Wisconsin Rights the Wrongs

There was a time when unions served a purpose. When the Industrial Revolution was in its infancy and employees worked long hours for slave wages, in poor conditions, with no benefits, unions came along and saved the day. What followed for the next hundred years was concession after concession to the point where unions today have became as hated as the greedy corporations they opposed were a century ago.

It's a classic paradigm shift. As manufacturing jobs have steadily disappeared in North America due to the unsustainable wages and gold-plated benefits sought by trade unions, those left without jobs who once kowtowed to the union leadership have come to the realization that they would have been better off without them. No corporation becomes more competitive by spending more money on the things that the rest of the world has figured out how to do less expensively. It's as true now as it was fifty years and ago and as it will be fifty years hence.

While trade unions had declined in membership along with the jobs they used to represent, unions representing the public sector remained alive and well. In Wisconsin, however, they decided to do something about that.

Governor Scott Walker instituted reforms that saved the state $1 billion. Before the reforms, the average government employee in Wisconsin earned $71 000, yet paid nothing toward their pensions and only 6% of their health care premiums. Walker's reforms required public employees to pay 5% of their salaries towards their pensions and 12% of the health-insurance premiums-still less than half the average in the private sector.

Walker's most controversial reform, however, was the elimination of the collective bargaining power of unions for everything, but wages. Joining a public sector union became optional in Wisconsin and as unions became more and more irrelevant, this was a reform that most agreed was a positive and necessary step.

Most that is, except for those who want to continue to gouge away at the public coffers by eating bigger slices of pie. The wailing and gnashing of teeth throughout Wisconsin over the last year culminated in a June 5th recall election instigated by public-employee unions, which Walker won with a greater margin of victory than the previous 2010 election.

Walker's reforms continue to have a positive impact. Property taxes in the state have declined for the the first time in twelve years and school districts are saving tens of millions of dollars by opting out of expensive health insurance once only available from the unions' own health-care company.

Let's hope the rest of the world has been taking notes on Wisconsin's turnabout, or at least those corners that want to remain employed, competitive, and fruitful.