Wisconsin: “Ground Zero” for Public Employee Unions?

TV Journalist among teachers. (Fox News screen shot by Bergeron.)

Hardly.   At least not until Jesse Jackson showed up in Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, to join the ranks of protesting teachers who congregated both inside and outside of that state’s capitol building. 

With his usual flair for over-dramatizing a situation, Jackson stood in the middle of a crowd – before a TV mike – and declared Madison to be “Ground Zero” for the union cause.

The term “Ground Zero” is an expression that should be reserved for cataclysmic events, after which few people are left standing or alive.  If Jackson doubts that, he should reflect upon the disaster which befell the occupants of the World Trade Towers on 9/11.

Data by CQ Press. (Fox News Screen shot by Bergeron.)

That location was, in fact, “Ground Zero.”

But that hyperbolic, incendiary term can hardly be applied to the titanic, yet manageable struggle now going on in Madison, Wisconsin, in which a significant, paradigm-shifting change is about to take place which, if successful, could feather out into other American states.

The lobbying and legislative battle being waged between the Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker; the Wisconsin Education Association Council; and the Republican-controlled State Legislature, may  be about to reshape the entire landscape and structure of the teachers’ union in that state.

It didn’t have to happen that way:

Data source, USA Today.  (Fox News screen shot by Bergeron.)

When Walker first proposed his plans for reform, the entire covey of fourteen Wisconsin Democrat Senators fled the state and crossed the border into Illinois for a self-imposed exile:  It was an attempt to stymie the legislative process. 

Their strategy, they believed, was that Walker could do nothing because he would be one senator short of a quorum.  A quorum is the minimum amount of legislators required by law to conduct debate and to approve bills.

But the Republicans discovered that they could get around the problem of delinquent senators with a procedural move that permitted the Wisconsin Legislature to bypass the quorum quandary.

Arcane, infrequently-used parliamentary moves, such as the one employed by Walker and his majority party in the Wisconsin legislature, can be powerful instruments.  This one allowed Walker to codify into law a proposal which restricted collective bargaining rights for most public sector unions in the state.

It didn’t have to happen that way. 

Fox News screen shot by Bergeron, (Data current as of  2/18/2011.)

Walker had previously offered to keep collective bargaining in force for educators in the Wisconsin Education Association Council, with only two exceptions: Sick leave and vacation rights.  WEAC leadership refused his last and best offer, one that would have resolved the collective bargaining impasse. 

Positions hardened even more.  That’s when Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature circumvented the problem of missing, across-the-border Democrat Senators by invoking the procedural move mentioned above.

In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie isn’t even coming close to considering such a challenge to the collective bargaining process.  

Yet Christie’s most basic proposals are being stone-walled, with no apparent, significant counter-offers forthcoming from the unions:  Instead, they are intensifying their lobbying efforts. 

It doesn’t have to happen this way.

Note:  All TV screen shots in this post are from a 2/18/2011 newscast  emanating from Fox News.