Commentary
Sources in Wisconsin offer their impressions of recent protests, issues behind them
Editor's note: We asked Wisconsin residents in MPR's Public Insight Network for their experiences and perspectives surrounding the recent protests there. Here are excerpts from their responses.
"I am extremely disappointed in the behavior of the protesters who have called in sick for work. They certainly have a right to protest, but only after work hours unless they have been excused. The school shut-downs were the event that made me unsympathetic to their position. ... Millions of people support Gov. Scott Walker's bill." -- Gail Sklodowska, company administrator, Milwaukee.
"As a UW-Madison student, I live two or three blocks from the Wisconsin capitol. I can hear the protests at almost every hour of the day. Cars are honking and people are yelling constantly.
"I work for the student government, the Associated Students of Madison (ASM), which has officially endorsed these walkouts, but the vote to do so was by no means overwhelming. Tensions are high because there is constant debate over what ASM's role in all of this is. ... I'm not on the student council, so I don't have a vocal position on these issues, but my boyfriend is. As a staunch Republican, he's been in a perpetual state of anger at what he calls "mob rule." It's hard for us to talk about this because he's very passionately against what the protesters (and ASM) are doing, and while I'm not particularly passionate, I mostly agree with the protesters.
"All in all, I've never witnessed anything like this before in my life. Regardless of the side I take, this has been an amazing experience to see first hand. It feels like being on the edge of history, with all eyes of the nation on us." -- Kate Fifield, student, Madison.
"My wife and I helped organize a group of parents and students to show support for local teachers and school staff outside our children's elementary school. We feel that to expect high quality public schools and municipal services we must treat these employees with respect rather than try to strip them of collective bargaining rights. ... We are very proud of the way public employees around the state have made their voices heard in respectful, peaceful protests not only in Madison but in cities and towns across Wisconsin." - Craig Johnson, attorney, Whitefish Bay.
"I believe the governor did the right thing. You teach because you see it as a calling -- like Catholic school teachers do. The unions have outlived their usefulness. There are plenty of protections for workers. They hold the taxpayer hostage.
"Gov. Walker will save many small school districts if this passes. Isn't it time public employees give a little instead of taking? They can join the taxpayers who pay their salaries and benefits and don't have the benefits they enjoy. What makes them so special?" -- Judith Kerr, substitute teacher, Cornucopia.
"I worry a great deal about the 85,000 kids who attend the Milwaukee Public Schools, which closed on Friday. Teachers ought to be ashamed of taking away any days of instruction.
"The protests are a frustration, but not completely surprising or without merit. The complete desertion of the state capital by the Democratic senators is, at best, a stunt, and at worst, a total abdication of the senators' role as elected officials. Eventually, they need to sit down and talk. And vote. Running away and hiding in Illinois is childish behavior." -- Cindy Zautcke, policy analyst, Mequon.
"As a state economist and policy analyst, I was surprised that no one asked me about this proposal. I analyzed it for its economic impact. If public employee salaries are cut (through increased withholdings as proposed) by enough to fill the $137 million budget gap, the resulting drop in consumer spending will lead to: 1) a loss of over 1,200 nongovernment jobs; 2) a loss of about $100 million in business sales statewide; 3) a loss of nearly $35 million in personal incomes of nongovernment employee households; 4) ironically, a loss of nearly $10 million in state tax revenues." -- Robert Russell, economist and analyst, Madison.
"I went to Madison Thursday morning early to protest the likely removal of my right to collectively bargain. I'm a teacher in Milwaukee; our superintendent said there would be disciplinary action for any teacher who didn't report to work. There was a strong intimidation factor that made many teachers decide not to demonstrate. I was very nervous, still am. But I could not stay away.
"The issue is not money for me; it is the right to negotiate a contract. What is left in this country if contracts are meaningless? ... State employees are hard workers who have paid health benefits, have accepted furloughs, and have survived pay freezes. Stripping them of collective bargaining is not an acceptable way to balance the budget. It's not enough of a savings anyway." - Susie Welsh, teacher, Milwaukee.
Comments (4)
We need to face reality and make tough choices to address our economic and fiscal crises, but proposals such as the Wisconsin 2009-2011 Budget Repair Bill do not propose effective actions based on accurate facts and clear thinking.
The median wage in America, adjusted for inflation, has barely budged for decades, and between 2000 and 2007 it dropped. Median annual wages of American workers are declining at the same time that American corporate profits are booming and the richest one percent of the U.S. population is taking home 23.5% of the country's annual income.
If you and your family are worse off now than you used to be, it's not because a small minority of American workers is still represented by unions. Today only 12.3% of the total US workforce, or 14.7 million people, are represented by unions; in 1981-82 about 25% of private sector workers were unionized, compared to about 7% today.
You're worse off because American multinational corporations are making and selling their goods abroad, slashing their workforces and wages in the U.S., and all while retaining their revenues and increasing their profits. American corporate profits have risen due to their reducing labor costs in the U.S. by pushing down U.S. wages and the size of their U.S. workforces, as well as due to their sales and production overseas.
American corporate profits for the third quarter of 2010 were the highest on record: $1.659 trillion, and were 28% higher than third-quarter profits one year previous, but this rise in profits by American corporations has not been accompanied by a rise in U.S. employment, wages, or national income. American corporations are pursuing strategies to keep labor costs low in the U.S. by avoiding rehiring, substituting temporary for fulltime workers, increasing productivity, depressing wages and eliminating benefits, and shifting employment abroad. America's private sector economy is no longer structured to generate the U.S. jobs required to return us to the levels of pre-crash 2007 employment. Only a third of the jobs lost in 2008-2009 were in industries paying less than $15 an hour, but fully three-quarters of the job growth in 2010 came in these same low-wage industries. The top three occupations among the industries that grew in 2010 were retail sales clerks, cashiers, and food preparers, and these occupations have median hourly wages of less than $10.
You and your family, like 95% of Americans, are worse off because a larger and larger share of total income has been going to the richest Americans over the past 30 years. Do you make less than $114,000 a year, like 90% of Americans? Do you make less than $160,000 a year, like 95% of Americans? Or do you make $400,000 or more a year, like the richest one percent of Americans?
Only the top 5% of American families increased their percentage of the country's total household net worth from 1983 to 2007. Based on Internal Revenue Service figures, if middle- and upper-middle class families had maintained the same share of American productivity that they held in 1980, they would be making an average of $12,500 more per year. In the late 1970s, the richest one percent of Americans received eight to nine percent (8% to 9%) of America's total annual income. By 2007, the richest one percent raked in twenty-three-and-one-half percent (23.5%) of the nation's total income. U.S. GDP quintupled since 1980, and we all contributed to this success. It's reasonable that upper-middle class families should have maintained the same size of their slice of pie. If earnings since 1980 were based on this measure of productiveness, the richest 1% of Americans would be making $1 trillion less per year.
You and your family will not be better off if there is even less union power to defend against cuts in your wages and benefits, or to bargain effectively for your fair share of the record profits American corporations are now making.
Demand that your government do the following:
Act to now ensure that those Americans who have received the most--and the facts are that that group is NOT represented by public employees--now share more fairly with those average Americans who have far less.
Restore tax rates for the top five percent to the 1980s tax rates.
Deny tax breaks and other government rewards to American companies that off-shore jobs and disinvest in the U.S.
Levy a tax on imports from off-shored labor and direct the proceeds to companies that mass-produce their products in the U.S.
Invest in American infrastructure repairs and improvements. The U.S. Infrastructure needs repairs and improvements, it's harder to off-shore jobs doing this work, and jobs doing this work are more likely to pay closer to a middle-class wage.
Governor Walker is trying to evade his responsibility to lead the state of Wisconsin. He has aligned himself with the corporate bad guys, the Koch brothers, who are pushing the anti-Union agenda. His office has been usurped by the corporatists and there's nothing to be done about it now. BUT BE INFORMED! Walker is a liar. He is not only deceiving the people by what he says (see Mr. Russell's comment above regarding the negative impact of the Walker proposal), but he's still denying that he's not trying to cut the feet out from under the Unions in Wisconsin. It's one thing that this elected official is using his office to advance his career as a corporatist, but it's another thing entirely to have a public figure being so grossly deceptive, and unyielding, as part of his modus operandi. Scott Walker must be vilified.
We raised our family in Wisconsin. I am a union supporter. I have one thing to say. Everyone should vote and know what they are voting for. How did this man get into office? I don't go along with the "independent voter" idea either. Pick your philosphy and support the candidate that reflects that philosphy. I would rather not vote than put someone in office that I cannot support across the board.
It may appear Wisconsin will have to be comfortable in ground zero, for a movement able to elect politicians with the luxury of being able to be wet behind the neck.
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