New Orleans    

Understand first exactly how draconian these rules were fashioned.  From the headlines most probably remember that the Republicans tried to hide under the sheep’s clothing of pretending to be more democratic.  In this perversion of the concept they first mandated an annual recertification process, meaning that a “yes” or “no” vote by the workers on continuing to be represented by the union.  At first glance some might thing this would be a nuisance but not that big of a problem, but the “flawmakers” put their hands on the scales against the workers and their unions.  Winning the vote would no longer be on the old rules, where a majority of those voting would decide in the same way legislators and the governor were elected themselves by a plurality of those voting.  No, the unions would have to win by 50% plus one of all of the workers who were eligible to vote, much like the very difficult, old Railway Labor Act standards for transportation workers, rather than the National Labor Relations Act standards of majority rule that have been in place for over 60 years.

And, keep in mind that that was simply the first hurdle the workers were required to jump.  So, how have unions fared under this regime?

Many public sector unions, especially the larger ones affiliated with AFSCME, which were virtually born in Wisconsin originally, announce they would not seek to recertify under these new rules.  This decision last September meant that tens of thousands of state workers and others might be informally represented, but would not be certified any longer.   The head of the largest AFSCME council was quoted flatly as saying that they thought their resources were better spent fighting for a new law and recertifying when collective bargaining returned rather than trying to survive under this mishmash.

Most teachers unions with the National Education Association (NEA) did decide to recertify.  About a third of the bargaining units had to go through the process in the fall of 2011.  The other two-thirds are not yet up or are under existing contracts that delay their decisions.  Importantly of the units eligible, workers won majorities virtually in every contest.  According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel these were the results:

The Wisconsin Employee Relations Commission, which oversaw the voting over the past 20 days, released a list of results showing that 177 teacher and other education unions voted to recertify, and 29 fell short of a recertification vote.  Of the 29 failures to recertify, only one union, made up of teachers in tiny North Cape School in Franksville, actually had more members voting against recertification than for it. The new recertification rules required a vote of 51% of a union’s membership – not just a majority of voting members, as is the case when public officials run for office. The North Cape vote was 6-5 against certification, with 18 members in what the WERC called the “unit population.”

In a “real” democracy unions would have won all of these elections except one, which they lost by one vote!  But who knows what drugs the various “flawmakers” are on in Wisconsin.  The paper further reported on one district where the union failed to recertify:

One unit that just missed certification was Northern Ozaukee School District teachers union. The WERC document lists 64 members in the voting population; the vote was 31-1 in favor of recertification.   Paul Krause, president of the Northern Ozaukee School Board, said he took the failure of recertification as a sign the majority of the district’s teachers have faith in the district. “I hope that the relationship between the board and teachers can continue to improve,” he said.

Are you following this?  The head of the school board watches the union win by a 31-1 with 50% of the eligible teachers voting, and slaps his own back that he won because the majority didn’t vote?!?  Crazy in the cold up there!

I mentioned earlier that recertification was just the first hurdle.  Another big one is the fact that even when recertified, unions by the new “flaws” are not allowed to bargain on very much of anything since all of that has been curtailed.

Oh, and just so there’s no confusion that this might even possibly be about worker democracy, here’s another juicy tidbit from the newspaper story where a legislator makes it clear this is all a game of “gotcha” on the unions, since a big part of this fight is taking away union dues as well.

Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), chairman of the state Senate Education Committee, responded, “If teachers decided they want to recertify their unions, more power to them.” But he said the next question is whether the unions are able to collect their dues; the new state law removed the ability of unions to have dues automatically withheld from members’ paychecks.  “The question is, will the dues come in,” he said. “The proof will be in the pudding.”

The proof of the pudding is here.  This is Republican class war, Wisconsin style, and being copied by other states wherever possible.  Hating unions is one thing, stacking the deck is another, and that’s where it all gets nasty.

New Orleans

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times wrote a scary piece this week detailing some of the draconian steps that legislatures and new governors are proposing to stick it to public employees and their unions, including in some situations outright withdrawal of recognition for the unions.   There are few folks out there that have not seen this coming particularly given the last year of struggle in heavily unionized California around state and local employees and the drumbeating by New York’s new democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, and President Obama on wage freezes.

Part of the problem is the wide misperception that public employees are living high on the hog with better salaries and benefits, so now it’s time for them to share in the pain.  There is little evidence that this is in fact the truth.  The only traditional advantage that public employees have had historically is that their jobs were simply more stable and secure than in the private sector, and workers traded the security of a job certain for the ups and downs of the private sector business cycle.  Unions in the public sector, rather than being greedy, simply enjoyed the same security as their members since they were not facing constant employee turnover and therefore costs were less to service and generated a stable dues base.   The real crises could be the loss of that stability.

There may be some states and isolated cities where certain jobs between private and public sector are equivalent when one measures both pay and benefits, but this has been an exhaustively studied situation, and the notion that there is a significant public sector advantage is largely a politicians’ mirage.  A good example often in the news is the mismatch of pay for public sector nurses compared to those in the private sector where devotion to the job is about all that holds the workers.  Lower wage workers in the service sector have increasingly been contracted out in past economic crises and are tit for tat with the private sector if not below.

The advantages argued in the past for public sector pensions are also disappearing, especially as the reports of public underfunding build up in piles these days.  In fact what is often ignored is that some of these same pensions substitute for social security, so that if they are degraded public workers could find themselves up a terrible creek.

Contrary to what the right wing is arguing, public employees are not pampered and over paid.  The real issue is more likely “defunding” the unions which have been their protectors, especially the aggressive and politically powerful SEIU and AFSCME.  Greenhouse makes this point as well arguing that tactically forcing unions to spent more in defense would defang them in terms of political spending for 2012 federally and at the local and state levels.

This is a bad time for this fight, but there’s no reason to “blame the victim” — public employees — when this is just brass knuckle political war.  We might as well engage the battle on the real ground rather than the make believe world.

New Orleans

It was painful for me to report that in the US after many years of employment increases and rising protections brought by unionization in many states, these same critical, yet low status health care workers, are facing a crisis in state after state.  Announcement curtailments of workers has already expanded waiting lists in many states, and California where there may be close to as a many workers as exist in Korea faces drastic budget proposals by the governor.  If all the proposals being discussed were realized my guess is that 200,000 home health care workers could see their jobs disappear with cutbacks in state subsidies.  The loss of 200,000 union dues payers would also be critical for SEIU, AFSCME, and other unions representing home health workers.

The IMF crisis a little more than a decade ago in Korea finds its lingering wake in the severe cutback of labor protections.  The Great Recession in the US may end up leaving a similar tsunami for many public – and private – employees as well.

Bob Hebert in the New York Times woefully reminded today that many are averaging a 25% cutback in income in the recession and that it may take 6 to 10 years to make up the ground to move back from income insecurity to any semblance of citizen wealth.

Discussions with my Korean friends was a painful reminder of the long tail of economic crises with no end in sight.