The biggest political battle taking place in the country has been in Madison, Wisconsin over the past week. That's where protesters have descended upon the Badger state's capitol, demonstrating against Governor Scott Walker's attempt to not only have state workers begin contributing to their retirement and health care benefit plans (which they have said they're willing to do), but also to strip them of their collective bargaining rights, which they are vehemently protesting against.
Only Fox News addressed the issue head-on, though predictably, there was no union official to counter the large platform Walker received on Fox News Sunday, where the new GOP Governor received plenty of airtime to advocate for his stance.
WALLACE: ..If it's a money issue and balancing the budget and they are willing to concede on the money issues, why isn't that enough? Why do you also have to take back some of their collective bargaining rights?
WALKER: Well, they aren't because, in the end, they can say that, but that's really a red herring. The same groups back in December, after election, before I was sworn in, tried to ram through literally in a lame duck session employee contracts that would have locked things in before I got there. So, they're not really interested. But more critically, I was a county executive, an elected official in Milwaukee County, a county that's never elected Republicans before — I was there for three different elections because we tried to tackle these very same issues.
And what stood in the way time and time again was collective bargaining. We've got over 1,000 municipalities, 424 school districts, about 72 counties in the state, all of which need to have the power to be able to offset what's going to happen in Wisconsin next week, just like New York, in California, wherever else, has been doing, and that's cutting billions of dollars from local governments.
The difference is, unlike those other states, I want to give those local governments the tools they need to balance the budget now and in the future. They can't do that with the current collective bargaining laws in the state.
But again later on in the interview, Wallace asked him if it what he's doing in trying to claw back collective bargaining rights is destroys the unions in Wisconsin,
WALLACE: Well, let's talk about that. You say this is not about the unions. This is about balancing the budget. But your opposition says this is about union busting.
Wallace: So, let's take a look at what is in your plan because beyond making public workers pay more for benefits, here's what your plan would do. It would allow unions to negotiate only over wages, not benefits or work rules. The state would no longer collect union dues and unions would have to win an election every year to keep representing workers.
Isn't that union-busting?
WALKER: No, absolutely not. Our belief is that we're going to ask more for health care and more for pension contribution which is, by the way, very realistic.
My brother is a typical middle class family. He's a catering manager for a hotel here in Wisconsin. His wife works for Sears. They've got two beautiful girls. A typical, Wisconsin middle class family.
He told me last week and he reminded me, he said, Scott, hey, I'm paying almost $800 a year — or a month, excuse me, to pay for my health care and to set aside the little bit I put in terms of my 401(k). He'd love, like most every other worker in the state would love, to have the deal we're putting on the table for our state and local government workers.
WALLACE: But, Governor, I want to talk about the specific things about collective bargaining and saying that unions have to hold elections every year and that's what your critics say is union- busting, not the argument about the money issues.
WALKER: But the two go hand in hand. If we're going to ask our state and local workers who are doing a great job to pay a little bit more, to sacrifice, to help to balance this budget, we should also give them the flexibility saying that for those members, for those workers, who don't want to be a part of the union, if you don't want that deduction each month out of the paycheck, they should be able to get that $500, $600 or in some cases, $1,000 back that they can apply for their health care and their pension contribution.
Perhaps the most outspoken commentary from anyone on the Sunday shows gave in opposition to Governor Walker came from ABC's house liberal on their Sunday morning show, This Week, as you can read with her exchange with George Will:
WILL: Donna, as I'm sure you know, such heroes of the labor movement as Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia said there's no place in the public sector for unionization at all. As I'm sure you know, 24 states limit or deny entirely collective bargaining rights for public- sector unions. And all Mr. Scott is planning to do is limit collective bargaining to wages. What is draconian about that?
BRAZILE: Well, what these workers would like, George, since they've already given up furloughs, paid leave, unpaid leave, what they would like is — is to have a voice at the table. They don't want their collective bargaining rights.
And, look, what we're talking about is that the governor has cherry-picked what public workers he will subject to this so-called removal of their collective bargaining rights. The firefighters, the policemen and others who supported him in his election bid, well, guess what? They don't have to worry about their collective bargaining rights.
Christiane, over 400,000 state and local employees have lost their jobs over — during the — the duration of the recession. They are willing — what we've seen across the country is, these workers are willing to come to the table to talk to these governors about reducing the — the budget deficit, but not on the backs of working people.
Later on NBC's Meet The Press, Illinois Democratic U.S. Senator Dick Durbin also expressed his outrage at Governor Walker's actions, saying that assuming the Wisconsin standoff was about budget austerity was like believeing that United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez was just trying to wrangle a few more pennies per pound on grapes.
"It goes way beyond this budget issue," Durbin said. "…He's setting out to break a union."
Durbin said it was a historic moment and cautioned Wisconsin Republicans to "not destroy decades of work to establish the rights of workers to speak for themselves."
Meanwhile, as Politico reported, Walker is being hailed with well wishes from notable Republicans from across the country, ranging from Jeb Bush to Chris Christie.
This article appears in Feb 17-23, 2011.