Teachers’ Unions Badger Taxpayers

What are the Wisconsin legislature’s theatrics all about? Democrat Senators fled the state to avoid having a quorum, so there could be no vote to require state employees to start paying one-twentieth of their overly generous pensions and a little over one tenth of their health care insurance in order to balance the state budget as required by law.

Wisconsin teachers, who average $89,500 in salary and benefits, fraudulently called in sick in order to join the protest. So much for their caring about the children as schools shut down.  All those who faked illness should be fired.

The past 30 years have shown that the more we spend on government-run schools, the worse the education. Two-thirds  of Wisconsin’s eighth graders cannot read at grade level. We need to introduce (or establish) merit pay and do away with tenure and guaranteed jobs for life.

So why were union members (SEIU, NEA, AFT, ATU, AFSCMF, teamsters, and Obama front groups like Organizing for America) being bused in from neighboring states to bully elected representatives into not  doing their jobs? Easy, unions are some of the biggest contributors to the Democrat Party and they can only get more donations if there are more state employees with bigger salaries. Their members are forced to pay union dues which go to finance Democrat candidates whether they like it or not.

Union workers are less than 7% of the private workforce, but 38% of government employees. Without bigger and bigger government, Democrats will lose their forced donation base (union dues) and power.

Unions and their media allies keep saying they are fighting for their right to collective bargaining. There is no bargaining. The people who agree to pay them these exorbitant benefits are not paying the benefits, we taxpayers are!

Government employees bargain with government employees, not business owners who have their businesses to lose if demands are excessive. We taxpayers, who pay their salaries, are excluded from the bargaining process. That is why government workers now make almost double that of the people who pay them, we taxpayers!

State governments are broke because of government-run monopolies and government-employee unions. We can go elsewhere to buy food if employees go on strike in a supermarket.  But kids have nowhere else to go when their teachers get fraudulent medical excuses saying they are sick so they can go and demonstrate. There is nowhere else to go to get your driver’s license, etc.

President Obama tells us to be “civil,” live within our means and tighten our belts, but apparently that does not apply to his union supporters. What they do not realize is that as long as more and more money goes to people who do not produce anything but obstacles to producing things of value at the lowest possible cost, all of us are having our standard of living reduced.