Scott Walker’s War on the Middle Class

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has made a mess of Wisconsin's economy.  His next mission?  To create a similar mess on a national level and to continue the GOP's war on the middle class.  Walker, like most in the GOP feigns concern over the declining prospects of middle America yet continues to push policies that will accelerate the downward spiral for most of us.  A piece in Salon looks at the damage wrought in Wisconsin that Walker wants to take national.  Here are excerpts:

The Washington Post returned to Wisconsin this past weekend to empty union halls and a depressed workforce. The public employee union law – which barred contract negotiations on everything but base wages and limited annual salary increases to the rate of inflation, forced most unions to collect their own dues rather than having them deducted automatically by the state and mandated annual recertification of affiliates – has been more successful than even its supporters hoped.

In the state where public employee unions got their start, public workers see no need to stay enrolled, since unions cannot by law effectively advocate on their behalf. Membership in the Wisconsin affiliate of the National Education Association is down one-third; the American Federation of Teachers dropped by one-half; the state employees union fell 70 percent.

There are fewer public employees working, too, even though Gov. Walker claimed that the passage of the anti-union law would save jobs. The Wisconsin Budget Project finds that the ratio of public employees to total population is at its lowest level in at least two decades.

That will only continue if Walker gets his wish to turn Wisconsin into a right-to-work state, an effort being undertaken right now in the state Legislature.

[A]ccording to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, median household income in Wisconsin is $51,467 a year, nearly $800 below the national average. And it has fallen consistently since the passage of the anti-union law in 2011, despite a small bounce-back nationally in 2013. The Bureau of Economic Analysis puts Wisconsin in the middle of the pack on earnings growth, despite a fairly tight labor market with a headline unemployment rate of 5.2 percent.

This actually undercounts the problem a bit, because it doesn’t cover total compensation. For example, in the wake of the anti-union law, public employees lost the equivalent of 8-10 percent in take-home pay because of increased contributions to healthcare and pension benefits.

Moreover, the meager earnings growth that has come to Wisconsin has mostly gone to the top 1 percent of earners.  

[A]s Larry Mishel wrote in the New York Times yesterday, “the erosion of collective bargaining is the single largest factor suppressing wage growth for middle-wage workers over the last few decades.” And Wisconsin provides a salient example of that.

[Walmart] like most businesses, makes changes that benefit workers only when its reputation is threatened and poor publicity ensues. That means that worker voices play a powerful role in wage growth.

Scott Walker has taken that voice away from public unions, and effectively the entire Wisconsin labor movement, which finds itself crippled. That has real consequences for middle-class wages. Since Walker wants to bring this policy menu to the rest of the country in 2016, people on Main Streets outside of Wisconsin should take note.