To hear Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker tell it, the Badger State is “broke.” So he has just rolled
out a $30 billion budget stuffed with radical cuts to erase a $3.6
billion deficit, and coupled with a heavy-handed bid to hobble civil
service unions. The incendiary package has triggered a political uproar,
and concern about spillover here.
As Brenda Shillington, a
Toronto representative for the Public Service Alliance of Canada, told
CBC Radio on Wednesday, “It’s something that could happen here,” though
probably in a more incremental way as governments pare costs. Wisconsin
is well beyond contracting out garbage pickup.
Walker, a newly-elected
Republican hardliner, has taken on organized labour with a partisan zeal
that has many Americans, not just Democrats, recoiling in disbelief. As
the Star’s Robert Benzie reports, workers have besieged the legislature.
Even U.S. President Barack Obama has been drawn in. He fears that civil
servants are being “denigrated or vilified,” and their rights are being
infringed upon.
It’s not an idle concern. As
Tuesday’s budget shows, the pain of Walker’s overall $4.2 billion
two-year cost-cutting won’t be spread equitably through Wisconsin’s 3
million-strong taxpaying workforce. Public service workers, who number
170,000, will carry much of the load. These teachers, civil servants,
health workers and others will shell out nearly $1.5 billion more in
health care and pension premiums. That is designed to offset steep cuts
in transfers to schools and local government.
At the same time Walker is
exempting police and firefighters, two groups the Republicans court,
from sharing the pain. And he is handing out $200 million or more in tax
breaks to private enterprise.
Yet despite this unevenness,
in the U.S. climate of belt-tightening Wisconsin public workers are
resigned to pay the higher health and pension costs. They recognize that
on average American private-sector workers pay even more. They’re
resigned to do their bit to balance the state books.
Where Walker has gone from
budget balancing to labour bashing is with his “budget repair”
legislation that guts public workers’ union rights. He proposes to
hobble their ability negotiate wages by limiting future raises to
inflation, except in the unlikely case that the voters agree in a
referendum to more. Unions would lose the right to bargain benefits such
as pensions and health. They have to vote annually to recertify their
unions. And union dues would no longer be deducted at source.
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Related:
March 3 2011 Ottawa-based singer-songwriter Tom Juravich
is re-releasing his song “When Did I Become the Problem” in support of workers
and unions fighting back against the attacks on public sector workers across the
U. S. more...
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To many, including Democrat
state senators who have bolted to Illinois to deny Walker the quorum he
needs to get a vote on the measures, this looks more like Tea Party
labour-bashing than prudent cost containment. And Wisconsin isn’t
unique. Ohio and other states are targeting civil service unions. Yet a
recent national poll found that more Americans sided with Wisconsin’s
civil servants, than with Walker. And another found that Americans, by a
margin of nearly 2 to 1, oppose weakening public workers’ bargaining
rights.
All this is a cautionary tale
for Canadian policy-makers. Conservatives may be tempted to go the
Wisconsin route. But that would be folly. In part because Canadian
taxpayers rightly recognize the value of funding public services, our
governments are not in as dire straits. What belt-tightening needs to be
done here ought to be managed without placing crippling burdens on local
authorities, bashing the public service or kneecapping union
rights.
We’re all in this together.
