Thousands of union workes protest against the governor of Wisconsin’s proposed bill to take away workers’ rights. This bill was supposedly needed to combat a budget shortfall. Guess what? There wasn’t any shortfall:
Wisconsin’s new Republican governor has framed his assault on public worker’s collective bargaining rights as a needed measure of fiscal austerity during tough times.
The reality is radically different. Unlike true austerity measures — service rollbacks, furloughs, and other temporary measures that cause pain but save money — rolling back worker’s bargaining rights by itself saves almost nothing on its own. But Walker’s doing it anyhow, to knock down a barrier and allow him to cut state employee benefits immediately.
Furthermore, this broadside comes less than a month after the state’s fiscal bureau — the Wisconsin equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office — concluded that Wisconsin isn’t even in need of austerity measures, and could conclude the fiscal year with a surplus. In fact, they say that the current budget shortfall is a direct result of tax cut policies Walker enacted in his first days in office.
Union workers, inspired by what’s happened in Egypt, Tunesia and elsewhere have begun to fight back against this cynical move. The Democrats are nowhere to be found [UPDATE] because that way the Wisconsin state senate lacks a quorum to actually sign this bill in law. From Crooked Timber:
Today the Senate Democrats buggered off to Rockford, Illinois (which, it has to be said, displays heroic dedication, as anyone who’s been to Rockford will know) so that the Senate lacks a quorum. This gave a huge boost to the protesters, who had been anticipating a vote and defeat today. I’ve chatted with one Democratic legislator and my wife with another: both report that the Republicans are really rattled by the response, having simply not anticipated it (no-one, absolutely no-one, did—everyone I know has been stunned, and that includes leading union organisers). I have to say the Democrats in the legislature have been solid—like the union leaderships they seem to understand that, as one just told me “we’re in the fight of our livesâ€. And there is a sense among the demonstrators that this is the one to win.