Originally Posted by gloopy

The overriding issue there is the state (as many) are broke. Big time. Beyond the ability to recover without some massive, earth shattering, sacred cow skewering, unthinkable and unacceptable outcomes to municipal unions. Even FDR, arguably one of the biggest cheerleaders of unions in this country ever, was over all against public unions entirely.

And from what I've heard they have most certainlly not agreed to the necessary cuts but rather viewed the cuts as an opener from which they would negotiate downward upon. They then, of course, try to turn it into a poor underpaid teachers arguement but the NEA as a whole and their particular state affiliate are extremely corrupt, have been found using membership dues money for mass direct political contributions to candidates of a particular persuasion, argue vehemently against parental choice and meaningful accountability, and their cries for parity go straight out the window because public teachers still make, on average, way more than their private counterparts. Not only that, but the percentages of benefits they are being faced with paying pale in comparison to almost the entirety of the private sector and that is microcosm for government in general.

State and national debt is beyond out of control. It is a crisis, period. No one, not even the evil anti union republicrats, dare to propose literally even 10% of the austerity measures necessary to stop the bleeding, much less fix the problem. Although I have great reservations about "public unions" (which, by the way, have been the lynchpins in almost every totalitarian regime in modern history) they can have as much collective bargaining rights as they want, as long as the overall problem is fixed IAW fiscal realities. But they will never, ever go for that.

This is playing out to be a classic partisan divide, but the fact remains the party is over, the bill is here, we can't pay and its time to go in the back and wash the dishes. That goes not only for public union contracts but other untouchable sacred cows like Social Security, Medicare, foreign aid, military, global welfare and government overhead at every level, not one iota of which a political majority up to this point has had the courage to even face much less fix, including considerable majorities in all branches of government at given times by both major parties. All we have done is roll the snowball up the hill and defer a greater problem for someone else. That someone else is now us.

I don't believe for one second that they are just protesting about some esoteric contstruct of collective bargaining in theory only. They are protesting the cuts, and they think in doing so they can bargain those cuts down. They can not. The economics of it are as undeniable as they are staggering. And unlike a money losing private company, they are burning the people's money and like it or not that makes it different. Even FDR, the high priest of modern leftism understood that. And the peoples' whose money is burning are broke too. The take away on this is Wisconsin is just the tip of the iceberg. Austerity here will rival Europe by a large margin and sooner than later, and it will be bitterly resisted along the way but there is no other way.

What we as a private profession shouldn't do is get in the middle of it because "unions good always and forever" as that is not the case. Do we want a system where everyone is in a union and it becomes a superpower politburo that blends the functions of corporate and political interests into one indistinguishable force? Public unions and private unions are 180 degrees different in concept. Lets not get so wrapped up in the banner of the concept that we lose sight of that.