At the heart of Gov. Scott Walker’s budget “repair” proposal are measures which would weaken Wisconsin’s public employee unions by curtailing their rights to collectively bargain, and while the measures are targeted at the state’s public employee unions, there’s not much stopping Gov. Walker and legislative Republicans here in Wisconsin from enacting similar laws to weaken the state’s private unions as well.
If Gov. Walker and Republicans in Wisconsin are successful in changing Wisconsin’s laws to weaken labor unions and turn the state into a “right to work” state, we can look forward to lower wages, as demonstrated by the following table, which compares “right to work” states with states that have stronger laws protecting labor unions:
| Type of State(s) | Median Household Income | Unemployment Rate (2009) |
|---|---|---|
| “Right to work” | $46,352 | 8.0% |
| NOT “Right to work” | $54,364 | 8.8% |
A look at that table shows that while unemployment rates are slightly lower in “right to work” states with weaker labor unions (8.0% to 8.8%), wages are significantly higher (just over $8,000 per household per year more) in states with stronger labor unions.
It seems pretty clear that by making it their mission to weaken Wisconsin’s unions, Gov. Walker and Republicans will lower wages (and likely benefits as well) for workers in Wisconsin. Given that fact, it’s no wonder Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which represents big business here in Wisconsin, wholeheartedly supports Gov. Walker’s proposal. After all, weakening the state’s public unions is just one step closer to WMC’s goal of lowering worker costs for the private sector, so that the companies WMC represents can see their bottom lines get a lot bit fatter.
So who voted for Adolf Walker ? All the right wing Nazis that want to increase the Bussiness climate at any cost! So we have effectively conceded workers rights to bargain for the greater good of their Rich bosses? I am all for balancing the budget and everyone doing their fair share, but to basically rip away the right of public employees to bargain with the management of their employer smacks of Nazi Germany.
Moving the right to bargain from a union to an individual is an excellent model for promoting good workers. I am a member of one of the “targeted” unions, and I’ll be happy to see this bill succeed.
Forward, this proposal doesn’t move the right to bargain from the union to the individual; it does away with the right to bargain. As a member of one of the unions that would be subject to the new laws, you won’t be able to bargain for anything; you’ll simply be dictated to, because you’ll have little of the protections you now have.
But hey, good luck bargaining on your own behalf; I’m sure that’ll be a smashing success and your employing unit will see things your way!
Without a union in the way, the employee has a tremendous opportunity to bargain for themselves. If you’re a valuable employee, the employer will gladly work with you and reward you for your efforts. If not, this is the employers opportunity to encourage you to move on by not working with you. Its a win-win situation.
Heh….as I said in my original response, good luck with that. I can’t wait to hear about how your employer chose to negotiate with you to give you a better deal when they could simply dictate to you what your terms of employment will be.
As I said, good luck, and please update us all on how well you get rewarded by your employer!
Its simple, at least if you work hard at your job. Employers are interested in keeping the people who perform well because it improves the profitability of their business. If you’re not that valuable, there’s no reason to work with you, and if that’s the case, then take the hint and move on to something else.
Although, as a teacher, I realize that my “company” is not in the business of making a profit, but still have budgets that dictate what they have to work with. Paying 2 or 3 people a little more to eliminate a another person who didn’t do much anyway just makes good economic sense.
I’m very excited about my opportunity to have more control over my working conditions as an individual, as I did when I worked for a private company…and summers off to boot.
Yeah, good luck with that. I can’t wait to hear you regale us with stories of how handsomely you were rewarded by your public sector employer, especially considering without collective bargaining rights you really have no leverage and they have no reason to negotiate with you.
I hope I have the opportunity to share that with you within the next year.
Leverage is the neanderthal tactic. Performance is the civilized one; I’m happy to put up or shut up.
That’s quite simply just not true. Argue all you want that you’ll be better rewarded though collective bargaining. But to say there’s no reason to negotiate is baloney.
Any employer, private or public sector is motivated to be productive – to actually get the task done that they were hired/elected to do. Where they need workers to get the job done, failure to attract, train and assist employees in getting the work done will result in them losing their job. And public sector are already much, much more restricted by legislation and statutes.
Say it’s better to have collective bargaining that’s fine. But public sector work got done just fine for decades before collective bargaining & public sector unions.
So…here’s your update.
My first paycheck in the non-union world included a 2.5% raise that was given to everyone, and a 1% performance raise for me. How about that? Hard work CAN pay off afterall. Those things more-or-less balance the increases in what I pay for healthcare and the Wisconsin Retirement System, but that was due to statewide policy, not my employer’s choice. My paycheck is $12 more than it was last year. All this nonsense was about going one year without a raise? Trivial. However, essentially going without a raise for a year is well worth it to know that I’m pulling my weight with things I should have been paying for all along. But, as someone recognized for good efforts, I am offered many new opportunities for optional overtime. I’ve taken one of three so far. I’m happier about my wages and working conditions.
Oh, and as a special bonus, the waste-of-a-life coworker I had before was finally let go (which I believe could have happened 3 years earlier if it weren’t for the union), and they’ve hired a replacement that starts in 3 weeks.
I couldn’t be happier.
I received a letter in the mail from WEAC indicating that I could opt to pay union dues all at once or in monthly installments. Har-de-har-har. Who would pay that? The union no longer controls wages, has little control over working conditions, and Obama took away the ability to bargain for healthcare, not Walker.
I’ve been doing some comparisons with the states Walker wants us to be like, such as New Jersey and Indiana and Texass. And I think you can successfully argue that Wisconsin is better off than any of those states when you look at economic stats like unemployment and median incomes, and in quality of life standards with Wisconsin’s low poverty and high level of people with health insurance.
Scott Walker doesn’t get that, or doesn’t care as long as he gets paid by the big fish, small ponders at WMC and co. Neither reason is acceptable.
Sorry but the data you’ve listed simply does not support the argument that you’re making. Your problem is assuming causality when there isn’t nearly justification. Yes, the right to work states map lines up roughly with a map of higher vs. lower median incomes. Know what? Cost of living maps line up pretty well with median income as well. I could just as well say that states without right to work laws have higher costs of production and transportation and those costs are what necessitate higher incomes just to break even.
Bottom line is, that if you’re going to make any argument involving median incomes on a state by state basis, you need to factor in cost of living or the figures are just not valid. It’s like saying incomes are higher today than they were 50 years ago because my grandpa only made $5000 a year.
I was interested, so I ran the data myself using the cost of living index by state and 2010 data. I got about a $600 difference between right to work and non right to work states.
Locke- You can make the caveats you want, but I certainly don’t think you can find many stats that say Wisconsin and non-right-to-work states are generally in worse shape than any of the places Walkert is trying to copy (I didn’t even bring up the disaster that Florida is). So why move away from a system that’s worked pretty darn well in this state? Quality of life is a huge factor in why businesses and people locate in certain areas, and personally that is a big reason why I eventually moved back from Indiana.
Things like unemployment, poverty, and education levels are based on % of population, and are fair comparisons, and growth or decline of income is certainly more of an apples-to-apples comparison that the actual numbers may be. It is worthy to point out that Indiana is 10% lower on median household income, cause I sure don’t think things are that much more expensive here than there.
Pretty darn well? Maybe you missed the billions of dollars of debt WI finds itself in, while we still pay high taxes.
Jim Doyle made it at it’s lowest since the 1960s unless you think that’s too high?
Furthermore, watching where the money went with Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum were not exactly saints and conservatives in spending. They went on spending money they didn’t have and in fact Jim Doyle lowered the deficit. Scott Walker is going down this path as well, instead of focusing on the deficit and making jobs he is doing his little pet projects just so the conservatives can continue to keep in power. The Republicans are cheering thinking they can spend what they want when the people who didn’t vote for them will continue to point out to the rest public they are putting us further into the said deficit you’re trying to use an argument.
Honestly? I think we do need to cut certain things, I think we can temporarily cut funding from the arts and some degree of sports for instance in the UW Systems until we get out of deficit. Removing Bargaining rights from Unions, not to mention people who do not make much money in the first place is illogical and purely partisan tactic. There are bigger pieces of the pie to take out of. It’s like they say how they want more jobs yet they don’t want any Green Jobs to grow here, pure partisan tactics and not is what is good for the whole state — sometimes you got to compromise and if Scott Walker is not willing to do that I predict even conservatives that backed him will begin to follow another candidate that they can trust. This is an issue and the principle is that it’s purely partisan and special interest just so the conservatives can keep in power in a purple state.
I used to think Unions were slimy groups despite my family working for them, however I soon came to the conclusion they are the other side of the coin of businesses.They are just as much as a part of business as anything else – furthermore using the argument that the Unions give money to a candidate you do not support is the same argument as a business you work for giving money to a candidate you do not support. Every argument you can make about those evil unions, are the same arguments you can make about those evil big businesses.
By removing one from the equation, we will become Indiana, where there was a huge controversy in fact where they lied about making jobs but they were nonexistent in reality. Aka, the conservatives in power lied there and there were no jobs being made if you watched the money. We cannot run on manufacturing forever because of high technology machines so we must open new doors for new growth which unfortunately Walker will not do.
We cannot get very far with low gas, because eventually we might not even reach the gas station. Taxes and services will have to be raised in order to get out of this situation, cutting will have to happen, and regulation will definitely be a factor — and Walker seems to be only interested in cutting — which is fine and dandy if he wasn’t spending so much money doing it.
we are in major debt while WE still pay high taxes because too many corporations do not!
Yes clearly corporations have gotten such a great deal in WI that they are coming in here droves right? Even if that were the case, only you would see that as a bad thing.
Corporations are just brick and mortar made up of people. Corporations don’t pay taxes; PEOPLE pay taxes.
Actually many have come here. The problem now a days is that we have the pure socialists like Jindal who are willing to pay millions of dollars per job that they Buy errr “create”.
You are correct forgot, corporations do NOT pay taxes, hence the deficits and the recession.
I meant if you tax a corporation those costs are passed on to people anyway. You are either paying for it outright or tacked on to the cost of a product. Are you really that blind? It’s the same as saying, property taxes are taxing my house, but not me.
And if so many corporations have come here, they would be expanding the tax base by creating jobs and those people would be paying taxes.
‘I meant if you tax a corporation those costs are passed on to people anyway. You are either paying for it outright or tacked on to the cost of a product.’
Isn’t that essentially a consumption tax that is all the rage on the right side of the aisle nowadays? So you simply don’t but stuff when you can’t afford it. Isn’t that taking personal responsibility?
Actually… when this data updated to late 2010 values, properly weighed (by population and workforce) and adjusted by regional costs of living… this is what you find:
Forced Unionization States
Unemployment: 9.6%
Adjusted Real Wages: $42,165
Right to Work States
Unemployment: 9.1%
Adjusted Real Wages: $43,427
This indicates both a lower unemployment rate and high real wages being associated with Right to Work states…
Is this WMC economics? Where do you get these figures?
Do we know what kinds of benefit packages are associated with the adjusted real wages you cite? Health insurance, holiday pay, vacations, sick leave, working conditions, etc?
Steve it all makes perfect sense…like the more guns less crime, the less rights the workers have the more the companies want to take care of them with higher wages and benefits.
Those figures didn’t include any type of benefits. While I’d love to include that in my model, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not track intangible benefits by region. So this is take home pay alone.
The need for income adjustments stem from differences in the cost of living regionally. The basic formula is that you take 100 (the “base”) and then divide that by a region’s cost of living index value and multiply the wages needing adjustment:
(100/Regional Cost of Living Index Value)*(Nominal Wage)=Real Wage
You end up with the “real” wage in terms of purchasing power. This levels the playing field between regions.
Employment information, weekly average wage information, and workforce information found here:
http://www.bls.gov/
The best State by State Cost of Living Index I’ve found thus far:
http://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/index.stm
Current Population Data was found here:
http://2010.census.gov/2010census/data/
I would argue, then, that the average benefits won by union workers, through contract negotiations, especially health insurance, if factored in, might change your numbers dramatically.
I ran the numbers including estimated benefits. Since actual dollar and cents figures are unavailable, I used the difference between civilian/private employee benefits and state unionized employee benefits as found in a regional index data. There is about a 15% disparity in healthcare and retirement benefits between private and public unionized employees according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics benefits index. Further, I added these union benefits proportionally into wage information by state. Wage data was calculated like this:
Nominal Wage * ( 100 / Cost of Living Index Value ) * ( 1+ ( Unionization % * Benefits Difference % ) )
Anywho, the results changed slightly, but not much (about $630)…
So now… including benefits differences…
Forced Unionization States
Unemployment: 9.6%
Adjusted Real Wages: $43,294
Right to Work States
Unemployment: 9.1%
Adjusted Real Wages: $43,978
Further…
The correlation between increasing unionization and real wage increases is -.35
So basically… there isn’t any measured importance to having strong unions, if anything it appears strong unions lower the relative quality of life for the aggregate.
Thanks for the effort. I suspect it will be unacknowledged, but I appreciate it.
Can we get somebody else, with a real name maybe, who can replicate your findings? Should be easy enough to do, given the current climate. I should think Governor Walker would like to hand your report out to the press.
Steve,
You make an exellent point. Thanks for bringing it up. I suspect it will go unacknowledged, but I appreciate it.
Heh….
I just want to say that I couldn’t disagree more with the comparisons of Walker to Adolf Hitler and/or Hosni Mubarek. Does what Gov. Walker is doing seem a little dictatorial? Yeah, but both Hitler and Mubarek engaged in some pretty horrific acts, and they’re in a class all to themselves.