Why is the Big Cheese in Wisconsin anyway?

Do you really want to know what's happening in Wisconsin? This WSJ Editorial is the best overview of the real issues and historical background I have read!... 

Associated Press

Barack Obama and 
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka

Wall Street Journal

FEBRUARY 25, 2011

Union Power for Thee, But Not for Me 

• By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

If the president is so upset with Wisconsin's labor law reforms, why won't he allow federal workers to bargain collectively?

The union horde is spreading, from Madison to Indianapolis to a state capital near you. And yet the Democratic and union bigwigs engineering the outrage haven't directed their angry multitudes at what is arguably the most "hostile workplace" in the nation: Washington, D.C. 
 

It will no doubt surprise you to learn that President Obama, the great patron of the working man, also happens to be the great CEO of one of the least union-friendly shop floors in the nation. This is, after all, the president who has berated Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to limit the collective bargaining rights of public employees, calling the very idea an "assault on unions." This is also the president who has sicced his political arm, Organizing for America, on Madison, allowing the group to fill buses and plan rallies. Ah, but it's easy to throw rocks when you live in a stone (White) house. 

Fact: President Obama is the boss of a civil work force that numbers up to two million (excluding postal workers and uniformed military). Fact: Those federal workers cannot bargain for wages or benefits. Fact: Washington, D.C. is, in the purest sense, a "right to work zone."  Federal employees are not compelled to join a union, nor to pay union dues. Fact: Neither Mr. Obama, nor the prior Democratic majority, ever acted to give their union chums a better federal deal. Scott Walker, eat your heart out.

For this enormous flexibility in managing his work force, Mr. Obama can thank his own party. In 1978, Democratic President Jimmy Carter, backed by a Democratic Congress, passed the Civil Service Reform Act. Washington had already established its General Schedule (GS) classification and pay system for workers. The 1978 bill went further, focused as it was on worker accountability and performance. It severely proscribed the issues over which employees could bargain, as well as prohibited compulsory union support.

Democrats weren't then (and aren't now) about to let their federal employees dictate pay. The GS system, as well as the president and Congress, sees to that. Nor were they about to let workers touch health-care or retirement plans. Unions are instead limited to bargaining over personnel employment practices such as whether employees are allowed to wear beards, or whether the government must pay to clean uniforms. These demands matter, though they are hardly the sort to break the federal bank.  

Which is precisely the point. Washington politicians may not know much, but they know power—in particular, the art of keeping it. Even Carter Democrats understood the difference between being in electoral debt to the unions, and being outright owned by them. And as Gov. Walker will attest, allowing unions to collectively bargain over pay and benefits is allowing them the keys to the statehouse. 
 

Innocent Americans assume that unions use collective bargaining solely to obtain better pay and benefits. Not exactly. The real game is to insist that the dough runs through the union—giving it power over the state. In Wisconsin, for instance, the teachers union doesn't just bargain for more health dollars. It also bargains to require that local school districts buy health insurance for their teachers through the union-affiliated health-insurance plan, called WEA Trust. That requirement gives the union (not the state) ultimate say over health benefits. It also costs the state at least $68 million more annually than it would if schools could buy the state-employee health plan—money that goes to a union outfit. 

 

Since Washington pols aren't about to let unions run their town, the result is a weird bifurcation. On the state level, union campaign dollars are primarily contingent upon Democrats agreeing to allow public-employee unions to milk taxpayers dry. On the federal level, union dollars are primarily contingent upon Democrats agreeing to pervert federal laws and institutions so that private-sector unions get special privileges over employers and nonunion companies—consider project-labor agreements, Davis-Bacon and card check. 

All of this helps explain why Mr. Obama has gone quiet on Wisconsin, and why Organizing for America is scurrying to hide its involvement. The president's initial instinct was to jump into the state, a 2012 battleground area where he might build points with his liberal base. The White House has since sensed danger. As the world is painfully aware, Mr. Obama is under no obligation to balance his budget. So to whack Gov. Walker for his efforts to do so might strike some Americans as irresponsible, especially as the president is working to convince them that he really does care about deficits. 

The other risk: The spotlight turns back to D.C. If the president is so worried about Wisconsin's "assault," why has he never taken up federal bargaining rights? If the Badger State's current system is the gold standard, why has he not replicated it? If it is so important that all parties "sit at the table"—as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney recently lectured Wisconsin—how dare Mr. Obama unilaterally declare a federal pay freeze? (Honestly, the union-busting gall!) 

The debate over public-union giveaways has only started. That debate would benefit were Mr. Obama to explain how it is that Wisconsin is wrong to ask for the same budget flexibility that he enjoys as president. If he's unable to do that, perhaps the debate ought to be over.