First - what about the other half of the states? They are "right-to-work" states. This means that employment in a public (paid by government) position does not require union membership or dues payment. Therefore in these states, the individual employee can decide if he or she wants to be included in the union and the contract negotiated by the union.
In Wisconsin specifically, teachers pay $0, that's right, zip, zilch, nada - toward their heathcare and pensions. According to the Governor, Scott Walker, this financial burden was in large part responsible for the state's severe debt (3.6 billion dollars). Scott Walker and the Republicans in the legislature put forth a bill to end collective bargaining rights of these workers. The idea was to have teachers pay a portion of their healthcare (insurance) and a contribution to the pension fund.
Now - depending on who you watched or listened to, some reported that Scott Walker approached the unions to ASK for concessions in these areas to make up some of the deficit and the unions refused. Others report that Walker never approached the unions first. What's the truth? I have no idea.
According to Walker - if public employees don't start contributing to these benefit costs by April of this year, 1500 state employees would have to be laid off by the end of June. And another 10-20,000 would have to go in the future.
According to Walker, this is only about the state budget, which is so far in the hole, this was the only way to fix the issue. According to Democrats, this is about busting the unions, about politics, about making sure the Republicans stay in power. WAIT A MINUTE... what in the world does this have to do with Democrats vs. Republicans?
Oh yeah - Democrats are large supporters of unions, and unions are the largest supporters of Democrats. For information on who contributes to each party, check opensecrets.org: (http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topcontribs.php) The theory goes that if the unions cannot collect millions of dollars in dues to contribute to Democratic campaigns, then the Democrats won't stand a chance to win.
When the time came to vote on the bill, 14 Democratic State Senators left WI and hid in IL for a couple weeks. The WI State legislature was stymied. You see, at that point, the bill contained both the reduction of collective bargaining rights and fiscal portions (money). The Republicans figured out that they could remove the spending sections and with a simple majority, pass the collective bargaining rules. State rules require 3/5 of the members to be present to pass fiscal bills. Without the Democrats, the bill as it was could not be passed. However, once the spending provisions were removed, the vote was made, the bill was passed.
What does this actually mean for teachers in WI? Well, they are no longer required to be union members, although they are still allowed. Union dues are no longer automatically paid. And unions must be re-certified each year as the employee's representative (each year the employees will vote to be represented). These employees can still collectively bargain their salaries and other items like teacher-student ratio, and job safety items, but their benefit packages are off the table. This will ultimately mean that they will have to pay some portion of their healthcare (insurance) costs, and will have to contribute to their pension fund. Overall the amount being asked is roughly half of what average private-sector workers pay. On top of that, it has been reported that average pay/benefit package of Milwaukee public school teachers is over $100,000. I'd think that for 9.5 months of work, that's a decent living.
You may hear the argument about public-sector vs. private-sector. The public sector is government jobs. The private-sector is private businesses, even if publicly traded on the stock market. Unions can get into any business if the workers vote for them. There is a large argument against the unionization of public workers for a few reasons. One is that all of their salaries and benefits are paid for with taxes. Essentially this is giving these employees the right to collectively bargain to increase benefits that raise everyone's taxes, and the rest don't have the right to collectively bargain against them. Two other issues when it comes to teachers are tenure and last-in, first-out policies. Tenure means that after a certain number of years, for example 3 years, a teacher cannot be fired without excessive proceedings, regardless of most causes. Last-in, first out says that a school district MUST reduce employee levels based on seniority. So, for example, in Wisconsin this year, the teacher who won an award as "Outstanding first year teacher" was laid off a week later due to union requirements.
The overall union issue is another topic for another day. Some of the union arguments, both for and against, play into the situation in WI and developing in several other states. However, for today, I wanted to present a clear idea of what went on. Please let me know if I've left you with questions.
References:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/14/6267543-wisconsin-law-curbs-union-dues-certification
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