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Out of Wisconsin, a lesson in leadership for Obama

By George F. Will

MADISON, WIS.

Hitherto, when this university town and seat of state government applauded itself as "the Athens of the Midwest," the sobriquet suggested kinship with the cultural glories of ancient Greece. Now, however, Madison resembles contemporary Athens.

This capital has been convulsed by government employees sowing disorder in order to repeal an election. A minority of the minority of Wisconsin residents who work for government (300,000 of them) are resisting changes to benefits that most of Wisconsin's 5.6 million residents resent financing.

Serene at the center of this storm sits Republican Scott Walker, 43, in the governor's mansion library, beneath a portrait of Ronald Reagan. Walker has seen this movie before.

As Milwaukee County executive, he had similar dust-ups with government workers' unions, and when the dust settled, he was resoundingly reelected, twice. If his desire to limit collective bargaining by such unions to salary issues makes him the "Midwest Mussolini" - some protesters did not get the memo about the new civility - other supposed offenses include wanting state employees to contribute 5.8 percent of their pay to their pension plans (most pay less than 1 percent), which would still be less than the average in the private sector. He also wants them to pay 12.6 percent of the cost of their health care premiums - up from about 6 percent but still much less than the private-sector average.

He campaigned on this. Union fliers distributed during the campaign attacked his "5 and 12" plan. He says his brother, a hotel banquet manager, and his sister-in-law, who works at Sears, "would love to have" what he is offering the unions.

For some of Madison's graying baby boomers, these protests are a jolly stroll down memory lane. Tune up the guitars! "This is," Walker says, "very much a '60s mentality."

He does, however, think there is sincerity unleavened by information: Many protesters do not realize that most worker protections - merit hiring; just cause for discipline and termination - are the result not of collective bargaining but of Wisconsin's uniquely strong and century-old civil service law.

"I am convinced," he says, "this is about money - but not the employees' money." It concerns union dues, which he wants the state to stop collecting for the unions, just as he wants annual votes by state employees on re-certifying the unions. He says many employees pay $500 to $600 annually in union dues - teachers pay up to $1,000. Given a choice, many might prefer to apply this money to health care premiums or retirement plans. And he thinks "eventually" most will say about the dues collectors, "What do we need this for?"

Such unions are government organized as an interest group to lobby itself to do what it always wants to do anyway - grow. These unions use dues extracted from members to elect their members' employers. And governments, not disciplined by the need to make a profit, extract government employees' salaries from taxpayers. Government sits on both sides of the table in cozy "negotiations" with unions.

A few days after President Obama submitted a budget that would increase the federal deficit, he tried to sabotage Wisconsin's progress toward solvency. The Washington Post: "The president's political machine worked in close coordination . . . with state and national union officials to mobilize thousands of protesters to gather in Madison and to plan similar demonstrations in other state capitals." Walker notes that in the 1990s, Wisconsin was a trendsetter regarding school choice and welfare reform. Obama, he thinks, may be worried that Wisconsin might again be a harbinger.

He also thinks Obama's intervention demonstrates why presidents should serve apprenticeships as governors. He says that Obama, in the Illinois Legislature and the U.S. Senate, "was a liberal among liberals," and liberals are his base, and his staff comes from it. Governors, Walker says, get used to considering the interests of broad constituencies.

Walker's calm comportment in this crisis is reminiscent of President Reagan's during his 1981 stand against the illegal strike by air traffic controllers, and Margaret Thatcher's in the 1984 showdown with the miners' union over whether unions or Parliament would govern Britain. Walker, by a fiscal seriousness contrasting with Obama's lack thereof, and Obama, by inciting defenders of the indefensible, have made three things clear:

First, the Democratic Party is the party of government, not only because of its extravagant sense of government's competence and proper scope, but also because the party's base is government employees. Second, government employees have an increasingly adversarial relationship with the governed. Third, Obama's "move to the center" is fictitious.

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Starving Wisconsin's unions

By Eugene Robinson

Let's be clear: The high-stakes standoff in Wisconsin has nothing to do with balancing the state's budget.

It is about money, though - but only in the sense that money translates into political power. At this point, it's clear for all to see that Gov. Scott Walker's true aim is to bust the public employee unions, thus permanently reshaping the political landscape in the Republican Party's favor.

Democratic state senators who fled the state to forestall Walker's coup have no choice but to remain on the lam. Protesters who support union rights have no choice but to keep their vigil at the capitol in Madison. This is a big deal.

At issue is the attempt by Walker and the Republican majority in the Legislature to strip public workers of their rights to collective bargaining. Under the legislation - which fugitive Democrats have managed to stymie by denying the state Senate a quorum - public employee unions would have no ability to bargain over benefits and pensions. The unions would be able to bargain over salaries but could not secure raises greater than the increase in the cost of living.

Walker is right about one thing: When it comes to pensions and benefits, public workers in Wisconsin have a sweet deal. Most of them put less than 1 percent of their pay into their pensions; Walker's bill would require contributions of at least 5.8 percent. And most pay only about 6 percent of the cost of their health insurance premiums, a figure that Walker wants to raise to at least 12.6 percent.

It's easy to see why the average private-sector worker in Wisconsin - probably paying upward of 25 percent toward health insurance costs and struggling to tuck away something, anything, for retirement - might agree with Walker.

It should be noted, however, that those generous deals were not ordained by Divine Providence. They were negotiated, which means that state and local officials agreed to the contract provisions now deemed so excessive. It has long been common for unions to accept better health and pension benefits in lieu of higher salaries - in effect, taking the money later rather than sooner. Now that these IOUs are coming due, Wisconsin wants to renege.

I thought Republicans were supposed to believe that a contract is a contract, sacred and inviolate. Guess not.

But never mind all that. The reality is that workers in many industries are having to choose between givebacks and massive layoffs. Public employees should not be uniquely sheltered from the ill winds buffeting the U.S. economy.

The Wisconsin unions have recognized this fact. Union leaders have announced that they are prepared to accept Walker's proposal on health and pension contributions. In other words, money is no longer an issue.

Walker won, right? He got what he wanted, didn't he?

Actually, no. Bringing health and pension benefits in line with reality was never the point.

Walker and the Republicans are insisting on the provisions in the bill that would deny collective bargaining rights to public workers. The GOP's focus is not on the practical impact of this measure - the unions have acquiesced to Walker's financial terms - but on the political impact.

Unions have been a reliable source of political support for the Democratic Party, including campaign contributions. Over the past few decades, union membership has declined sharply; according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers who belong to a union declined from 20.1 percent of the workforce in 1983 to just 11.9 percent in 2010.

In the private sector, just 6.9 percent of workers belong to a union. But among public-sector workers, 36.2 percent are union members - and if you look only at state and local government workers, 42.3 percent are unionized. So if Republicans wanted to weaken the Democratic Party by destroying its most important source of big-money support, they would try to crush public-sector unions at the state and local levels.

That's what the Wisconsin fight is really about. That's why Walker won't settle for budget-balancing concessions. He wants to eliminate the greatest benefit that unions can give their members - collective bargaining - and also, by the way, make it much harder to collect union dues. He wants to starve the unions to death.

This is pure, unadulterated union-busting - not with goons and brickbats, but with the stroke of a scheming governor's pen.