This is a minor diary. A rant. A chance to get some stuff off of my chest. But since I have your attention, I'd like to keep it for a couple minutes.
My wife is a Wisconsin public employee. Though she is a union member, she is not part of a union shop, she is an Associate Professor at a UW system university in which union members are a tiny minority (for now). She is very good at time management, one of the most organized and efficient people I have ever met. She is diligent, honest and thoughtful to a fault. If I worked with her I wouldn't trust her since I would figure she was hiding something awful. But she's not. She's just really that conscientious, that devoted, that hard working and that kind.
Scott Walker is going to cut her take home pay by $4100 per year. And even in the compromise the Democrats offered, this would not be diminished one dollar.
During the school year, when she is getting paid, she works 45-50 hours a year. During the summer when he is either not getting paid or getting a small bonus for teaching a 3-credit class. she works 20-30 hours per week. If you are an academic, this is not a surprise. If you are not, it may be a surprised to learn that it's hard to find the time to get significant research done during the school year if you want to give substantive feedback to your students and work less than 60 hours a week.
The teabaggers consider her a high-living bloodsucker as she wrestles, at 11pm, with the exact right manner in which to give feedback to a student who is struggling to understand a key concept but is time and again missing the main point. It is bizarre to me that somehow people think that since they pay taxes, they are experts on compensation for public workers. Compensation is tricky. Having owned my own business, I know all too well that there are both market forces and personal narratives that effect the right compensation for any individual. Sometimes you can get away with paying someone less than market value because they are young and ambitious. Sometimes an employee with financial demands will need more than the market justifies. With low-skilled workers, having few options, the employer holds the upper hand, fair or not.
When you get someone who came in as a young, carefree person trying to make a name and then you fuck with them after they have a bit more at stake and also a bit more international recognition for their work and you haven't even given them raises that get them ahead of inflation, you are tempting them to leave, Scott Walker. I would hate to leave Wisconsin, but why on earth should my wife (and there for I) stay here when what would have been a decision to leave for a $5-7k pay increase becomes a decision to leave for a $9-11k pay increase.
Scott Walker promised to create 250k jobs. Good luck with that, Scott. I need a part time job. You will need to create a $35k rather than $25k per year part time job for me now in order to keep us from leaving. You have just stripped my family of our entire annual discretionary budget and left us with nothing but housing, food, clothing and other basics. Wisconsin already has a brain drain problem. It has just been exacerbated. The UW system, already lagging, has just become noncompetitive in the national market as of the day this passes. And for those of you who think this might not pass, get real. The only aspects that are negotiable are the union busting arts, which are, I agree the most important, but are only the worst parts of an egregious bill that didn't have to be. As others have pointed out, a state beer tax equivalent to the national average would have closed the budget hole. And my household would have still been hit hard. But at least we'd know where we had to cut back.
As a Christian, I must also mention that however this may effect my family, we'll get by okay. For custodians, lower level office staff and other folks currently making $10-15/hr, these cuts will turn their worlds upside down. A flat out 9% across the board salary cut would be much more fair, but this is a regressive cut. This will be 20% cut in take home pay for the lowest paid full time state employees. There will be many who will need to move or take on (hard-to-find) part time jobs. Yeah, I am depressed when I think of the effect this will have on my family, but I am furious to the point of rage that there are other families that will have their homes ripped from them and/or their entire family time ripped form them. There are people who will literally be forced to find different jobs rather than simply choosing that route as the best of unpleasant options.
Okay. I have vented. It feels weird writing personally about a political issue that has such a personal aspect. I always felt strange reading about the personal impacts of the Iraq War or the various pieces of anti Gay Marriage referenda and legislation. But now I know that sometimes you can't help but mix the personal in.
One positive thing I must comment on though is the size of the crowd in Madison this past Saturday. Whether it was 70k, 80k or 100k, it was like nothing I had ever seen at the Capitol before. The mood was firm but hopeful. I am convinced that with this energy, a compromise may be reached that preserves basic rights to unionize. I am even more convinced Walker will be a half term or at most one term Governor. Alas, much damage will be done in his limited time and I will be feeling that damage in a more personal way than I ever have any right wing crap ever before. It's never okay to stay home on election day folks. I suppose everyone at Daily Kos knows that, but I am wondering if I should find other venues for this sort of story.