The Tunisia of Collective Bargaining Rights?

Or so the New York Times refers to my lovely state of Wisconsin…(You can read more about what’s going on here.)  Wow!  The images of protests taking over the state capital are gripping (and a particularly riveting way for our schoolchildren to learn about labor rights as their teachers march either in Madison or in front of their schools).  We really do have something going on here.  So, let’s summarize some of the key points from my admittedly pro-negotiation bias.  The protests, despite RNC misinformation to the contrary, are not about money or greedy teachers.  Teachers, and other members of public employee collective bargaining units, know full well that they have to give up some of the benefits they receive including the fact that they will have to contribute more to their pensions and health care.  And, given how little they receive in salary, the sacrifice in benefits is no small thing.  But, that’s not the point.

The protests are all about rights–the right to organize, the right to unionize, the right to negotiate over their benefits.  Hidden in the bill, and not really debated until teachers and others went on high alert last week, was a provision that certain public employee unions would only be able to negotiate their wages and not any other element of their compensation, including benefits or health care.  My labor law colleague, Prof. Paul Secunda, explains more about the details of the bill here.  Only police and fire unions, which happened to support the governor’s election campaign, are exempted from this provision.  Lest we think that this union exemption is, perhaps, linked to public safety, the union for prison guards, which happened to support the governor’s opponent, fall under the provision eliminating bargaining.  So you get to negotiate–and your union is also protected from other onerous anti-union legislation–if your union supported the governor.  Otherwise, the law make sure that any opposition public unions are eviscerated before the next election.  Pretty impressive.

Another interesting note, also covered in the national news, is how the Democratic state senators have since left the state so that there cannot be any quorum to vote on the proposed legislation.  I’m not sure that the strategy of not negotiating over a bill that will take away the right to negotiate will do much more than delay the inevitable but it does make for a good story.  Two notes on this part of the battle.  First, I think this is exactly the type of negotiation–over rights or values–in which we in academia debate whether one can really negotiate.  Can you really compromise your rights?  Would we agree to only some freedom of speech?  Could you agree that only unions agreeing with the rest of the governor’s platform have bargaining rights?  Bob Mnookin deals with these types of issues in his terrific book, Bargaining with the Devil and I imagine that for some politicians or union activists, Governor Walker is looking pretty close to the devil right now.

Another fun story, that perhaps could lead one to question a bit more of what is going in Madison, comes from Gail Collins in the New York Times on Friday.

Wisconsin’s Democratic state senators went into hiding to deprive the Republican majority of the quorum they need to pass Walker’s agenda. The Senate majority leader, Scott Fitzgerald — who happens to be the brother of the Assembly speaker, Jeff Fitzgerald — believes the governor is absolutely right about the need for draconian measures to cut spending in this crisis. So he’s been sending state troopers out to look for the missing Democrats. The troopers are under the direction of the new chief of the state patrol, Stephen Fitzgerald. He is the 68-year-old father of Jeff and Scott and was appointed to the $105,678 post this month by Governor Walker.

Perhaps the speaker’s/majority leader’s father was a super choice, and the fact that he was suddenly at liberty after having recently lost an election for county sheriff was simply a coincidence that allowed the governor to recruit the best possible person for the job. You’d still think that if things are so dire in Wisconsin, the Fitzgerald clan would want to set a better austerity example.

I’m not really surprised that this connection had not been highlighted in local papers so we’ll see what happens now.  In any case, I am sure that there will be more to come from Wisconsin soon!

Just adding a fun picture from Cynthia Alkon’s sister who was in Madison over the weekend….

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