Where Joe Klein stands on the Wisconsin public unions:He's
against them:
... it seems to me that Governor Scott Walker's basic requests are modest ones--asking public employees to contribute more to their pension and health care plans, though still far less than most private sector employees do. He is also trying to limit the unions' abilities to negotiate work rules ...
Joe forgot to mention the other aspects of Walker's move: to eliminate collective bargaining for anything but wages, and even wages could not rise larger than the CPI. Nor did he mention the fact that the "crisis" is a direct result of Walker's just-passed initiatives that took the state out of a balanced budget situation. Or that last year, it was Republicans that killed a $100 million concession the unions worked out with the then-Democratic governor. Those facts don't matter when you are one of the top reporters in journalism.
Also, this:
... public unions can serve an important social justice role, guaranteeing that a great many underpaid workers--school bus drivers, janitors (outside of New York City), home health care workers--won't be too severely underpaid ...
underpaid = nothing to get excited about
too severely underpaid = bad
Got it.
posted by Quiddity at 2/18/2011 12:51:00 PM
"contribute more to their pension and health care plans" ...those are exactly the kind of things best accomplished through collective bargaining.
Although, I sympathetic to the Wisconsin public workers. I do feel like they are getting their comeuppance after kicking Finegold out of the senate. Cheesehead mofos.
My solution to Wisconsin's budget problems: TAX THE RICH.
