Polls

[Iowa10000]

Why is it that polls only matter if they can be used to by those in power to get what they want.
90% think jobs is what we should focusing on.
61% of the population thinks we should first tax the rich to help balance the budget, before we cut the budget, but congress once again did what they wanted not the people.
75% want the war started by Bush to be done.

It makes me sick that people who were elected to serve the people of our nation do everything they can to put forward their party's agenda even when the majority of America is not with them.

Just like the health bill, 39% favor it, 28 % would like it to be better and only 33% want it to go away, but the liars seem to think that 33% against and 28% who favor a health bill but don't think it went far enough gives them 61% against and that is why it needs to be repealed. What garbage you people on the right spew out your mouths is almost enough to make me puke.

 

[Iowa10000]

What is actually being proposed in Wisconsin?
By Ezra Klein
Reading the commentary, I think a lot of people are confused about what's actually being proposed in Wisconsin. So let's go through it.

You can find Gov. Scott Walker's proposal here. It's called "the Budget Repair bill." The section that's attracted all the anger is "State and Local Government and School District Labor Relations."

In it, Walker proposes that the right to collectively bargain be taken away from most -- but not all -- state and local workers. Who's left out? "Local law enforcement and fire employees, and state troopers and inspectors would be exempt from these changes." As Harold Meyerson notes, these are also the unions that happened to be more supportive of Walker in the last election. Funny, that.

Walker tries to sell the change in collective bargaining as modest. "State and local employees could continue to bargain for base pay, they would not be able to bargain over other compensation measures." But that's not really true. Read down a bit further and you'll find that "total wage increases could not exceed a cap based on the consumer price index (CPI) unless approved by referendum." In other words, they couldn't bargain for wages to rise faster than inflation. So, in reality, they can't bargain for wages and they can't bargain over other forms of compensation. They just can't bargain.

The proposal doesn't stop there, though. "Contracts would be limited to one year and wages would be frozen until the new contract is settled. Collective bargaining units are required to take annual votes to maintain certification as a union. Employers would be prohibited from collecting union dues and members of collective bargaining units would not be required to pay dues." These rules have nothing to do with pension costs or even bargaining. They're just about weakening unions: They make it harder for unions to collect dues from members, to negotiate stable contracts or to survive a bad year.

The best way to understand Walker's proposal is as a multi-part attack on the state's labor unions. In part one, their ability to bargain benefits for their members is reduced. In part two, their ability to collect dues, and thus spend money organizing members or lobbying the legislature, is undercut. And in part three, workers have to vote the union back into existence every single year. Put it all together and it looks like this: Wisconsin's unions can't deliver value to their members, they're deprived of the resources to change the rules so they can start delivering value to their members again, and because of that, their members eventually give in to employer pressure and shut the union down in one of the annual certification elections.

You may think Walker's proposal is a good idea or a bad idea. But that's what it does. And it's telling that he's exempting the unions that supported him and is trying to obscure his plan's specifics behind misleading language about what unions can still bargain for and misleading rhetoric about the state's budget.


By Ezra Klein | February 18, 2011; 12:16 PM ET
Categories: Unions
UNION BUSTING BY THE RIGHT

 

[Avatar4321]

You assumption is incorrect. Polls don't matter