Editorial Comment: Anti-Union Policies are Attacks on the Middle Class
Most Americans grow up with a certain set of expectations: work hard, go to college and be rewarded with a job that pays a living wage — the story of the middle class.
The recent economic crisis has fundamentally changed this narrative.
Millions of Americans, who did everything right by working hard and attending college, can’t find work. Those that are employed full-time have seen their hours, paychecks and benefits reduced as employers react to the slowing economy.
Employers aren’t the only ones cutting back; facing massive budget shortfalls, state governments have followed suite.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, more than 31 states have enacted cuts that restrict the ability of vulnerable citizens to obtain health insurance or receive health care. At least 29 states have reduced funding for programs such as Homecare and disability insurance that service elderly and low-income individuals. And more than 43 states have cut or eliminated funding that subsidizes public universities and pays for K-12 education.
This week, however, the governors of Ohio and Wisconsin are attempting a more damaging approach.
Ohio Senate Bill 5, sponsored by Republican State Sen. Shannon Jones and supported by Republican Gov. John Kasich, will end collective bargaining between unions and public employers if enacted into law. In practice it will eliminate negotiations between unions and public employers that lead to agreements over wages, working hours and health and safety, giving employers unilateral power to set workplace policies and regulations.
A budget proposal from Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker goes even further.
In addition to eliminating collective bargaining, his proposal forces public employees to pay half the cost of their pensions while paying significantly more toward the cost of state-sponsored health insurance. The proposal would result in a dramatic take-home pay reduction for affected workers.
If either proposal becomes law, employees will also lose the ability to negotiate through their unions for higher wages and benefits as well as common-sense accommodations like maternity leave. And because Ohio and Wisconsin laws prohibit public employees from striking, they will effectively lose all rights as workers.
Kasich and Walker have said that the changes are necessary in order to address their respective budget crisis. However, both proposals attack the deficit at the expense of public employees.
Public employees are not just ‘government bureaucrats’ — they are fire fighters, police officers and sanitation workers. They’re street sweepers, teachers and college professors. They are the middle class.
And they’re struggling already.
Targeting them in order to reduce the deficit is more than a disservice to the valuable role that they play — it’s an attack on the middle class.
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5 Comments
It’s interesting that you talk about unemployment, cuts in education and public pensions in the same article. These things may be related, but not quit in the way you’re implying.
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Unions destroy wealth. The reason unions worked for a while in the mid 20th century was because, like pirates, they took advantage of existing economic growth. In other words, America was going to grow rapidly and develop a relatively wealthy middle class after WWII – it helps that the rest of the world self destructed – with or without unions.
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That being said, its worth noting that union states, such as Ohio and Michigan, have relatively high unemployment rates (9.3 and 10.6%, respectively) whereas Texas and Alabama, both right to work states, have 8% and 8.9%,respectively. We might need to consider that unions make it harder to fire, which makes employers more reluctant to hire. Now, which hurts the middle class more? No unions or no jobs?
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As far as state employees go, I agree that public employees are too often made the whipping boys for politicians. That being said, one of the reasons states have to cut education funding is because they’re paying pensions and health benefits for hundreds of the thousands of retired state employees. So we wind up robbing the young to pay the old. That’s not sustainable and thats not how you grow your economy.
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I think its perfectly reasonable to expect state workers to pay a higher a share of their own incomes towards both their retirement and health benefits. When I was working in the private sector I was routinely putting 10-12% of my pre tax income into my 401k. There is no reason a government employee shouldn’t have to make similar contributions to their own retirement. Keep in mind, that’s pre tax income, so the real hit to your paycheck is significantly less.
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Asking public employees to pay a higher share of their own benefits is also fair when we consider that the alternative is to have a higher and higher share of our state budgets going to finance comfortable retirements at the expense effective schools and universities. One type of spending is consumption, pure and simple, whereas the other type is investment in long-term economic growth.
…and the gap widens! The end of collective bargaining is terribly concerning, but what should really raise eyebrows are the cuts in education. Reducing our educational capital is shooting ourselves in the foot. It’s much more expensive to deal with an unemployed population than fund education! They build prisons in MS based on the # of kids that are can’t read in the third grade. Cutting education is lethal to economic health and we have the research to prove it!
Spread the word that Ohio’s economy can only improve if our middle class is strong.
http://ohiodems.org/action/sb5_letters_to_the_editor/
Some people need to just chill out and realize that the government isn’t a legue of evil. Yes, most have an agenda, and yes kasich’s is unfavorable to the middle class now, but in 4 years we get to decide to keep him or not.
Just vote, people.
“They have favoured big goervnment at the national level for decades while playing up to idiot voters as being fiscally conservative.”Kasich is better than his Democrat predecessor by any yardstick you care to measure by. Your “they’re all the same” generalities fall apart with the slightest bit of actual examination of the record.