Austerity battles in WI, Shutdown looming in DC
Monday, February 28th, 2011Need to write a quick post to mention the ongoing labor battles in Madison, WI that has been in the news a lot lately. Every day there seems to be another clip of protesters occupying the state capitol, marching down state street, chanting behind the cable newscasters with creative signs. It seemed like it came all of a sudden, after watching a lot of protests in the middle east, thousands of people occupying the streets in Cairo, then there was talk about budget cuts coming to state workers in a small midwestern state that had just celebrated their banged up team go from wildcard to superbowl champs.
I’m seeing a trend that seems to omit the bigger picture. Since the financial crisis there is a lot of anger building up directed at public employees for their pensions, benefits, and job security that were the fruits of organized labor. I would normally say that this is another case of “divide and conquer” being that while there are good benefits for public employees and job security, overall salaries are much lower than the private sector. However what is more significant is that to blindly attack the public employees is to support a huge bait and switch which seems to becoming the norm in America today.
It seems strange to attack the a public school teacher’s benefits and pension while ignoring the wall street executive has their golden parachute attached to their contract regardless if they run the company to the ground and bankrupt thousands of investors. Some of which, by the way, were the major pension funds that are hurting so bad now that they need to increase required contributions or in the case of public pensions, increased funding from the state. It also seems cowardly to advocate for pay freezes of rank and file federal employees but exempt military contractors getting paid six figures to do work that a full time enlisted soldier is fully capable and willing to do. And then there is the question of where the blame for the recession, it wasn’t the public employees or even the unions that crashed the economy. Last I checked, the very ones who were responsible for getting us into this mess are still getting the VIP treatment by the media and still have enough money to influence the next election cycle, whoever ends up back in the positions of power.
Back in DC, we are bracing for a shutdown of the federal government coming this Friday. There has been talk about a short term extension deal that is being hammered out behind the scenes, but that only delays the shutdown for another two weeks. This is coming on the back of a 2 year freeze of annual cost of living adjustments that are normally designed to cancel out inflation, and additional rhetoric from congress about hiring freezes and reductions in force. The talk of a shutdown comes as a big political battle to shrink the size of the federal bureaucracy and the role of government. However like much other things in DC, the devil is in the details as federal salaries, even money spent for foreign wars is nothing compared to the major entitlement programs of medicare, social security and medicaid.