Reform, Not Eradicate

 

Scott Walker hates your kids.

 

This supposed truth is as catchy as it is infuriating, and it is just what the teacher’s union in Wisconsin, and all other public unions across America want you to believe.  There’s just one problem: it’s not true.

 

The truth is, in fact, much more startling. The majority of states in our union face staggering budget deficits and financial issues that would make the executives at Lehman Brothers and AIG chuckle and reminisce. No, the real truth is that a large portion of these state’s budgets are spent on protecting the interests of public government unions. The scariest truth of all is that unless we seriously reform the way we deal with these unions, we will bankrupt ourselves much in the same way those banks did, with the taxpayers, as always, footing the bill.

 

These unions very existence seems to transcend the rules of rational investing and spending, private or public. They believe that they can continue to swallow taxpayer investment, receiving benefits while neglecting their own monetary contributions, and because of their bullying and powerful clout, they can do so beyond the realm of reasonable evaluation. This has been the status quo since the Kennedy administration, and despite the fact this model is causing our states to hemorrhage money at unprecedented levels, union leaders refuse to even acknowledge the need for change. I propose that, just as investors in a private company are allowed voting rights and a conference once a year to judge the direction of the company and hold its workers accountable, so too should taxpayers with the unions they subsidize.

 

Judging by their actions, unions want to be able to collectively bargain with regards to helping protect and enhance their benefits, yet they do not want to take part in any discussion about the accountability that comes with accepting special standards. It is hard to justify an entire segment of the population refusing to contribute even the smallest margin of their salaries to their own health-care or pension funds, while workers in other private industries, even those working for the federal government rather than the state, are afforded not even close to the same standards.  To use one of many examples, in New Jersey, where the budget deficit is nearly 10 billion, unions have spent millions of dollars campaigning against the notion that they might have to give even 1.5% of their salary towards their healthcare.

 

Looking at the teachers union specifically, in states like Wisconsin, taxpayers pay around 101,091 each year per teacher, a sum that is seemingly justifiable when you take into account the significant role education has in sustaining a successful and productive society and ensuring its future. In teacher’s hands, we place the most important responsibility: our kids. Yet, teachers are not held accountable for the failure of our public school system, and the humbling place our children rank worldwide in testing, because they are able to hide behind union rules that make it nearly impossible to fire teachers who have tenure, regardless of if they fail the most simple test of all: are they good teachers? Just as corrupt cops can hide behind the thin blue line of silence, failing teachers can fail their students for years, even decades, without any reproach. That is unacceptable.

 

These are all simple, and practical points, yet their simplicity and rationality underscores what is the greatest failure of the recent protests in Wisconsin that I touched upon at the start. Instead of settling on weakened unions conceding and accepting financial regulation, a significant feat, Walker saw the opportunity to kick them while they were down, and in doing so, incited a public outcry that took the debate and rhetoric away from his original point. Ultimately, by making the issue more ideological, demanding an end to collective bargaining and therefore a systematic destruction of the very idea of unions, and less practical, reforming unions to fit the financial terms of the present, Brown went too far and created a circus in the process.

 

The juvenile nature of the debate opened the door for the unions to revert to their time tested characterization of victimhood to garner support. The strategy, using the tired, yet comforting archetypes of yesterday, works. Let’s call them the “Frank Capra terms.” Big business and corrupt politicians undoubtedly dressed like “the man,” with their ubiquitous cigars somewhere nearby, attempting to break the will of the good guys, the teachers, firemen and cops.  By allowing them to weave this familiar narrative, Walker allowed the central issues to be obscured and ignored.

 

What has happened is Wisconsin may prove to be an all-important step forward or, regretfully, one backward. If anything, other states, led by Democrats and Republicans alike, can learn from the mistakes made there.  One particular Governor, Chris Christie from New Jersey, has astutely enhanced his popularity by taking a different tact from Walker, embracing the need for collective bargaining because, simply put, he knows his argument, when put in pragmatic and appealing terms, is the right one. At the very least, at least there is reasonable public discourse regarding an issue that has been ignored for too long. Regardless of how we get there, the end result must be clear: the creation of a system that works for the reality of today, not the wishful thinking of yesterday