The Scott Walker victory in Wisconsin this week showed just how unpopular public employee unions have become in the US.<\/p>\n
Nearly four out of ten voters who have a union member in their household still voted in favor of Walker, the Republican who shredded collective bargaining rights for public employee unions.<\/p>\n
This is speculation, but I would bet you a cup of coffee that many of those “union households” who went Republican weren’t from families with ties to government work.<\/p>\n
The reason? Public sector workers have continued to win contracts that bring solidly middle class benefits, while the rest of the unionized (and non-unionized) work force has seen sharp declines in wages and benefits.<\/p>\n
Even within the labor movement there is growing tension over this disparity.<\/p>\n
After all, a big chunk of those government worker wages and benefits aren’t paid by corporations or by rich folks’ income taxes.<\/p>\n
They’re paid through property taxes, which is (depending on your point of view) either a perfectly fair flat tax or a really unfair regressive tax.<\/p>\n
Whatever your political leanings, the result is that means middle- and working-class homeowners pay the same rate as the one percenters.<\/p>\n
The result has been huge tax pressure on precisely those families who can least afford it, and on families who are seeing their own quality of life erode.\u00a0 That is a formula for severe resentment.<\/p>\n
And we’re seeing that conflict play out\u00a0 here in the North Country and across the US.<\/p>\n
In Democratic New York state, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s popularity soared after repeated confrontations with public sector unions.\u00a0 Voters in relatively liberal California have also been voting eagerly to curtail pension benefits for public workers.<\/p>\n
One interesting factor here is that a growing number of Democrats are leading the “fight” against public employees and their benefits.\u00a0 This from the Wall Street Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, a Democrat elected in 2006, blamed cuts in city services such as library hours and police staffing largely on rising pension costs. \u2026 \u2018Now that we are getting control of retirement costs, we can cautiously start to restore services,\u2019 Mr. Reed said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel — a former top Obama administration official — is also locked in a pitched fight with public sector workers.<\/p>\n