In 2011, when the battle in Wisconsin raged between Governor Walker and his allies on the one hand and the public employee unions on the other, the two sides seemed monolithic. Especially the union side, with thousands of members swarming the state capitol to march in angry protest.
It would be calamity, union reps declared, were any concession made to the requirements of fiscal sobriety. Union members should not be required to contribute more to their health care or pension costs; suffer any limits on pay raises or collective bargaining; and certainly not be required to let their own members decide whether they wished to remain in a union.
It’s this last point that suggested a not-so-very-monolithic union force after all. Now that members are being asked whether they want their unions, the state’s public employee unions are losing between 30 to 60 percent of their members in various cities and counties.
In the Kenosha Unified School District, Wisconsin’s third largest, only 37 percent of the membership voted to re-certify their union. An official with the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) trade union admits that “the majority of our affiliates in the state aren’t seeing re-certification, so I don’t think the KEA is . . . unique in this.”
“As it turns out,” writes blogger Brian Fraley, “Act 10 was the largest anti-bullying initiative in the nation. Who knew?”
Well, now, we all should.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “Dis-united We Stand”
Real pisser when the followers won’t follow where they are being lead.
When boiling the live frog, one has to be careful about not turning up the heat too rapidly, lest the frog notice.
Once that last third of folks in Kenosha realizes that they too have a choice and that they don’t have to rubberstamp what is there, they may bolt for the door also. Going to be intersting to see if the “leaders” take for granted the remaining folks who haven’t left and how much damage control they try to spin to distance themselves from the policies that have been so clearly rejected by their members. God forbid that they might even have to go back to working for a living.
Will be particularly interesting to see if the remaining “leaders” actually install some mechanisms to ensure that they are actually following the wishes of their members, instead of their kowtowing to the demands of the socialist national leaders.
This is the inevitable result of letting people in the union who actually care about education, instead of just the union.