Somewhere in Northern Illinois

Funny that Democratic state legislators, seeking to avoid being captured in their state capitals and being forced by local marshals back to their legislative chambers to vote on un-popular anti-union legislation, have found refuge in one of the states with the worst overall deficit and unfunded pension problems: Illinois. Faced with Republican majorities in both houses with Republican governors waiving their signing pens, these refugee senators first ran from voting sessions in Wisconsin, which threatened to emasculate public union collective bargaining forcing cuts most in healthcare and pension benefits, and were soon joined with legislators with comparable quorum issues from Ohio and Indiana.

Oddly, with the legislature still in Democratic hands, Illinois is also headed by a Republican, Pat Quinn, who mused: “We believe in hospitality and tourism and being friendly… I also believe in unions.” Fourteen Wisconsin legislators, switching hotels as fast as they are discovered, were soon joined by the Indiana contingent: “[By February 23^rd,] most of Indiana’s 40 Democratic state representatives were living in rooms (‘plain but all we need,’ in the words of one) at the Comfort Suites in Urbana, Ill., about 100 miles west of the state Capitol in Indianapolis. Wisconsin’s Senate Democrats were preparing to mark their first full week, on [February 24^th], somewhere in northern Illinois.” New York Times, February 23^rd. Hey, Illinois is handy, well-situated and easy for family and friends to maintain supply lines.

With unfunded state and local pensions, where numbers range from $1 to $3.5 trillion dollars depending on whose numbers you believe, how to deal with these costs has become an issue that has catapulted more than one governor to the state capitol. Whether federal bankruptcy laws will be amended to cover states, or states will simply breach their contractual obligations to vested pensioners to former public employees, or states will at the least have to create a going-forward program of reduced benefits and longer tenures required for retirement, something’s gotta give.

Wisconsin is hardly the state with the worst budget deficits, and it is ironically the place where collective bargaining was born, but folks like newly elected Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker, who basically campaigned on this cost-cutting issue, are digging in their heels despite massive protests on the state capitol steps. “Under Walker's plan, most public workers - excluding police, firefighters and state troopers - would lose bargaining rights for anything other than pay and would have to pay half of their pension costs and at least 12 percent of their health-care costs. Walker, who to ok office [in January], says the emergency measure would save $300 million over the next two years to help close a $3.6 billion budget gap.” Washington Post, February 25^th. While the State Assembly is ready give Walker his wish, the State Senate Democrats refuse to return, and provide the necessary quorum, to allow the inevitable vote against public unionism.

There seems to be a perverse sense of delight at the Democrats’ conundrum, and the Governor is going to make sure those minority senators suffer: “For now, these senators say, most people from their home districts still seem supportive, and their families, if confused as the days dragged on, still seemed patient. But pressure is mounting: Those left in Madison this week, supporters of Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to limit collective bargai ning and cut benefits, agreed to a brand new rule about paychecks. Direct deposits to senators’ bank accounts are now barred for anyone who misses two or more days of the legislative session. Those who wish to be paid their salary must collect their checks in person, on the Senate floor… Democratic Party leaders in Indiana volunteered to pay for legislators’ hotel stays, but some of the Wisconsin senators said they were on their own, using discount travel Web sites in search of deals every time they moved to a new hideout.” NY Times. Wisconsin appears to be taking a harder line that Ohio and Indiana, where compromise is in the air.

In Wisconsin, Tea Party voters are reveling; they are getting their way. And secretly, across the board, many of those in the private sector whose pensions were seriously eroded by the market collapse or whose company benefits were replaced by ERISA-insured benefits when their companies and the underlying pension funds fell apart, are feeling a bit less pain as they may be joined in their suffering by those whom they considered to be fat cats with cushy pensions (the average public pension is somewhere around $19,000, and most public employees are not covered by Social Security). Public employees without college educations tend to do better than their private counterparts in pay and benefits, but college educated civil servants tend to do worse… although the results are skewed all over the map.

What’s really going on with this bubbling anti-unionism, even as a majority of Americans seem to support the right of such employees to bargain collectively? Bottom line: Folks really hate suffering alone. George Skelton, writing for the February 24^th Los Angeles Times, explains: “But [these public pension tussles are] merely a symptom, it seems to me, of a gradually declining lifestyle for working stiff Americans — blue and white collar, college educated or not. Except for the super-rich, our financial well-being has become chillingly shaky in the global economy and downright scary during the great recession.

“There's cheap labor overseas and job-killing technology at home… Private-sector workers have been taking it on the chin for a decade or more: Future pensions frozen for current employees and eliminated for new hires; retirees at the mercy of risky 401(k) plans and Wall Street. Plus layoffs and elimination of retiree health benefits… Now it's the public sector's turn to suffer, in the eyes of many in private enterprise. It's sort of an American civil war between government and non-government families.” [Italics added] Suffer, suffer, suffer – is this the new American way for the once middle class?

I’m Peter Dekom, and every time I watch us slip a notch, I nervously look over my shoulder at China.