Is Walker's Backing Breaking Apart???

I have to admit, I think the Democrats, unions, and left is missing their best attack on Governor Walker: His whole "budget plan" only closes the budget hole by 10%. While it only closes the budget deficit 10% of it's total, it destroys organized labor, which by and large opposed his election, 100%. If you needed any more proof of his real intentions than that, you're blind. We're not using that enough.

With that said, the protestors are doing an amazing job in Madison. New polling shows that Wisconsin-ites initial sympathies are with the state workers and not the Government, by a 44%-38% margin. People are seeing the faces of real people at these protests, and realizing that we can't just leave them behind. The Assembly is taking notice too. They adjourned without a final vote tonight. Even more importantly, in the House, where most thought this was a done deal, they rescinded their vote to go to final passage, and are back in a stage where amendments can be considered. The Governor gave a televised statement tonight where he ignored his own attack on collective bargaining, and attempted to say this is all about concessions. There's good reason he may be lying, or at least hedging: 65% of Wisconsinites think he went too far here, the Chamber President in Milwaukee declined to endorse this bill, and the local business community may be turning on him. I'd be skittish too, if I were him.

The truth is getting out about Walker's bill. Ezra Klein writes:

In it, Walker proposes that the right to collectively bargain be taken away from most -- but not all -- state and local workers. Who's left out? "Local law enforcement and fire employees, and state troopers and inspectors would be exempt from these changes." As Harold Meyerson notes, these are also the unions that happened to be more supportive of Walker in the last election. Funny, that.

Walker tries to sell the change in collective bargaining as modest. "State and local employees could continue to bargain for base pay, they would not be able to bargain over other compensation measures." But that's not really true. Read down a bit further and you'll find that "total wage increases could not exceed a cap based on the consumer price index (CPI) unless approved by referendum." In other words, they couldn't bargain for wages to rise faster than inflation. So, in reality, they can't bargain for wages and they can't bargain over other forms of compensation. They just can't bargain.

The proposal doesn't stop there, though. "Contracts would be limited to one year and wages would be frozen until the new contract is settled. Collective bargaining units are required to take annual votes to maintain certification as a union. Employers would be prohibited from collecting union dues and members of collective bargaining units would not be required to pay dues." These rules have nothing to do with pension costs or even bargaining. They're just about weakening unions: They make it harder for unions to collect dues from members, to negotiate stable contracts or to survive a bad year.

The best way to understand Walker's proposal is as a multi-part attack on the state's labor unions. In part one, their ability to bargain benefits for their members is reduced. In part two, their ability to collect dues, and thus spend money organizing members or lobbying the legislature, is undercut. And in part three, workers have to vote the union back into existence every single year. Put it all together and it looks like this: Wisconsin's unions can't deliver value to their members, they're deprived of the resources to change the rules so they can start delivering value to their members again, and because of that, their members eventually give in to employer pressure and shut the union down in one of the annual certification elections.

You may think Walker's proposal is a good idea or a bad idea. But that's what it does. And it's telling that he's exempting the unions that supported him and is trying to obscure his plan's specifics behind misleading language about what unions can still bargain for and misleading rhetoric about the state's budget.

And it is becoming clearer and clearer. This is about 2012 and beyond, and the GOP's attempts to cripple anyone who disagrees with their corporate agenda. American Majority Action, a corporate funded, "astroturf" Tea Party group will stage a rally in support of the Governor tomorrow, with their leader going so far as to say this is the first shot in the 2012 battle. As is usually the case with extremist right-wing, corporate groups, they are fighting for a lie.

The facts are the facts: Wisconsin's deficit in the coming years is $3 billion. This bill closes it by about 10%, or $330 million. It not only isn't a budget "fix," it's also a union busting bill. It basically proves what progressives have been saying: even if you gave public-sector workers as crappy of a deal as the private sector workers get usually, it won't fix the deficits, which proves that the cause of state level deficits is usually NOT public sector contracts. The facts don't back up the Governor, and he's going too far.

Kill the bill!