Opinion

A progressive fight to rein in unions

Wisconsin’s public-sector unions are worried to the point of snarling. You could say it’s because taxpayers remembered they already have a state mascot — the badger.

The new governor, Scott Walker, is determined to cut the budget and plainly not intimidated by the unions — not even by their claim that a fat public payroll is a symbol of Wisconsin’s progressive tradition.

That we treat public-sector unions as beloved pets, those unions intimate, is the gauge of our compassion. It’s pure poppycock — and it exposes a fallacy exploited by public-sector unions everywhere.

Walker, a Republican, spent eight years as executive of traditionally Democratic Milwaukee County, the state’s largest, where he restrained taxes, cut payrolls and privatized janitors. In last fall’s statewide campaign, he signaled he’d bargain harder with unions — at one point bringing in New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who said he won cooperation by threatening “to take a bat out and hit you.”

Not that you’d hear such talk from Walker, who at 43 still seems like the Eagle Scout he was — but he let the Jersey guy say it.

After he won in November and Republicans took the Legislature, Walker warned that he expects some compromise from unions — and if they weren’t cooperative, he’ll look at all options, including changing state unionization laws.

“It’s like the plantation owner talking to the slaves,” blustered Marty Beil, the boss of the state workers’ local of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, the largest union representing state workers.

What is Walker asking? First, for state employees to start contributing to their pensions. Despite state law, practically none do, since their contracts specify that their employers will pay their share. Walker wants them to put in 5 percent of the contribution.

Second, to pay more of their health premiums. They now cover about 5 percent; Walker wants 12 percent. For comparison, the average Wisconsinite pays about 20 percent of his premium, still well under the national average.

It wins little sympathy for state workers to tell the rest of us that their deal is going from unbelievably cushy to “merely” fabulously so. After all, 80 percent of Wisconsin taxpayers don’t get pensions, but 401(k) plans — to which we contribute two-thirds of the money, on average.

Unions seek to restrict the discussion to a simple choice — still higher taxes, or fewer services. They can’t bear mention of the third variable: What we pay for what we get.

But Walker has raised just that matter, which endangers the unions’ whole arrangement.

Until now, state unions haven’t had to work very hard for their customers — that is, dues-paying members. They needn’t entice them, after all: State employees usually have no choice but to join, by law. Bargaining is easy, too. For decades, Democrats won union support and Republicans avoided being branded as mean by giving unions what they wanted.

As deftly as unions manipulated the legal environment, they’ve cultivated the political one, too. Many Wisconsinites take pride in their provident state: not cruelly stingy like the South nor patronage-driven like Illinois. Progressivism was invented here and remains part of the state’s identity. Public-sector unions have attached themselves to this, saying that well-compensated civil service is how we ensure smart, honest government. Nice benefits keep us from being Alabama.

It works — until taxpayers realize just how nice those benefits are, even as the state can’t afford enough school aid to keep the local band teacher employed. But the public has started to see the linkage.

If so many things government does — buses, parks, public radio — are the mark of a decent society, as we long have been told, then how can it be decent to keep paying outsize benefits when they mean governments must throttle back those necessary services? How are no-cost pensions compassionate when they mean the university has to charge higher tuition?

This is the question Walker is raising, and it’s a game-changer. If he can dethrone state unions as mascots of public generosity here, it can happen anywhere.

Patrick McIlheran is a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial columnist who blogs at jsonline.com/blogs/mcilheran. pmcilheran@journalsentinel.com