Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind (33 page)

The First Amendment guarantees that you have the right to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances”—that is, without the union getting between you and your government.
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Unions do precisely this when they forcibly unionize Americans, unrestrained by our Constitution.

Governor Rod Blagojevich and his successor, Governor Pat Quinn, in their executive orders unionizing personal assistants, claimed that care providers “cannot effectively voice their concerns… without [union] representation.”
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As the nanny state grows under President Obama, these patronizing viewpoints will become more commonplace, and the left will decide that we all need union masters to help us petition our government. But don’t we all have elected representatives? Isn’t that what democracy is all about?

Not anymore. We all still have elected representatives, but many of them have been co-opted by the Shadowbosses. The unions are working with union-supported government officials to expand the groups of people whom they can organize. Remember, union power ratchets up, never down. It may take them a few years to get all the right politicians in place, but they will likely get there—step by step, according to their latest Shadowboss battle plan.

What’s our plan? In the next chapter, we will see how some Americans are fighting back against growing government employee union power, and winning some important early battles. But will we win the war? For that, we will need your help.

I
N the original
Star Wars
movie, the shadowy forces of the Empire reign over the galaxy with the Emperor, via his henchman Darth Vader and his stormtroopers, controlling every element of citizen life. As the movie opens, the Empire is nearing completion of the Death Star—a battle station capable of destroying entire planets and crushing the Rebel Alliance.

That’s when our hero, Luke Skywalker, stumbles upon an old Jedi Knight, Obi-Wan Kenobi. After receiving an urgent message from Princess Leia, Obi-Wan explains to Luke the importance of getting involved in the rebellion against the Empire. But Luke resists. Only when Luke finds his village in ruins, his uncle and aunt killed, does he decide to take up his lightsaber to use the Force to fight back against the Empire.

In 2011, Americans across the nation realized that the government employee union Empire had left their fiscal village in ruins. And they decided to join the rebellion.

A Luke Skywalker of this new rebellion is Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Governor Walker’s state was in dire trouble. Wisconsin had been the first state to permit collective bargaining over government employees in 1959. After more than fifty years of government employee unionism, government growth was out of control at the state and local
level. As an example, government employee compensation had grown nearly
three times
as fast as private sector worker compensation over the previous decade.
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In his 2010 campaign, Walker had promised to reverse Wisconsin’s disastrous financial situation. He meant to do it by curbing the power of the state’s government employee unions.

Knowing what Walker would do to them if he were elected, the government employee unions, especially the NEA-affiliated Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) teachers union, spent heavily to defeat Walker. But Walker beat his union-funded opponent by a 52 to 46 percent margin.

Once he was elected, the government employee unions started to panic. If Walker were able to roll back their collective bargaining powers, their dues-funded Empire could collapse.

So the unions acted. In December 2010, Big Labor demanded that the lame-duck Democrat-controlled state Assembly and Senate approve multi-year state union contracts that would extend union benefits into future years. The Assembly passed the measure, but it fell short by just one vote in the Senate.
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So the unions would be forced to negotiate with the new governor over the terms of their contracts.

Once in office, Walker started out making moderate requests for government workers to contribute to their pensions and increase their contributions to their health-care plans.
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The
New York Post
reported, “Walker warned that he expects some compromise from unions—and if they weren’t cooperative, he’ll look at all options, including changing state unionization laws.”
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The state head of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) took offense at Walker’s approach, saying “It’s like the plantation owner talking to slaves,” and the unions rejected his demands.
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And so, the fight began.

With no compromise forthcoming from the unions, Walker went to battle to save the finances of his state. His first target was Wisconsin’s law permitting collective bargaining over government employees. This law had stripped government workers of their freedom to negotiate
with employers on their own behalf for over fifty years. And because Wisconsin was a forced-dues state with dues checkoff, union dues were automatically deducted from government employee paychecks as a condition of their employment.

Walker framed his challenge to union power in moral terms. He explained that collective bargaining laws are just plain immoral. “The unions like to talk about collective bargaining,” Walker stated. “Collective bargaining is not a right, collective bargaining is an expensive entitlement and it’s time we put the power back in the hands of the people.”
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Walker is correct, of course—as we’ve seen, collective bargaining puts money and power in the hands of the Shadowbosses, and it takes away a fundamental right from workers: the right to bargain over their own labor. And of course, forced-dues provisions are even worse.

On February 11, 2011, Walker laid his cards on the table. His budget reform package abolished forced dues for teachers and many other public employees, and also prevented unions from bargaining over these employees’ pensions, benefits, and work rules. Union bosses could still bargain over government employee wages, but “raises could not exceed the increase in the Consumer Price Index unless approved by a referendum”
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—which effectively meant not much bargaining over wages, either. And also harmful to union power, Wisconsin was going to get out of the dues checkoff business—so no more collecting dues for the union.

A final reform was that government employee unions would have to be recertified by the workers that they represent every year. So workers would now be able to throw off the mantle of the union if enough of them voted against recertification. This proposal scared the unions to death, because for the first time in generations their stranglehold over Wisconsin government employees was actually at risk.

And this meant war.

Walker retained collective bargaining for police and firefighters. Why? Because, after looking at the long, dirty history of union
violence, Walker believed that police and fire union chiefs would have fought him by launching illegal strikes. He didn’t want burning houses or looting in the streets.
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Instead, he got the next best thing.

With union dues income under serious threat, the Empire took action. The government employee unions targeted the rebel base: Madison, the capital of Wisconsin.

Threats of violence immediately took center stage. One government union militant, a thirty-seven-year-old correctional officer, was arrested for disorderly conduct after allegedly making a verbal threat to shoot Walker.
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A Republican Wisconsin state senator received an e-mail stating: “We will hunt you down. We will slit your throats. We will drink your blood. I will have your decapitated head on a pike in the Madison town square. This is your last warning.”
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Another e-mail sent around the same time to fifteen GOP state senators was nearly as lurid: “Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last eight weeks… I hope you have a good time in hell.” The author of the second e-mail, a twenty-six-year-old day-care worker and forced-unionism zealot, was later identified and arrested on two felony bomb-scare counts and two misdemeanor counts.
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She pleaded guilty and avoided jail time by enrolling in a first-offenders program.
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Welcome to the world of the government employee unions—even if you threaten someone with death, you’re usually off the hook. Violence is not necessarily illegal, as we explained in
chapter 2
, if you’re a member of a union and you were doing it for the cause!

Businesses were faced with boycott—and worse—if they did not support the unions. The CEO of a chain of convenience stores located in Wisconsin and Minnesota received a letter from four union officials. The letter told him to support their actions against Walker, and warned, “In the event that you do not respond to this request by that date, we will assume you stand… against the teachers, nurses, police officers, fire fighters, and other dedicated public employees who serve our communities.” The letter was clear: it wasn’t enough to stay out of the fight. The unions wanted everyone to explicitly endorse their side or face boycotts. That particular letter was signed by a police union official and two firefighters union chiefs. Their signatures created at least the implication that businesses might not be protected by the police and fire departments if they failed to support the unions.
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Teachers union bosses, first in Madison and then in Milwaukee and other cities, called teachers out on illegal strikes and staged angry protests at the state capitol and at legislators’ residences. Within a few days, at least fifteen school districts across the state were forced to cancel classes as teachers called in “sick.” These rallies were chock full of evocative signs: “Why Do Republicans Hate People?” “Scott Walker = Adolf Hitler,” “Midwest Mussolini,” and “Walker Terrorizes Families.”
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David A. Keene, the president of the National Rifle Association and a former chairman of the American Conservative Union, summed up the teacher revolt in Wisconsin where he went to college and law school: “Many of my old radical friends are back now in all their glory. Many of those camped out in the state capitol building and carrying signs declaring their support of ‘workers’ rights’ while comparing their state’s newly elected governor to Hosni Mubarak and Adolf Hitler are gray pony-tailed remnants of a culture most of us thought had vanished into the mists of history. But here they are again, defying orders to clear the capitol grounds while swaying to the folk music of Peter, Paul & Mary’s Peter Yarrow, who can only otherwise be seen on PBS folk revivals with other nearly forgotten guitar-strumming veterans of the ’60s protest movement.”
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While Keene’s description of old radicals again in their glory is amusing, the protestors were deadly serious about stopping Walker cold in his tracks.

The pro-Walker rebel forces gained supporters across America. Bill O’Reilly cited a Quinnipiac poll showing that 42 percent of Americans think unionized government employees make too much money, and that 63 percent think these employees should pay more for their benefits and retirement. “The left-wing media in America will not give you the straight story,” O’Reilly said.
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A former advisor to President Bill Clinton, Dick Morris, agreed: “The liberal media has tried to sell the myth that the public is siding with the unions in these battles. This poll shows the opposite. They largely agree with the restrictions the governors are trying to impose.”
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To make it look better for television, however, the unions quickly assembled some “grassroots” supporters, some of which the unions may have paid to protest. “The left wing radicals in Wisconsin from the unions have mobbed the capital with rent-a-mobs,” noted radio host Michael Savage.
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