NEGOTIATIONS

NEGOTIATIONS,

Had to laugh, (ruefully) about the Green Bay, Wisconsin city hall meeting 3-22-11 and the related story in Wednesday's GREEN BAY PRESS GAZETTE edition. It is true that most of Green Bay city labor agreements end December 31st. 2011. Count them, 15 labor contracts with city workers, that's right folks, city employees are represented by 15 different unions, mostly with different desires, working in different sectors for.....us, the tax payer.

I call what Green Bay has with regards to it's labor force "the splinter effect." Please somebody tell me how effective a voice you can have when it's coming from 15 different places, with 15 different sets of working concers, 15 different wage desires and 15 different and unique divisions  of services offered to the community.

Collective bargaining was granted to public workers in 1959 in Wisconsin. Through the years, employees and municipalities made concessions and gained advantages each in his own way. Sometimes the outcome of the bargaining process favored the worker, other times, the city. And sometimes the outlandish was asked for and won. Do you know how much it costs the city to allow fire departments to use fire trucks to be taken grocery shopping?

Has the unionization of city workers been in the best interest of Green Bay and the tax payer, absolutely not. Unless you call a city worker being allowed to work overtime the last several years of his employment with the city for the purpose of  PADDING HIS RETIREMENT BENEFITS. That's just simple unadulterated abuse, not only by the worker, but by the supervisor allowing the practice to go on.

Like a guy working in the private sector said, "the gravy trains over, time to anti up and pay your fair share." The unions are a necessary evil, something that we all need to tolerate, a checks and balances type of process to guard both union and non-union workers alike. Unions do get their members seeming better benefits and decent pay for their services, there is no doubt about that.

However unions protect non-members as well, keeping the threat of unionization always a possibility in the workplace. Unless you trust your current employer to always treat you in an honorable manner, with fairness and respect. Why do you think unions cut better deals, and don't give me this crap about mafia enforcers, they get good deals through (collective bargaining).

Lost however in the process over the years has been an inability of our elected officials to monitor the unions and the requests asked and  granted through contract negotiations. The concept of a union representing a group of workers is not novel, or a revolutionary idea. Workers have been attempting to gain a representative voice for hundreds of years in some form or another. It happened the very first time a group of cave-men hunters figured out that they needed somebody to lead the hunt and why it wasn't a good idea for one guy to try and spear a dinosaur, they (collectively) made the kill and each benefited for the food.

How Green Bay's splintered effect has shaped city workers has been a predictable process, especially when you deal with 15 different organizations and not even dealing with the two most important, police and fire, oh wait, I forgot, they are critical services and also two of the most powerful unions in the state and who is stupid enough to fiddle around with law enforcement and fire protection, especially at election time.

I have a simple and logical solution to the issue that has raised it's ugly head, workers pay what Governor Scott "Sleepy" Walker proposed with regards to health and retirement benefits, keep collective bargaining and monitor with a five member non-paid un-affiliated board of review, (no attorneys allowed.) These members could be picked from a phone book for all I care, they would have to be a home owner and a resident of the city of Green Bay.

This year we will see another mayoral election and it looks to me as if current mayor Jim "Shadow" Schmitts and challenger Patrick "Pretty Boy" Evans will stagger into the fall throwing barbs at one another in the usual political arena that has become our process. Budget and tax rates are the only real issues that need to be considered, not jobs, city mayors don't create jobs, it's not their job. Their job should include good sound negotiations with regards to union worker contracts. City workers have never had a strong position of collective bargaining, they can't strike, the ultimate threat by a worker.

Scott "Sleepy" Walkers position, from the start, was to bust the unions of Wisconsin, those who are surprised by his actions obviously didn't read his bio. What we need is for us to pay attention, get involved and to be a part of the process, we have sat on our hands way to long.