State Employees for Doyle

In recent weeks, leaders of several state employee unions have made a substantial financial commitment to re-elect Jim Doyle. This is ironic (but not coincidental) in light of Doyle’s demand that their members take a substantial pay cut over the next two years.

Here’s how it will work. In May Doyle announced that all state employees would have to agree to take 8 un-paid furlough days a year, for the next two years, which comes down to a 3 % pay cut. His line was that the furloughs will contribute $224 million toward resolving the state’s $6.5 billion deficit. If the unions didn’t agree, there would be consequences.

State employees immediately spotted this as bullshit. First, over half of state employees and over 70 % of University employees are paid from federal funds or grants, or through their own work in revenue-generating programs. Cutting the hours of these people won’t save the state a dime. In fact, the result will be a modest decrease in state tax revenues as these folks earn less.

For other state employees--those working in prisons, the DD Centers, mental health and medical facilities and the like--furloughs will actually increase labor costs. These institutions have legally-mandated minimum staffing levels and staffing has been bare bones for years. Even before furloughs, when someone called in sick another employee was required to pull a double shift—at time and a half pay! The net effect of furloughs for these workers is that they’ll be putting in roughly the same number of hours in a year, but an additional 8 days of that will be at time and a half.

Obviously, this occurred to Doyle and his people too. But his was a political, not a budgetary, calculation. Other Governors were furloughing state employees so he, by god, was going to do it too. It may not make economic sense, but beating up on state employees always plays well up in the Fox Valley.
Now, one might think that the unions would get together and make a stink. If nothing else, they could launch a campaign to expose Doyle’s furlough fraud. Tell the voting taxpayers across the state that they are being manipulated by a cynical politician.

But Doyle’s press release wasn’t even cold when the leaders of the two major state employee union federations started selling the plan to members. Furloughs were necessary, they said, in light of the unprecedented state deficit. And about all the unions could do is insure they were administered as fairly and painlessly as possible.

One of our more paranoid members suggested that the rapidity and uniformity of union leaders’ response to Doyle’s announcement suggested that they had advanced notice and may even have coordinated what they were going to say. Such are the workings of the fevered mind.).

Maybe a union campaign to expose the fraud wouldn’t have stopped the furloughs. But it would have made Doyle pay a political price. And, if nothing else, it would have made him and those who follow think twice before using unionized state employees like a piñata.

Outsiders may have trouble understanding why the union tops took a dive for Doyle on this one. But if you’ve been around awhile you understand that the first task of most union leaders is to elect Democrats. Doyle was our guy in the last election and, pretty much regardless of what he does, will be in the next. So it wouldn’t do to rile up a bunch of state employees and the voting public over something like a little political fraud. Better to help him stick it to the membership. It’s just a matter of priorities.

And for those unionized state employees who will be taking the 3% hit (and it won’t be everybody), you may take comfort in the fact that you are making a material contribution to Doyle’s political career.