Madness in Madison

Madness in Madison

It’s not quite at the level of the madness in the Mideast nor tantamount to the madness of King George but what’s happening in Madison, Wisconsin and elsewhere in the Badger State is getting close.

The newly-elected Republican governor of the home of the cheeseheads, Scott Walker, has proposed changes in teachers’ collective bargaining rights which, based on union interpretations, would reduce Wisconsin’s teachers to the level of vassals of the state. A more reasonable view of Walker’s plan is that it would save Wisconsin from its fiscal insanity and a declaration of bankruptcy.

With New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie as a model, Walker has also dared to take on the powerful teacher union and impose common sense constraints which would accomplish nothing more than getting public employee and teacher salary and benefits more in line with private sector pay and bennies.

Time was, many decades ago now, people entered government service and the teaching profession with full knowledge that they would be compensated less monetarily in return for greater job security.

Times change.

Today, thanks to the power of unions, workers in the public sector have been thriving even as their privately-employed counterparts have faced cutbacks, dismissals, reduction in pay scales, and elimination of health and other benefits. It was equitable in the past that teachers, et al. were able to trade off pay for job security. Now that they have far surpassed the private sector in monetary compensation, earning up to triple private salaries while still retaining employment security and almost unlimited benefits, it’s equitable that they help level the playing field.

The new governor’s practical and hardly revolutionary proposals have been met with outrage and lies by the unions yet they merely provide . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3661)