Freedom Line Blog

Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker’s campaign for reelection just got a whole lot easier.

Earlier today the state’s seven member Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that Act 10 – the controversial union-busting law championed by Walker and the GOP-led legislature – is constitutional, reports NPR.

In upholding the law’s curtailment of certain state employees’ collective bargaining rights – in particular teachers’ unions – the majority reasoned that, “No matter the limitations or ‘burdens’ a legislative enactment places on the collective bargaining process, collective bargaining remains a creation of legislative grace and not a constitutional obligation. The First Amendment [right of association] cannot be used as a vehicle to expand the parameters of a benefit that it does not itself protect.”

The decision vindicates Governor Walker’s goal to free Wisconsin taxpayers from being held hostage by public employee unions who demand ever increasing compensation, and threaten to strike if unsatisfied. Throughout the country, public employee unions have abused the privilege of collective bargaining to bring many states to the brink of insolvency. Armed with this decision, Walker can consolidate his policy victories and begin to tout Wisconsin as a model for other states to follow.

This week, the Ohio Liberty Council filed paperwork to place on a statewide ballot this November a state constitutional amendment to opt-out of ObamaCare’s individual mandate.  The Tea Party group delivered over half-a-million signatures, nearly two-hundred thousand more than needed.

On the Left, an assortment of Democratic and labor union groups claimed 1.3 million signatures in favor of repealing Ohio’s stripping of collective bargaining rights from public employee unions, known locally as Senate Bill 5.

While those who want to opt-out of ObamaCare should also support limiting public unions’ ability to bankrupt taxpayers, getting both results will require educating voters to tick ‘Yes’ for the opt-out, and ‘No’ for the repeal.  That may sound easy, but for anyone who’s tried to engineer an outcome with multiple decisions for a group (i.e. logistics for a high school reunion come to mind), it isn’t nearly as easy as it should be.

So far, momentum appears to favor both the ObamaCare opt-out and repealing the collective bargaining ban.  If those sentiments prevail, Ohioans may spare themselves a federal spending mandate while drowning themselves in a tsunami of local and state union benefits.

Suggested slogan: Ohioans Want Freedom, Not Mandates

Byron York reports that the implementation of Wisconsin’s controversial ban on collective bargaining by public employee unions is already freeing one state school district from financial hardship.  Among the benefits of the change in policy:

• Swapping a $400,000 deficit for a $1.5 million surplus thanks to increasing teachers’ health insurance cost of coverage from 10 percent to 12.6 percent, which is “still well below rates in much of the private sector”

• Being able to shop around for health insurance coverage instead of being forced under collectively bargained contracts only to purchase coverage from a union-operated provider – the demanded premium levels have already dropped to “match the lowest bidder”

• Changing work rules like upping a teacher’s hours of instruction from five out of seven periods to six, thus allowing the district to reduce student-to-teacher ratios and provide more one-on-one tutoring with troubled students

Wisconsin’s Democratic Party and its liberal lobbyists may still consider the ban on collective bargaining a “disaster,” but it’s clearly a win for parents, students, and administrators.

At least one group of union members doesn’t treat collective bargaining rights as the end-all, be-all of organized labor.  Today, the NFL Players Association voted to decertify itself when negotiations broke down with league owners over the proper revenue sharing ratio.

One of the effects of decertification is the elimination of NFL players’ collective bargaining rights, and the transformation of the union into a trade association.  Of course, the fight between labor and management now goes to the courts; mostly because labor thinks it can get a better deal.

Maybe so, maybe not, but at least NFL players have the opportunity to choose whether the union structure best serves their needs.  Imagine if Wisconsin public employees had that kind of freedom.  Do you think a majority would vote to certify their union every year?

Their howls of protest notwithstanding, Wisconsin Democrats – whenever they gain control of state government again – are likely to retain Republican Governor Scott Walker’s ban on collective bargaining by public employees.

The Manhattan Institute’s Josh Barro explains that Democrats in Wisconsin are about to learn the joys of writing their own budgets; just like their peers in other states and the federal government.

For this reason, I am skeptical of Democrats’ vigorous hopes to retake Wisconsin’s government and repeal this new law. There is no clamor among Democrats in Virginia to give collective-bargaining privileges to public workers, nor have Democrats in Washington, D.C., shown much interest in empowering federal workers’ unions. This is because Democratic officeholders, quite rationally, prefer to write their budgets themselves, rather than hand over control of employee-compensation costs to unions. Once Wisconsin lawmakers get used to the new status quo, I think this is likely to be true there, too — why would mayors, school-board members, and state legislators want to give up a powerful new budgeting tool they’ve been given?

Eventually, Democrats will take power in Wisconsin again, and when they do I think they are likely to restore the “dues checkoff” — automatic deductions from public payrolls to pay union dues, eliminated in the just-passed bill. But I think they are likely to find the federal model of limited collective bargaining pretty useful, just as Barack Obama has. Under pressure from municipal officials, Wisconsin Democrats will be more likely to “reform” this law while retaining significant constraints on bargaining than to repeal it entirely.

From today’s iteration of the inimitable (thank God) Dr. Krugman’s column in the New York Times:

… what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy.

If this is what makes it to print, one wonders what function it is exactly that Dr. Krugman’s ‘editor’ serves. The Grey Lady is on life support.