January 3, 2011
Strained States Turning to Laws to Curb Labor Unions
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Faced with growing budget deficits and restive taxpayers, elected officials from Maine to Alabama, Ohio to Arizona, are pushing new legislation to limit the power of labor unions, particularly those representing government workers, in collective bargaining and politics.
State officials from both parties are wrestling with ways to curb the salaries and pensions of government employees, which typically make up a significant percentage of state budgets. On Wednesday, for example, New York’s new Democratic governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, is expected to call for a one-year salary freeze for state workers, a move that would save $200 million to $400 million and challenge labor’s traditional clout in Albany.
But in some cases — mostly in states with Republican governors and Republican statehouse majorities — officials are seeking more far-reaching, structural changes that would weaken the bargaining power and political influence of unions, including private sector ones.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Apart from the provocative headline, I will give the auld lady credit for pointing out the underlying Republican agenda behind the current attack on public workers and for putting a lot of meat in this article. But this is the second of two NYTimes articles fuzzing the issue of public employees:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Republican legislators in the essentially Red States of Indiana, Maine, Missouri and other states plan to bar unions from forcing workers they represent to pay dues or fees, in order to cut the funding of union treasuries. In Ohio, the new Republican governor wants to ban strikes by public school teachers.
Newly minted governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker, has been a public employee since he was 26, first in the Wisconsin State Assembly, moving on to become the Milwaukee County Executive before successfully running for Governor. Nevertheless, he says this of public workers:
We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots. The bottom line is that we are going to look at every legal means we have to try to put that balance more on the side of taxpayers.
Reflecting the views of many labor leaders:
"I see this as payback for the role we played in the 2010 elections," said Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the main union of state employees. Mr. McEntee said in October that his union was spending more than $90 million on the campaign, largely to help Democrats.
Meanwhile, former FauxNews host John Kasich, now governor of Ohio, is going after the poorest of the poor and the lowest of the low with a vengeance:
He is proposing to take away the right of 14,000 state-financed child care and home care workers to unionize.
God forbid that childcare and home care workers be paid a living wage -- and GASP! have access to health care.
Another group to watch, along with Rove's American Crossroads, is a group composed primarily of Republican state lawmakers and corporate executives, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is quietly spreading these proposals from state to state, sending e-mails about the latest efforts as well as suggesting legislative language to write into oppressive laws.