Are you following the heated debate over the rights of teachers’ unions in Wisconsin and feeling a bit puzzled by all of the partisan rhetoric?
Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein does an exceptionally good job in this column of explaining the forces that brought the state to this point of high political drama – and why collective bargaining and benefits for teachers and other state employees should not be the focus of current budget negotiations.
Here is how Klein explains what is happening in Wisconsin, and also playing out more quietly in a number of other states nationwide:
“(Here is) how you keep a crisis from going to waste: You take a complicated problem that requires the apparent need for bold action and use it to achieve a longtime ideological objective. In this case, permanently weakening public-employee unions.”
The tactic, then – and it is both an ugly and highly effective one – is to use the budget crises that is the result of a national financial meltdown, to achieve long-term political goals.
If you are a politician who resents teachers’ unions and the political influence that they wield, what better time to hit them hard than when the average voter is fearful about the state budget and eager to see spending dramatically reduced across the board?
This is precisely the political tactic that we see at work in Wisconsin and beyond.
Do most states currently have serious budget shortfalls that need to be addressed? Yes. Are educators and their students inevitably going to have to feel some of the pain of those cuts? Yes.
But that does not mean that teachers should automatically give up their right to collective bargaining. And it doesn’t mean that class sizes should necessarily be increased. Or that after-school programs must be cut.
There are many options for cuts available – and we need to consider all of them, being very aware of the many complex political forces at work behind the scenes.
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