How much are you worth?

Why does anyone have a job? It is not complicated. You and everyone has a job for one reason, and only one reason.  Someone has a great idea for something, say they want to produce food, people need food and want a variety of it. So this one person (lets call him Stan) figures out a way to produce his food product, and lots of people like it. But now he has a problem, more people like his product than he can produce by himself, so here is where your job comes in. He needs to have someone help him produce his product, so he finds you to help him (we'll call you Joe). In exchange for helping him produce, you agree to take X amount of dollars as compensation for your labor. So we now have an exchange of something (usually a wage) for something of value to him (your labor). TA DA! the first job is created.

This is the only reason you or anyone else has a job, there is too much work for one person to do for himself, so he finds other people to handle the excess labor. In our small world everything is working great. Stan now can produce enough, and Joe has negotiated a price for his labor that he thinks is "fair". Until..... the day that Joe sees another person (Phil) doing a similar job and making X+1 dollars. So you now feels slighted because you are not making the same wage as Phil. So you ask Stan for an increase in your compensation (a raise), Stan says okay, because he has more customers and can pay more for your labor. Yippee! you are now compensated more for your labor.

But now Phil finds out that you are getting the same as he is getting, only he is actually doing more labor, so now he feels that he is making less than he is worth, so he goes to his boss to get a raise. Competition has now been entered into the whole labor market. And it works, Stan is happy, Joe is happy, and Phil is happy.  The system works. It is called Capitalism.

Now we add the labor union leader (Norma) into the picture. Norma thinks that Joe is being wronged, and should be making the same  as Phil, it doesn't matter that Joe is happy, all that matters is that Norma thinks he is not being treated "fairly". So Norma convinces Joe to have her represent him in labor negotiations where she will guarantee better wages and better working conditions. She believes that Joe should be making X+3, but Stan cannot afford to pay Joe X+3. This, of course, doesn't stop Norma from demanding x+3, in fact she will make it impossible for Stan to make any money because she will have Joe not do any work (a strike) for a time to force Stan to pay Joe x+3.

Before Norma came in our little system was happy. Nobody felt slighted that they were not being paid less than they were worth. But Norma now introduces class envy into the labor exchange process. "Stan is making his money off the back of Joe's labor, and isn't sharing sufficiently," Norma whispers in Joe's ear. Stan negotiates with Norma and is forced to pay Joe X+3, but it puts him at a great disadvantage in the market in which he is competing. Eventually Stan cannot afford to pay Joe anymore and lays him off. Now Joe isn't even making X, much less the X+3 Norma negotiated for him. So who get the fingers pointed at them? Stan the "greedy, selfish Capitalist". But who is really to blame in this scenario? I think its Norma, who thought that she could demand more for Joe than Stan could pay.

So that leaves us with today's dilemma, labor unions have been demanding higher wages and more benefits from the taxpayers for years. They have told workers that they are worth X+10 ( it doesn't matter that the society cannot continue to pay them X+10 any longer), they are worth it and feel slighted if they do not get it, because of their "intrinsic value to society".  Who is to say that a teacher, or a firefighter or cop has more "intrinsic value" to society than a farmer, or a truck driver? We cannot continue to demand that one portion of society (non-union labor) continue to sacrifice more each year for another, smaller, portion of society (unionized labor).

Just because the labor union says you are worth X+10 dollars, doesn't mean that the society can pay you X+10 dollars. So what happens when society says, "Enough, we can only pay you X+8 dollars"? Well look at the Capital Square in Madison, WI to see what happens. We the people are not saying you are not worthy of our compensation, what we are saying is we don't have the resources that you believe, and we cannot continue to give you more of those resources than we ourselves need.

This is not a fight over a pile of excess money laying around (as the labor unions would like their members to believe), this is about an ever decreasing pool of money, that we all need access to.  Just because you are a member of a labor union doesn't mean you get more access to it than I do. If you think Phil will willingly chip into Joe's wages when he is now getting less compensation than Joe, you are not thinking clearly. Phil is tapped out, and now he is outraged as well.

We cannot continue to listen to Norma and have Joe get mad at Phil. Both Joe and Phil are laborers, even Stan is not evil and corrupt because he wants to keep the fruits of his labor as well. Nope! Our problem is Norma's class envy, and meddling into a system that has worked for a very long time.  The enemy is not Capitalism, it is class envy! Have we sold our souls for a bowl of cheap oatmeal?

Unions prove that Act 10 works

"Dear Brothers:

“We write to express our grave concern that MTEA has asked their legislators to introduce and work to pass legislation which would enable MTEA and the Milwaukee Public Schools to enter into an agreement in which MTEA would make economic concessions such as those enacted by Governor Walker’s WI Act 10.

‘The undersigned believe that such legislation would be detrimental to our members’ best interests: i.e. our Districts would likely push for similar legislation, given the precedent established by MTEA. Further, we believe such legislation will have an adverse impact on all Wisconsin public employees. Such legislation will enable Governor Walker to claim victory of his policy to reign [sic] in public employee wages and benefits. Because he did not adequately fund education, we are all currently suffering. Allowing Governor Walker to make such a claim just before the recall election will prove detrimental to recalling him and, therefore, will only enhance his ability to further harm all Wisconsin public employees.

“We ask that you immediately withdraw your request for this legislation.”

The letter was signed by the following union representatives from Madison, Kenosha, Green Bay and Racine:

Peggy Coyne, MTI President
John Matthews, MTI Executive Director
Mary B. Modder, KEA President
Joe Kiriski, KEA Executive Director
Toni Lardinois, GBEA President
Keith Patt, GBEA Executive Director
Pete Knotek, REA President
Jack, Bernfeld, REA Executive Director

This is a copy of the letter sent to the Milwaukee School District after they had requested that the WI State Legislature give them an open window in which to renegotiate fringe benefits without nullifying their existing contracts.

So, what are the unions really telling us? "Such legislation will enable Governor Walker to claim victory of his policy to reign [sic] in public employee wages and benefits." Asking the legislature to renegotiate the part of the contract affected by the collective bargaining clause of Act 10 will give Walker points to use against them in the recall. "Allowing Governor Walker to make such a claim just before the recall election will prove detrimental to recalling him and, therefore, will only enhance his ability to further harm all Wisconsin public employees."

So the Milwaukee School District rushed a contract through which left them with a deficit of $10 million dollars in their pension fund, and now they want to renegotiate to cover that deficit without nullifying the full contract. And the unions don't want them to be able to make up the deficit through contract concessions. BECAUSE....

Act 10 worked,

it brought about the ability of School Districts to bring their contracts into line with the actual cost of doing business without union collusion. This letter is another example of the thuggery the unions are willing to commit to keep the school districts in line. Because the union have been used to using school districts against each other in the negotiation process, they feel that they can use this same tactic against the Milwaukee School District now to smack them back down.

In their own words, Milwaukee wants to "make economic concessions such as those enacted by Governor Walker’s WI Act 10." They themselves are admitting that ACT 10 has worked, is working and will continue to work. That is why they have to redirect the argument back to the collective bargaining that they lost. If they can re-frame the argument back to collective bargaining they think they have the moral high ground.

But as long as the school districts are thriving financially, the unions will continue to lose the argument...financially. And having only 15% of the working class in the public unions, they will continue to lose the argument as long as the taxpayers see the benefits financially as well. And their antics during the protests and their death threats to opponents have also weakened their position.

The unions, by their own admission, admit that Act 10 has done what it was promised to do. Make school districts better able to control their budgets, and save money. You heard it from the Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, and Racine Teachers Unions.

What part of NO don't you understand?

We the Bank of America (i.e. the taxpayers) say no we will not increase your credit limit. You have not wisely spent the trillions of dollars we have already loaned you, what makes you think we can trust you with even more money. You have reached your credit limit, that is all there is to it. You can either stop spending so much borrowed money, or you can default, the choice is yours. The answer is NO.

I am also tired of everything being a "crisis" in the eyes of the Democrats. Oh for crying out loud, first it was global warming, then health care, and now the debt ceiling. It is not a crisis, you just don't want to be responsible so you make it look like the responsible party, the people who are saying no, are nothing but a bunch of party poopers who don't want to give you what you want. Suck it up, stop the temper tantrum already. SHAME SHAME SHAME SHAME SHAME ON YOU!

We saw a huge temper tantrum in Wisconsin this spring, the unions were all over the place with their "Walker=Hitler" signs, the "F**k Walker" signs and all kinds of Communist slogans marching on the Capitol square. So what has happened? Why hasn't the world ended already, collective bargaining was the holy grail. The schools were going to implode, the teachers were going to get shafted and end up on the streets, the unions were going to dissolve in to piles of liquid goo, patients were going to be piled three or four to a room, and nobody was going to get their meds.

Well guess what, none of this has happened. The world goes on, in fact, of the 18,000 new jobs created in the United States this last month, 9500 or so were in Wisconsin. So unions, how is that drumming working out for you? How is "recall Walker" going to bring jobs back? Guess what, the jobs are coming back because of Walker's budget, even though you think all he did was give tax breaks to the rich. So the rich just decided out of the goodness of their hearts to hire people this last month? The companies that are hiring are doing this because they feel the pain of the unemployed and want to contribute to society. NOPE!

They are hiring because the climate to hire is more positive here in Wisconsin, they don't need to worry about taxes being raised so they can now use some of the capital they were sitting on due to the uncertainty of taxes and use it to hire some new people. That is how capitalism works, that is how profit motive works, that is how private industry works. And guess what, when private industry works, so do private industry employees who consequently are paying the taxes that pay your sorry a** wages.

Maybe someday you will also be able to grow up and become mature adults who pay their own way instead of demanding that someone else sacrifice so you can live high on the hog. The government unions have become the bane to society that was predicted so many years ago, by none other than FDR.

This video explains it so well.

Walker v. Unions: the truth told

Wisconsin Interest
Volume 20, No. 1
March, 2011

By now, the political lore is familiar: A major political party, cast aside by Wisconsin voters due to a lengthy recession, comes roaring back, winning a number of major state offices.

The 43-year-old new governor, carrying out a mandate he believes the voters have granted him, boldly begins restructuring the state’s tax system. His reform package contains a major change in the way state and local governments bargain with their employees, leading to charges that the governor is paying back his campaign contributors.

Only the year wasn’t 2011 — it was 1959, and Gov. Gaylord Nelson had just resurrected the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Certain of his path, Nelson embarked on an ambitious agenda that included introduction of a withholding tax, which brought hundreds of protesters to the Capitol. Nelson also signed the nation’s first public-sector collective bargaining law — the same law that 52 years later Gov. Scott Walker targeted for fundamental revision.

Two different governors, two different parties, and two different positions.

Ironically, their assertive gubernatorial actions may produce the same disruptive outcome. By empowering the unions, Nelson’s legislation led to public-sector strikes and work stoppages. By disempowering the unions, Walker’s actions might lead to public-sector strikes and work stoppages.

In Walker’s case, union members reluctantly agreed to his pension and health-care demands, but have fought desperately to preserve their leverage in negotiating contracts. That raises the basic question of the Madison showdown: Why is Scott Walker so afraid of collective bargaining?

The answer can be found in the rise of the state’s teachers unions.

After the 1959 Municipal Employees Relations law passed, the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association became, in 1964, the state’s first certified teachers’ bargaining agent. Slowly, more teacher groups across the state began to organize in their districts. And in 1969, Ashwaubenon teachers became the first Wisconsin educators to hit the bricks and strike, as 83 teachers walked out for four days.

Part and parcel with these developments, a venerable professional group founded in 1853, the Wisconsin Education Association, transformed itself into a tough-talking trade union in 1972 called the Wisconsin Education Association Council, with the authority to bargain on behalf of teachers all over the state.

WEAC began collecting funds from its members ($3 apiece) to spend on supporting political candidates. According to the union, 88% of its endorsed candidates won in the 1974 elections. The union had arrived on center stage as a major player in Wisconsin politics.

Unionized teachers routinely flexed their muscle. Between 1969 and 1974, there were 50 teacher strikes in Wisconsin, despite a state law declaring public employee strikes illegal.Because there were no penalties outlined in the law, WEAC’s leadership frequently convinced its members to walk out anyway.

A turning point came in March 1974, when a bitter teachers’ strike in the small town of Hortonville prompted a resolute school board to fire and replace 88 striking teachers. All hell broke loose.

The strike, one of the longest in the history of American education, garnered national media attention and was litigated all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices affirmed the school board’s right to fire the strikers.

Asked later if it was wise for WEAC to pick a fight in conservative Outagamie County, its former executive director Morris Andrews said: “I would have chosen a better place.”

Determined to use the Hortonville defeat as a rallying cry for solidarity, Andrews began pushing for a stronger, more galvanized teachers union. Under his leadership, WEAC hired collective-bargaining and arbitration experts and implemented “pattern bargaining” strategies. The idea was to extract as much salary and benefit increases as possible from teacher-sympathetic school boards, then use that data to pressure more stubborn boards to cough up better pay and benefits.

Notably, WEAC’s post-Hortonville muscle led to passage of a 1977 mediation-arbitration law that guarantees settlement of deadlocked collective-bargaining disputes.

The new law essentially ended public employee strikes. According to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, the state has had 111 municipal employee strikes since 1970; 90% took place prior to the 1977 med-arb law. Since 1982, there has only been one strike, in 1997 by Madison Metropolitan School District teachers.
The end of strikes, however, didn’t mean teachers were any less aggressive in negotiating. Aided by the new law, teachers redoubled their efforts to improve compensation. And they succeeded, judging by the costs of total pay and benefit packages.

For instance, statewide average teacher salaries increased 6% per year in the 16 years before the Hortonville strike. In the 16 years after the strike, the increase is pegged at 7% annually. Not a big difference, for sure.

But salaries are only a part of the picture. Consider that in the 16 years prior to Hortonville, average state per-pupil spending increased 6.7% per year. Post-strike, it jumped to 9.6% per year in the 16 years following the Hortonville clash.

Through collective bargaining, WEAC obtained concessions from management that appeared to have little fiscal effect, but in the long run greatly benefited its members.

It was in the early 1970s, for example, that local government employees across the state started to see taxpayers picking up the full cost of pension benefits — the very practice Gov. Walker fought against in his budget-repair bill.

In the ’70s, union leaders were figuring out the value of benefits; many of labor’s decision-makers were older and needed health and pension benefits more than the rank and file. They recognized that benefits were often not taxed, meaning that teachers usually got more bang from a buck in benefits than from a buck in pay.

Other provisions benefiting unions followed. In 1973, Wisconsin enacted the “Educational Standards Bill,” establishing that all teachers must be certified by the state Department of Public Instruction, that every school district must provide kindergarten, special education, guidance counselors, and other measures.

Also in 1973, Milwaukee teachers negotiated a benefit that paid their health care premiums when they retired — in 2016, this benefit will be worth $4.9 billion, or more than four times the size of the Milwaukee district’s current budget.

Teachers represented by WEAC often demanded that their health premiums be provided by WEA Trust — their own health insurer — at a cost often greater than insurance on the private market. (Started in 1970, WEA Trust is now the fifth-largest health insurer in Wisconsin.)

In none of these cases of advancing teachers and their union were the long-term fiscal costs known. While Capitol protesters in February offered to give up some short-term financial considerations, it is this slow, steady, tectonic shift towards enriching and empowering public employees that Walker sought to decisively reverse.

Bottom line: Even in giving up ground on a few major points, the negotiating tide on work rules and other matters still favors government labor.

Today, K-12 education funding dwarfs the next-highest state spending program by a measure of 4-to-1. In 2011, Wisconsin spent $5.3 billion on public school aids, compared to $1.3 billion on Medical Assistance.

Give WEAC credit for having the most aggressive and most sophisticated bargainers. Give it credit for executing a long-term strategy to enrich its members. But the union has been so successful for so long that it has sown the seeds for a humbling comeuppance.

It was this seemingly inexorable march toward higher spending that Walker is trying to halt by disassembling an overly powerful and deeply entrenched union machine.
Upon taking office in 1959, Gov. Nelson called on politicians to “think and act anew.” And that’s exactly what Gov. Walker is doing.

Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

A letter to Governor Walker

Dear Governor Walker,

I have recently heard news reports that you may be ready to compromise on the collective bargaining of wages with the unions. Please I urge you to remain strong, to not back down now, it is too critical to the future of the state of Wisconsin.

I know you have taken a lot of heat from the unions and from the media, but we the conservatives need to know you will not give into the intimidation and extortion of the liberals. I continue to fight for you, I continue to defend you, I am in this for the long haul, and I hope you will also continue to keep the faith.

In the recording of you that has been circulating with the phony David Koch, I heard you mention a story of your belief that this was a defining moment for the state of Wisconsin and you wanted to emulate your hero President Ronald Reagan. I was really inspired by that story and felt that finally we had a man who would stand up to the liberal mindset that is destroying this country. Please do not be a leader like William Clinton who checked the polls to decide what direction the country should be turned. Ronald Reagan was hated by the left, the Democrats and the Media, and he didn't care, he lead this country like he was proud of it, because he was profoundly proud of it. I know you are facing a huge backlash right now, but remember your hero, and mine, faced even worse backlash, and he remained strong because he knew he had the support of the people. You have the support of the majority, even though we cannot be marching constantly on the steps of the Capitol. We have to work to fund the state. I have worked too hard to get off and stay off welfare to see it all go down the drain to someone who doesn't care about their own future, much less that of this wonderful state and country.

When I signed up for military service, I took an oath, much like you did when you took office, to uphold the Constitution and defend this country from all enemies foreign and domestic. And simply because I no longer am a member of the military doesn't mean I can turn my back on my oath. I will continue to fight all enemies, even if they turn out to be well-meaning but selfish union members. If what they are doing is to the detriment of this state and country, I will not back down.

If you give in now, you will only be reinforcing the idea that mob rule is acceptable. This is not what democracy looks like, no matter how loudly the protesters catterwall, this is what anarchy looks like, and we cannot let the few loudest shriekers determine the course of the future of our great state. Please the voters gave you a majority of both houses in a previously very red state, we continue to fight in the trenches for you. Please do not let us down by giving into the rabble.

Anne M Winrich

The tax man cometh!

General Purpose Revenue (GPR) Taxes By Source

GPR Tax Collections

($ Millions)

% of % of Change %

Tax Source FY 09 Total FY 08 Total FY09-FY08 Change

Individual Income $6,222.7 51.4% $6,713.7 51.5% $-491.0 -7.3%

General Sales & Use 4,084.0 33.7% 4,268.0 32.7% -184.0 -4.3%

Corporation Franchise & Income 629.5 5.2% 837.8 6.4% -208.3 -24.9%

Excise 647.6 5.4% 540.2 4.2% 107.4 19.9%

Inheritance, Estate & Gift 20.9 0.2% 158.8 1.2% -137.9 -86.8%

Public Utility 320.1 2.6% 297.5 2.3% 22.6 7.6%

Insurance Companies 136.3 1.1% 156.6 1.2% -20.3 -13.0%

Miscellaneous 52.1 0.4% 70.3 0.5% -18.2 -25.9%

TOTAL GPR $12,113.2 100.0% $13,042.9 100.0% $-929.7 -7.1%

Taken from the Annual Fiscal Report FY2009 http://www.doa.state.wi.us/docview.asp?docid=7830&locid=3

What all these numbers add up to is the amount of money that the taxpayers put into the running of the state of Wisconsin.

The total we need here is 12.1 billions dollars, this is the total amount that the taxpayers contributed to the legislature. And what kind of influence did we buy with our money? A big fat ZILCH. We still don't have a seat at the collective bargaining table. The unions are spending money to get into the taxpayers pocket, and we have NO say? Maybe big business and the labor unions are no different, they are all trying to screw us. But at least I can choose to not spend my money at a business if they offend me, I have no recourse with the public sector employee contracts. The tax man tells me what to pay or go to jail. Some choice.