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Wisconsin governor's recall unites public safety workers
Pro-labor movement buttons are displayed outside of the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker changed his state's collective bargaining laws, it galvanized one unlikely group: police, firefighters and corrections officers.
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Kai Ryssdal: There's no tension left in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, hasn't been for a while now. So if weren't for the state of Wisconsin, there wouldn't be much to pay attention to in tomorrow's last major round of primaries. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is up against a much publicized recall election after he changed collective bargaining rights for public employees last year. Among those employees? Now-disgruntled police, firefighters and corrections officers.
WBEZ's Niala Boodhoo reports from Madison.
Protesters singing: Well I've got a hammer, and I've got a bell and I've got a song to sing all over this land...
Niala Boodhoo: This sing-a-long happens at the Capitol building in Madison almost every workday. It grew out of the biggest protests that started last year. Inside today's crowd, like many days, there are a few off-duty firefighters and police officers -- including Madison Police Detective Brian Austin -- who's actively working to vote Gov. Walker out of office.
Brian Austin: What this guy did is he came in and basically, you don't have a voice, you are servants of your employer and you don't have a voice at the table anymore. And that is not what, those do not reflect the values of our state.
Basically these days, when Austin's not on duty, he's working on the recall. Austin said he's never been this politically active.
Jim Palmer says the governor's actions have created a whole new level of activism among rank-and-file police officers. He's the executive director of the state's largest police union.
Jim Palmer: If you had told me a year ago that we'd be able to get 200-300 law enforcement officers to protest the Capitol or conduct a sleep-in to prohibit or sleep in to prevent the Capitol from being closed down, I would have said you were crazy.
The funny thing is, Walker never intended to have police and firefighters against him. When he wrote the laws last year, public safety workers were deliberately excluded from what was basically a dismantling of the state workers union. The changes forced state employees to contribute more towards pension and health care costs.
Then, last summer, when the state budget passed, it had language that gave cities leeway to force those same changes on public safety workers. And now there are a slew of lawsuits across Wisconsin over police officer pay.
Mahlon Mitchell: I always say that Scott Walker is the best galvanizer, ever.
That's Mahlon Mitchell. He's the head of the state firefighters union -- and tomorrow, he may be the next lieutenant governor. Mitchell's also a firefighter in Madison. He told me he always intended to spend his entire life as one. Mitchell says Walker has changed that -- not just for him, but many of his co-workers.
Mitchell: Speaking from a firefighter standpoint, we talked about three or four different issues. I always say it's the gays, guns and God. Well they realized that it doesn't matter about those social issues right now. Let's vote on issues that affect our pocketbooks, affect our hours, affect our wages and affect our working conditions.
Mitchell likes to point out that in the 2010 election, nearly a third of union members voted for Gov. Walker. Paul Wright was one of those voters. But he thinks the governor...
Paul Wright: Turned around and stabbed us right in the back.
Wright's been a state correctional officer for 24 years. And for the past year he's made about $900 less a month because of how much more he pays towards pension contributions and health care.
Wright: That would be a nice truck payment, you could buy a house with $900 a month.
Wright says that $900 means his son can only afford to attend community college instead of the University of Wisconsin. The day we spoke, Wright had on a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt -- but he pulled it up to show me a red "Recall Walker" T-shirt underneath.
He has five of those T-shirts, so he can wear one every day of the week.
In Madison, Wis., I'm Niala Boodhoo for Marketplace.
Wow! Marketplace is a finance show, right? Did anyone hear about property taxes going down? Check Zillow and you will see it in many places. Scott Walker is trying to make the state unions more like President Obama's federal unions...which limit their power but everybody thinks feds have it all too well. So then if the feds are on a gravy train what about state workers and teachers where unions have all that power? Oh, by the way a look at seven pages of PolitiFact Check on statements during this recall shows that democratic and union leaning comments have 51 false statements to the Walker camps 31 false statements; 21 true for the democrats and 24 true for the Republicans. Guess who had the most "Pants on fire" statements? Yes, democrats and unions. It's truly great that Marketplace, which generally leans slightly left, fell off the left coast with this story! Kai himself tries to keep center but this story, the day before the election, and with no financial slant takes the cake. Shame on Marketplace. Will a retraction or apology be along sometime?
Wow, what a completely transparent hit piece the day before an election. I would have expected more from Marketplace. Interesting that a show about numbers couldn't be bothered to actually cite any, like the 3.6 billion dollar deficit hole Walker closed, or the fact that in some recent polls he's up by as many as 12 points. Thankfully, the people of WI are proving smart and sophisticated enough to see through the hype.
This was a REALLY disappointing report. I was waiting for a balanced story that gave the perspective from the other side and couldn't believe it when the story ended. I'm sure you're not informing anyone with a pulse in Wisconsin as to what the opposition is to Govenor Walker - but to those outside of the state, it paints a completely one-sided picture and did not tell the whole story. And on the off-chance that a voter in WI was undecided, it seems a crime to deliver a story like this on a night before the election. I expect better from Marketplace.
As one of the subjects of this piece, I want to clarify a couple of points. Police and Fire unions were EXEMPT from Act 10, and it was clear upon reading the bill that we would be one of the few groups to retain our collective bargaining rights. Governor Walker's strategy was to divide and conquer labor, and it failed miserably. He anticipated that we would simply say "thanks, but we have ours" and stay home to avoid a fight. What we did instead was to stand in solidarity with the good, hardworking people affected by this bill, and we marched side by side with hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites through the snow to speak out against this terrible legislation.
Tomorrow will be the day when we find out if the people can overcome the power of money in our political system. However, no matter what happens tomorrow, David Schuster is reporting that Governor Walker is the target of a federal criminal investigation. It is likely his legal troubles will continue far after tomorrow's election. Wisconsinites have to decide if they want to return a man to office who will likely follow the path of Nixon after the 1972 election, this time without the benefit of Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution.
Brian Austin
Another thing, David Schuster is another wild-eyed, spittle-flecked radical leftist, who would throw around some innuendo to try and damage Walker, and later say it came from an unnamed source, if he even said that.
"David Schuster reporting", indeed.
Most journalists are in the tank for the dems and everyone knows it.
I got to think if they could have gotten to Walker, they would have done it by now. Though with Holder in the Justice department, I will concede they can probably find some false charges if they try hard enough.
Governor Doyle is the one who should be under federal criminal investigation, not Scott Walker. You have a vested interest in keeping this criminal enterprise going, as it benefits you and your fellow public union thieves. Doyle (was) and the public unions, especially the teacher's unions in WI, are all complicit in ripping-off the taxpayer.
No rank and file taxpayer that is not part of your corrupt syndicate can possibly believe that it is in their best interest to have the state collecting union dues and depositing them in a union bank account so that the union can buy more democrat legislators who are <guffaw!> "bargaining" with the people that are funding their political careers.
You and your fellow travelers have been getting away with this stuff for way too long. Hopefully, tomorrow you go down.
Wisconsin needs a 1% property tax cap, and fair, challenge-able assessments. Once that is in place, the public union crooks and takers can't get up to much mischief. How about that lawman? Sound fair? I doubt you would like that much, but the taxpayers would love it. Maybe we can get people to march around the square, pushing for a 1% property tax, blowing horns and stuff.
Could this piece possibly have been any more biased & pro-union? Wow. You interview three guys who have an obvious personal financial interest in keeping the union gravy train going, and then you expect us to believe that represents the mindset of the average taxpayer in Wisconsin? Are you kidding? This time you didn't even make an attempt to present the other side of the story. How dare you manipulate & distort public opinion like this! Wisconsin, like NJ has suffered from decades of public employee unions who bribe our Democratic legislators into promising things we can't possibly pay for. Finally, a guy like Walker stands up for the average taxpayer, who pays a big chunk of his private-sector paycheck toward healthcare & benefits, and you can't even see fit to present both sides? Shame on you.
We are supposed to feel sorry for these guys? Forget it, they have been in collusion with the Dems for DECADES, feeding off the taxpayer.
What needs to happen is what they did in Indiana - set the property tax at 1% of valuation, and then make it easy to challenge the valuations, which is necessary in the county that Madison is in, due to all the democrat influence.
Basically, de-fang them - take away the ability to screw the taxpayer. Then the taxpayer can rest easy, knowing that his rate is set and permanent.
We will see tomorrow, if this is what the people want.
