanta Roofing said...

Obama is like Hitler in his continuing takeovers of private sector businesses, like GM and Chrysler. He's also trying to be the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch and the Judicial Branch, contrary to our Constitution. Walker, OTOH, is simply doing what he was elected to do, which is how we do it in America. He just broke up the cozy deal between the unions and the Dem Party, each giving the other more and more taxpayer money.

Anonymous said...

In 1980, while running for president, Reagan spoke highly of the Solidarity labor movement in Poland. Said something to the effect that without unions and collective bargaining, freedom would not exist.

Anonymous said...

Solidarity was comprised of industrial unions, pipefitters, welders, and the like. That is what Reagan was praising, not desk-jockeys employed by local governments who do nothing, make nothing, and just take their neighbor's money in the form of a paycheck. It's a big difference.