So what’s the deal with these union guys? Or what’s the deal with these wise guys in the Wisconsin Senate who have stuck it to their Republican colleagues in the past because they had the power to do who now have resorted to fleeing the state to prevent the Senate from taking action on the budget bill?
In all fairness, I don’t hold the union guys responsible for the trouble either Wisconsin faces or the rest of the country. That responsibility falls on the elected representatives in both the executive branch (who negotiated the contracts) and the legislative branches for approving the contracts.
And that holds true for every level of government from the smallest to the largest.
I know from experience that the union reps sit down to the bargaining table with a list of “demands” for the upcoming contract. The government side responds with a pitch counter-offering something less. They dance back and forth a little and come to agreement. The contract goes back to the union membership for approval and to the legislative branch for theirs and the deal is done.
So how tough can that be?
On the union side, things don’t get tough unless management refuses to budge on an important issue. They have to decide how hard they want to fight for each issue. Get the easy ones settled first then squeeze later for the harder ones. Sometimes the parties are not able to come together and the union members exercise their rights under collective bargaining rules and stop work. They are calculating that by stopping or slowing their work management will cave and agree to their demands. Maybe, maybe not!
The rules of the game for the union are pretty much the same in both the private sector and the public sector with a few exceptions.
The difference between union negotiations with a public agency and a private company is the person negotiating on the private sector side is always a staunch advocate for the company shareholders and the company’s bottom line whereas on the public side, the person negotiating for the taxpayers may well be a union member themselves and not an advocate for the taxpayers at all. You can imagine how some of those contracts might end up.
The negotiations in public sector contracts often are not negotiations at all. The union puts their demands on the table and the government guy agrees then goes back to his legislative body and cries about how hard the negotiations were and how he got the best deal he could and we need to approve it.
As an elected official in my city, I was never allowed to sit in on union negotiations with my city manager. Our council was only given limited details of the contract until it was voted on by the union. We never had fiscal impact analyses prepared in advance so we could see how our long term liabilities were altered by the changing labor contract.
We were never actually allowed to see any of the details of the contracts until after we had approved them.
I understand that the union members are feeling Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is attacking them because this change will affect them personally. And I feel for them in that regard.
But I also know what it feels like to be an elected official with a budget to balance and lots of folks with their hand out. It’s a no win situation.
For years I have been talking about the ticking time bomb with our government pension system. The issue came up in about 1991 when I served on the Joint Fire Board as one of the representatives for the city. A fire department in California had been run by Commissioners who were retired fire fighters. Whenever the contracts came up for renegotiation, they got great settlements with the expectation that when the cash flow got tight, they would just go to the voters to lift the levy lid. If you present fire department money requests in such a way that failing to approve might result in a family member not making it in an emergency, voters approve.
So when pension commitments started coming due, they had to come out of current revenues since the fire district didn’t put any of that money away as the commitments accumulated. When voters didn’t go along with raising taxes again, a crisis arose.
So was that a spending crisis or a revenue crisis?
Now take that scenario and apply it to nearly every government agency you can think of and imagine how large the crisis really is.
Sadly, the elected officials who negotiated these sweetheart contracts are long gone and the union leaders only did what they always do in advocating for their members.
Unfortunately the rank and file union members will be the ones that have to bear the brunt of the correction that must take place in order to get government back on a sound fiscal footing.
Elected officials in every district, council and legislature facing budget emergencies now have to figure out how to work around a problem that’s been accumulating for decades.
I don’t envy them a bit.
No Loss for Words 
Is Slashing Defense our Best Choice?
by Steve DanaFacing the possibility of seriously cutting the Defense Budget, maybe we should think about withdrawing our military forces from bases located in foreign countries? Wouldn’t we save a bundle if we didn’t have our forces spread around the world? Considering the way many of them feel about us, pulling out seems like a win/win for everyone; right? How many of the host countries celebrate our presence on their soil?
I am not advocating that we withdraw our forces, quite to the contrary, but shouldn’t we think about it? Doesn’t it make sense that we reaffirm that assumptions regarding our national interests made many years ago have not changed? At the same time, our supposed allies can reconfirm that our presence is advantageous and desirable to them as well or maybe not.
We pay a lot to have a military presence in many of these countries which enables the host countries to allocate a much smaller portion of their own budgets for their own defense and military while substantially increasing our cost. Keep in mind that the cost is not just measured in monetary form; our military forces are made up from millions of young Americans that we ask to go in harms way to protect freedom around the world. Maybe I would feel different if our treaty partners asked their own kids to make the same sacrifice.
Since the European economy is significant, aren’t they capable of paying for their own forces? So what portion of our cost to protect their interests do they pay?
If they beefed up their own forces, couldn’t we support them from bases on American soil? And while we’re at it, who are we protecting the Europeans from? Since we already let almost every European country into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) aren’t they all our allies now? So who is the threat? Since we didn’t let the Russians in, they must be the threat along with China since nobody else has the ability to project force significantly beyond their own borders.
Besides America, who funds NATO? Besides America, whose forces constitute the muscle of NATO? Without America, what happens to political stability in Europe if we pull out of NATO?
What happens if we give NATO a notice of intent to reduce participation over the next five or ten years?
The same questions could be asked about mutual defense treaties between America and a bunch of Asian countries like Korea, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.
If we closed American bases in all those foreign countries, what would happen besides our Defense Budget going down? Or, would it go down? Would the world become less safe if the United States of America did not have bases in all these places supplemented by a Navy that patrols international waters around the globe? Isn’t that an important consideration?
How would a withdrawal of American forces affect the aggressive tendencies of countries wanting to have a louder voice in international politics?
When you get right down to it, isn’t our military presence around the world the only reason things are as safe as they are? What is that worth to our allies and ultimately to our own people? Shouldn’t we be asking that question?
If our Army had not driven Iraq out of Kuwait when Saddam Hussein invaded in 1990, what would the Middle East look like today? If our troops weren’t stationed in Saudi Arabia, would Iraq have control of all their oil too? How would that affect our national strategic interests or more importantly, how would it affect our NATO allies? Would a Middle East controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood be a threat to Great Britain,France or Germany?
What would those countries have done had we held back and done nothing in 1990?
Consider the plight of Israel. If our forces were not in close proximity to that country, what do you suspect would happen to them? The fact that they are allowed to have nuclear weapons means they will put up a good fight if they are attacked, but there is not much protecting them from an increasingly hostile Middle East.
The lessons we learned over the years taught us that it is easier to defend our own shores if we maintain a presence in those foreign countries. If we prevent destabilization of our “allies” they are more likely to actually be allies.
There are good reasons for America to have presence in all these far off foreign countries, both tactical and strategic. I’ve listened to the rationale from knowledgeable retired Army officers I respect so I don’t doubt that we need to keep our forces in place, the problem is that not everyone shares my concern about the intent of many of our supposed allies and clearly many of the countries that would benefit if we failed.
So is slashing Defense our best choice as we work to balance our budget? I’m concerned that many in our own country are prepared to find out the hard way.
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