Wisconsin Protests: In Madison, Public And Private Unions Stand Side-By-Side With 'Magnets In Our Shoulders'

MADISON, WIS -- For the past ten days, tens of thousands of union protesters have swarmed the state capitol building in Madison, Wis. to protest Republican Governor Scott Walker's proposal to yank collective bargaining rights from some public-sector unions.

But it isn't just students from the University of Wisconsin protesting alongside the nurses, teachers, and trash collectors Walker has directly targeted. Police officers and firefighters have joined the demonstrations even though Walker exempted them from his bill, and private sector workers from near and far have entered the fray as well. They see Walker's proposal not as an attempt to save the state money but as an attack on unions.

"Union workers support union workers," said Tom O'Grady, a 60-year-old sheet metal worker from Local 565 in Sun Prairie, a Madison suburb. O'Grady told HuffPost the same thing that many other union workers did: If they don't stick up for public union workers today, they'll lose their own bargaining rights as private union workers tomorrow. "Walker screwed up," O'Grady said. "He put magnets in our shoulders."

Walker's comments during a recorded prank call suggest the Republican governor is skeptical of such union solidarity.

"I don't normally tell people to read the New York Times, but the front page of the New York Times has got a great story, one of these unbelievable moments of true journalism, what it's supposed to be objective journalism," Walker said to his prank-caller, who he thought was a billionaire campaign donor. Walker explained that the Times left Madison and filed its story from Janesville, about 40 miles southeast of the capital.

"The lead on this story is about a guy who was laid off two years ago, he'd been laid off twice by GM, who points out that everybody else in his town has had to sacrifice except for all these public employees, and it's about damn time that they do and he supports me," Walker continued. "And they had a bartender, and they had every stereotypical blue collar worker type they interviewed, and the only ones that weren't with us were people who were either a public employee or married to a public employee."

But this college town has been awash with stereotypical blue-collar workers who are not public employees or married to public employees, and they nevertheless think Walker's union proposal is the pits. Almost every wall inside the capitol building is plastered with anti-Walker posters and signs, and the rotunda has been filled with protesters non-stop. The sound of drums and chanting reverberates throughout the entire building. Scores of police officers watch over the scene, almost all of them wearing earplugs. The officers seem to smile at everyone who meets their eyes.

The protesters haven't been bused in from afar. Gary Langley, a 56-year-old electrical engineer who works at the Concourse Hotel in Madison, told HuffPost he walked to the capitol building to protest on Monday, his day off, after seeing a flier posted at work.

"I support my union brothers and sisters," said Langley, who said he's a member of the Workers United Local 66. "What bothers me most is the teachers. Wisconsin is number two in SAT scores. States without collective bargaining for teachers are the bottom five."

Langley said the collective bargaining fight makes him think of his 30-year-old son. "I put him through college. He had great teachers," he said. "I want our students to have the best teachers they can possibly have."

On Thursday morning, a group of 20 iron workers from around Wisconsin and the Midwest, all of them wearing hardhats, marched up to the state capitol on Thursday and scoffed at the idea that they were not directly affected by Walker's proposal.

"You can't target one group and exempt another group, because we're all tied together through a union," said Rick Kraft, 50, an iron worker with the Local 98 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He said iron workers had been protesting in Madison since last Tuesday. "We're all union protesters."

O'Grady said he was moved by the sight of huge numbers of people showing their support, particularly some of the young folks crashing at the capitol overnight.

"It's humbling," he said. "We see all these kids, they may never have a union job, and they're here every night for us? It's very humbling."

Comments

[Maxx Webber]

12:09 AM on 02/28/2011

Wow seems any post negting the unions are getting denied.

Must be some kind of card check policy.

[Remle Nemid]

04:49 PM on 02/25/2011

A sequel to the "divide & rule" strategy has been cleverly designed and is couched in this wise:

Separate the less militant of the unions from the more combative ones and spare them from the budgetary scalpel, for a while. Later, the remaining unions can be dealt with into submission because by then they no longer have strength in numbers. You can even tell them to their faces: "My way , or the highway?

[asmith3965]

02:58 PM on 02/25/2011

people get your heads on. the problem is public funded unions. not private unions.

[Martha Fair]

08:26 AM on 02/28/2011

RepubliBillys are marketing genius when it comes to divide and conquer. Only they would find a way for the upper 2% of their party to promote the notion that it is somehow honorable and noble for the lower 98% to work for nothing. Simply Amazing! I find on these threads all the time about how the poor should take 3 jobs for min wage and be proud of that fact. How about joining or organizing a union yourselves instead of being jealous and envious about what the teachers make? How about going to school and getting a master's degree, but then, if you had that you would have too much sense to keep voting for the RepubliBillys.

[KerriNYC]

11:22 AM on 02/25/2011

(page 6)
As for Blankfein, he should be able to spare a little change for Wisconsinites. His base salary recently tripled, to $2 million, even after he warned the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission last year that raising base pay on Wall Street causes bankers to take risks. No argument there.

[KerriNYC]

11:21 AM on 02/25/2011

(page 5)
For example, losses in 2008 totaled $23.6 billion. While these losses were partially offset by gains of $13.5 billion in 2009, the combined value of the two retirement funds on December 31, 2009, was 17.1 percent below its peak in 2007. The losses of 2008 will significantly affect Retirement System participants and employers for the next several years.
What if states had played it safe?
That’s the broader lesson here for Wisconsin and other states. Numerous state pension funds aren’t depleted because employees are contributing too little, as Walker contends (As an aside, see here for a remarkable recording of the governor discussing his plans to, among other things, lay off state workers with someone he thinks is chemicals mogul and Tea Party activist David Koch.) It’s because the financial crisis — caused in part by Wall Street pushing risky products and worsened by banks betting against their own clients — crushed the stock market, which lowered the value of pension fund assets.
Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research calculates that if after 2007 states had instead invested their retirement funds primarily in 30-year Treasury bonds, then state and local pension plans would be $850 billion richer.

[KerriNYC]

11:18 AM on 02/25/2011

(page 4)
As the housing bubble was inflating in 2003, for instance, Wisconsin issued $950 million in auction-rate bonds to fund its pension plan. The bonds did well until mid-2007, when souring subprime loans began rippling into the auction-rate and other bond markets. That turned into a full-blown crisis early the following year, when Goldman, Citigroup (C) and other large Wall Street firms stopped supporting auctions.
The bottom fell out. As the state’s auditor told lawmakers last fall in explaining the long-term impact of Wisconsin pension funds losing nearly $24 billion in 2008:
[T]he value of Wisconsin Retirement System assets has fluctuated significantly over the past ten years as financial markets have experienced their worst decline since the 1930s.

[KerriNYC]

11:17 AM on 02/25/2011

2008: A very bad year for Wisconsin (page 3)
For states, growing concerns about their credit raised their borrowing costs. Estimates suggest that a one percent interest rate hike on a $1 billion bond issue would cost taxpayers roughly $10 million a year. In 2008, rates in Wisconsin more than tripled, reaching 15 percent.
Wisconsin, other states, and scores of town and cities around the country also lost big after going to Wall Street to buy variable-rate auction securities and other types of structured financial products. The market for auction-rate securities collapsed in early 2008, leaving states and municipalities holding the bag. Goldman and other Wall Street banks agreed that year to pay a total of $160 million in fines over and repurchase $15 billion worth these securities to settle several state probes into the transactions.
In another case of speculation gone awry, some Wisconsin school districts lost millions after purchasing so-called synthetic collateralized debt obligations. Wall Street banks sold CDOs to bet on the value of housing in the years leading up the financial crisis.
How the housing bubble killed pensions
Ancient history, you say? Not at all. Because whatever Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker says about the state’s pension problems — which, incidentally, are far less severe than he claims — they’re not the result of employees contributing too little to their retirement. Rather, Wisconsin’s shortfall stems largely from the state getting killed in the stock market during the financial crisis.

[KerriNYC]

11:16 AM on 02/25/2011

How Wall Street and Wisconsin Officials Blew Up the State’s Pension Fund (page 2)

Wisconsin state employees fighting for their jobs should ask Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein for their money back.
What’s the connection? During the dog days of the financial crisis in 2008, the investment bank advised clients to bet that Wisconsin and 10 other U.S. states would go broke by purchasing credit default swaps against their debt. For Goldman and other Wall Street firms that used this ploy, the beauty part was that they had also previously earned millions in fees by helping most of those states sell municipal bonds.
In other words, these banks made money by finding investors to buy state debt, then made more money by selling derivatives to other investors who wanted to short that debt. As Bloomberg reported at the time:

As part of a September presentation to institutional investors on “Best Long and Short Risk Strategies,” Goldman recommended buying credit-default swaps on “a basket of liquid State General Obligation credits with current and worsening fiscal outlooks,” including California, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan.
The firm also recommended the derivatives on states with “significant unfunded pension” and other retiree obligations, including Illinois, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Nevada.

[KerriNYC]

11:14 AM on 02/25/2011

Goldman Sachs Mucked About in Wisconsin Too! (page 1)
Did you even suspect that Goldman Sachs would have had a role to play in the financial crisis taking place now in the state of Wisconsin? Here again, Goldman Sachs sold municipal bonds and makes millions in fees; then advised its clients to bet that Wisconsin and other states would go broke and GS earns millions more in fees. Goldman Sachs knows all the maneuvers to make itself money. Is this socially responsible? No! Is it ethical? No! Is it moral? No! And yet these actions are considered legal. Something is really rotten here.

How was Goldman Sachs chastised? They paid a small fine from petty cash and bought back some securities. How many times does Goldman Sachs get away with practices that transfer large sums of money from municipal pension funds into Goldman Sachs's coffers?

[Leroy Tischauser]

11:04 AM on 02/25/2011

I can understand business owners, those who clip coupons and those born into wealth supporting the Governor of Wisconsin in his quest to destroy collective bargaining. I cannot for a minute understand how any American who works for wages or salary, at least any American with even a little knowledge or understanding of our history, can support this blatant attempt by the Tea Party Governor of Wisconsin to destroy one of the few sources of real political power the middle-class possesses, that is the power that comes with the ability to join together and collectively bargain with employers for the terms of your employment.

Anyone who works for wages or salary who supports the Governor of Wisconsin on this issue truly has a limited understanding of the history of our country. This is a reactionary power grab pure and simple. The middle class as a whole will suffer immensely if the Tea Party remains in power very long and has it's way.

[kkayralene]

09:38 AM on 02/25/2011

Together We Rise...Give the fat cats HEART ATTACK Wisconsin!

[madisonhack]

09:18 AM on 02/25/2011

This protest is now being squelched by a Governor who has pushed a new rule to close the statehouse - our house - in the evening. If anybody here thinks this is over, you don't know much about the people of Wisconsin or our strong commitment to organized labor. If Walker truly thought Wisconsin was behind him, this collective bargaining issue would have been offered in a state-wide referendum. He didn't do that because he's lying about the support he has from the taxpayers in this state. Even Republicans are against ending collective bargaining, but that is only the most prominent of the provisions of this bill which is mainly a power grab by a despot in his first two months of office. People supporting this bill probably didn't read the provisions giving Walker the sole authority to sell off public property without the necessity of the normal bidding process and for whatever the governor deems acceptable. In other words, he can give the power plants and other important state infrastructure away to cronies to be privatized. Supporters have no idea that this bill gives the governor the ability to put his hands into the Wisconsin Retirement System funds to balance his budgets - or for whatever he wants. Likewise, he has sole authority to make changes in Medicaid provisions, without the past oversight exercised by the Legislature. This bill gives a section of wetlands to a well-known campaign contributor in defiance of current environmental laws. This whole administration reeks of cronyism and corruption. But Tea Baggers and other like-minded bullies seem to think they scored a victory by beating up on a bunch of school teachers and city clerks, not to mention the first responders of fire and police that they feign respect for.