At the turn of the last century, the “Wisconsin Experiment” led the nation as a way to develop government policies that would promote the greatest good for the most people. Gov. Robert La Follette brought together government officials, university professors and business leaders to hash out intelligent state policies. Today there is another Wisconsin Experiment underway. This one, though, is designed to tear apart that broad civic vision and replace it with an oligarchy. On its face, today’s Wisconsin story appears to be about budgets and entitlement. Citing the need to save money, the Joint Finance Committee of the Wisconsin Legislature at the end of May voted 12-4 to cut $250 million from the university’s budget and eliminate tenure from state law, enabling the governor-appointed Board of Regents to fire professors whenever they declared it time to “redirect” a program. Opponents are focusing on the end of tenure, but there is a larger story here about money, politics and ownership of the national government.
Time was when Wisconsin was held up as a place where Progressive values meant something and were put into practice. Because of that, state government largely worked. It was certainly no labor paradise, but much of the growth of unions throughout the 20th century can be traced back to the Badger State, whose reputation for labor activism was well deserved. Then Wisconsinites have elected as their governor a man who by rights shouldn’t be allowed to managed a Dairy Queen.
Voters were even afforded an opportunity to recall Scott Walker, but they whiffed on it, and so the only conclusion left to draw is that they have EXACTLY the quality of leadership they deserve. Who knew their standards were so abysmally low? Now Walker is sounding an awful lot like a Presidential candidate, which means he’s on the verge of taking his appeal to the lowest common denominator nationwide. Not surprising for a Governor whose state is now dead last in business start-up activity. Walker came into office promising to create jobs…but the only jobs he’s managed to create are for journalists chronicling his dishonesty and slavish devotion to the Koch Brothers and their self-absorbed Tea Party ideology.
Be still, my foolish heart…’cuz that’s some kinda high-octane leadership, knowhutimean??
At stake is the battle over the very nature and purpose of government. Whose interests should government serve- capital or labor? The wealthy of the middle class? Should America lose the pretense of community and openly become a dog-eat-dog, I-got-mine-you-can-damned-well-get-your-own capitalist Paradise? Or does the social safety net and the battle against income equality actually mean something?
At stake in this bitter fight was the nature of American government. Should workers have the right to bargain as a unit, joining together as a political bloc to influence both their contracts and government policies? Or should they be forced to compete for national power as individuals equal to the wealthiest men in America?
The idea that workers should be expected to compete as equals against the wealthiest among us is prima facie absurd, and those who, like Walker, argue that this idea actually represents fairness are spectacularly disingenuous. Money is power in America, and to expect those who don’t have it to compete on equal terms against those who do is to blatantly ignore a basic truth about this country.
Not surprisingly, Gov. Walker is deeply in thrall to wealthy Conservative interests, in particular the Koch brothers, who are heavily invested in buying government that favors and protects their interests. Being for all intents and purposes on the Koch Industries payroll means that Walker is unalterably opposed to collective bargaining…or anything else that could help workers exercise and protects their rights in the workplace. Captains of industry like the Koch view workers as raw material- cheap, expendable, and exploitable…and Scott Walker does what his masters dictate.
FDR and a Democratic Congress first established workers’ right to political organization in 1935 with the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act). They saw collective bargaining as a way to guarantee that the government served everyone, rather than the very wealthy who had led the nation into the Great Depression. Collective bargaining would level the playing field between workers and employers in politics, guaranteeing that government policies would benefit everyone.
Collective bargaining was envisioned as a means for workers to protect their rights by organizing as a bloc and advocating for their collective best interest. It’s how things like the 40-hour week, health care, retirement plans, vacation and sick leave, and other benefits came to be accepted as a baseline in the modern workplace. Workers gained those things because unions provided a means to band together and exercise power collectively. It’s no wonder Gov. Walker has been working so assiduously to destroy the power and influence of unions in Wisconsin. He knows that if he can do it in the Badger State, he can do it nationwide.
When you believe workers to be commodities, units of production to be squeezed, what you have is the American workplace of today- a place where “family values” receive lip service…and not much else.
We Americans are suckers for work. We put in more hours at our jobs than any people in the industrialized world, except Koreans. We take far fewer days of vacation than Europeans. In the last several years, many among us have seen our workload double while our incomes have stayed flat. And some of us have fallen into criticizing fellow workers who want a lighter load and more time with their families.
And speaking of families, we give endless lip service to family values, but, in most workplaces, families are not valued. Young women who are thinking about having children keep it a secret at work for fear that bosses and co-workers will brand them as slackers. Unlike the rest of the advanced countries, the United States has no paid parental-leave policy and just 9% of companies offer fully paid maternity leave benefits.
With the 40-hour workweek and the eight-hour workday becoming the exception rather than the rule and overtime pay disappearing in many jobs, American workers are having their lives commandeered by employers who demand more of their time without offering additional compensation. And, with the near extinction of unions, workers have little power to say no when the boss expects more and more.
As a generation of millenials leave college and enter the work force saddled with often crushing student loan burdens, the modern workplace is ready, willing, and more than able to exploit them, chew them up, and spit them out. It’s a world in which ever-greater expectations are placed on workers (working smarter, doing more with less, “right-sizing”) in the interest of increasing productivity and efficiency. There’s nothing wrong with working hard, to be certain, but when work becomes the primary value in life, when the demands of work prevail over commitment to family, something is out of whack. If a worker isn’t willing to step up and meet those ever-increasing demands, an employer can be secure in the knowledge that there are many others who’d happily step into the breach.
There’s a fallacy at work that working harder (read, “working longer hours”) ipso facto equates to more efficiency and greater productivity, when in fact the U.S. ranks third in productivity behind Germany and France. The German government actively pursue policies designed to create shorter work weeks and allow workers to actually live- you know, “work to live” instead of “live to work?” France, known for the generous vacation time afforded to workers, has taken a similar approach. Both of these countries should provide an abject lesson to businessmen in this country…if they were amenable to learning. Sadly, the fortunes of so many of them are so thoroughly wedded to quarterly earnings that they’re unable/unwilling to engage in thinking that does anything but impact short-term results.
When you view workers as units of production instead of people whose efforts and commitment are responsible for your success, you’ll most likely create a workplace in which people are valued far less than profits.
Scott Walker is leading the charge to reverse historical progress and devolve power back to the wealthiest among us, to roll back the gains labor fought so hard for in the 19th and 20th centuries. There’s no way workers can compete as equals with billionaires; Gov. Walker knows it, as do the billionaire benefactors pulling his strings. They’ve created an environment in which labor is and will continue to be at a significant disadvantage. If you’re a business owner, it’s a buyer’s market, which means you can afford to treat labor as a disposable commodity. With an oversupply of available labor, workers are very likely to remain expendable for the foreseeable future.
If the French and Germans can be so productive working far fewer hours than Americans, it is clearly time to reassess America’s out-of-whack work ethic. After all, the United States can hardly claim to be the land of the free if fewer and fewer of us have any free time.
Good luck with that…but in the end, it’s really our own fault. When we elect a moral and ideological midget like Scott Walker, we can can’t claim to be surprised when he does what he’s promised to do…and then some. Walker made no secret of his anti-union, anti-worker policies…and yet Wisconsin elected him anyway. That’s not on Walker; that’s something Wisconsin voters need to accept responsibility for. They (repeatedly) voted against their own best interests; they’ve sown the wind and are reaping the whirlwind.
Elections have consequences…and Wisconsinites are discovering that voting against their interests and electing an anti-union, anti-worker governor committed to degrading the rights of workers isn’t a recipe for success. I can only hope the American Sheeple aren’t stupid enough to fall for his schtick. Then again, when you’ve elected people like Louie Gohmert, Michelle Bachmann, and Sam Brownback (and let’s not forget George W. Bush), it’s difficult to have much confidence in the intelligence or attention span of the American Sheeple.
Wisconsin has exactly the quality of leadership they deserve. I can only hope that the rest of America won’t so gullible and inattentive.
