06-08-2012, 11:59 AM
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Join Date: Oct 2007
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Re: Group ends Snyder recall effort after Wisconsin's result
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Originally Posted by Coyote
Quote:
Originally Posted by AZRWinger
Warring with the public employee union on behalf of the taxpayer is a good thing. Evidently a significant number of union members thought so too as soon as they were given a choice, they dropped their membership. Of course Progressives behave as perfect reactionaries at the prospect of the worker having a choice.
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What significant number is that? |
Wisconsin Unions in Decline
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Regardless of whether Governor Scott Walker survives Tuesday’s recall election, Wisconsin’s public-employee unions are likely to see their power continue to decline.
According to the Wall Street Journal, government unions in the Badger State have “experienced a dramatic drop in membership” since Walker and GOP lawmakers passed a package of reforms last year, including ones curbing collective-bargaining rights and ending mandatory union membership.
Labor unions are being crippled by the elimination of automatic dues withholding, a practice that had enriched the unions’ coffers. Thousands of state workers are simply refusing to contribute; others are leaving public-sector jobs.
“You see it especially among teachers, where there is a feeling that it doesn’t make sense to keep working under the new rules,” says Paul M. Secunda, an associate professor at Marquette University Law School. Indeed, according to the Journal, the American Federation of Teachers–Wisconsin, a labor organization representing 17,000 public-school teachers, has seen 6,000 members leave its ranks.
But the biggest drop has been in the Wisconsin chapter of AFSCME, the powerful union that represents state, county, and municipal workers. In the past year, more than 30,000 members have deserted the collective.
According to the Journal, when Walker first proposed his fiscal reforms in early 2011, AFSCME’s Wisconsin membership stood at a healthy 62,818. By February 2012, the labor behemoth had shrunk to 28,745. “It’s a profound shift,” says George Lightbourn, the president of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and the state’s former secretary of administration. “It’s similar to what Indiana experienced after Governor Mitch Daniels changed the collective-bargaining laws. If these numbers are borne out, it will significantly change the whole nature of Wisconsin’s state workforce and the relationship between management and employees.”
State senator Alberta Darling, a top Walker ally and the co-chair of the upper chamber’s joint finance committee, says the bosses of the public-sector unions aren’t battling Walker as much as they are their own members, who have been unhappy with paying hefty dues for decades. “People who refused to pay used to be blackballed,” she says. “Now I’m hearing from many teachers that they feel free to work with their school boards without going through the unions first. They can manage their own issues without outside involvement.”
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