They fucking pay 100 percent of their own pensions. Nobody is paying for them except the employees.
They are getting it as part of their pay for the job, correct. The issue being that the employers (tax payers) do not get a say in how much they actually pay. It is being negotiated by what is essentially organized crime. The tax payer pays 100% of the pension, salaries, insurance, benefits for the teachers - the teachers do a job in return for it. This remains the same whether the teachers pay nothing or $5000 for their benefits. Once again - The tax payers pay all the money, the teachers do the work in return for it. No one forces the teachers to be teachers at a certain pay and no one should force the tax payers to pay the teachers a certain amount. How many teachers will quit over this small cut in pay to keep the state from going kaput? My guess is very few to none. What does this mean? This means the rate of pay is still sufficient for the job being done.
If you owned bought a burger place(the state-country-whatever) and you payed a manager to manage your store(president, gov, senate ect ect), and he hired a bunch people to work in your store (teachers, janitors, ect ect ect) for 10 bucks and everything was good, you made money. Then, the people decided they wanted 20 bucks an hour, so they started a union(or joined one) The laws made it so you couldn't hire anyone else and so your choice was pay 20 dollars or close down. What would your decision be? You can
a) Lose money (Deficit Spending)
b) Raise the price of the burgers to the point where no one is willing to pay (Raise Taxes)
c) Fight the pay increase in court and try to get rid of the union. (What Wisconsin is doing)
d) Close down (Bankruptcy)
These are the same choices that the Wisconsin Gov had to make. No one will answer D. Democrats will answer A or B. Republicans will answer C.
Deficit spending and raising taxes are BS and neither of them can continue to happen. Obviously someone chose A or B at some point in Wisconsin's history, and it obviously didn't work, so now they are trying C.
How much is a worker worth? Well, the honest answer is the least amount they are willing to work for. If you can hire teachers for 35k why would you hire them for 40k?
How much is success worth? Well, as much as a person is willing to pay to attain it.
The short and long of it is: If they don't want to work as teachers in Wisconsin making a few percent less, then they should go do something else with their lives.
Also, the 10-20% number that is bounced around by the left for how much the pay cut would be is BS. Since many of you argue that teachers pay 100% of their pensions already and that it is part of their pay, lets look at it your way then! Teachers make 100k a year on average in Wisconsin after all is said and done. They are being asked to pay how much? About 3000. So 3% pay cut. Boo friggin hoo. So lets skip forward to the real issue - Unions being allowed to negotiate with the government for benefits. OK. Lets make it a level playing ground and say:
EVERY UNION NEGOTIATION HAS TO BE APPROVED BY A VOTE OF THE TAXPAYERS FROM NOW ON.
Right now Unions negotiate with elected officials. The issue is that just about every Democrat gets money from the Unions. Then the Unions renegotiate every time a Democrat is in office and get more 'concessions'. If the Democrat was to deny the Unions, then the Union wouldn't support his campaign the next time. So the Democrat does whatever the Union wants. They call it blackmail and the Democrat isn't losing anything from siding with the Unions, he loses by siding with the Taxpayer. That is why each teacher costs 100k a year.
Walker is basically saying "Unions don't have the right to tell us what Benefits to offer any longer" Which makes sense. If you don't like the benefits, find a different job.