"The tea party’s assault on workers"

[applegrove]

The tea party’s assault on workers

by Mike Konczal at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/02/heres-how-red-states-are-rolling-back-worker-protections/?tid=rssfeed

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First, this isn’t just about public-sector workers, a subject that has long sparked political battles. These recent efforts are actually focused just as much, if not much more, on private-sector workers who aren’t in a union. Efforts to roll back everything from minimum wage laws to unemployment insurance affects everyone who works for a wage, and this is where the coordination across states has been particularly intense.

It’s also not just a matter of tighter state budgets. This is crucial to understanding the situation. For instance: 2011 saw the largest one-year decline in the number of state-level public-sector workers since records start in 1955. But the Republican-governed states that were most aggressive in laying off state workers had some of the smallest budget deficits.

The 11 states that went all-Republican in 2010, plus Texas, account for 70 percent of public-sector layoffs. Yet those states account for only 12.5 percent of the aggregate state budget gap. The most aggressive efforts to roll back public-sector workers were in places with strong funding of pensions, like Wisconsin.

And rather than cutting services simply to bring their states into solvency, many of these conservative states immediately tried to cut taxes afterward. Arizona, for example, cut health services and education, eliminated its state-funded pre-kindergarten program, and then immediately cut corporate taxes and commercial property taxes. Texas is moving to do the same things.




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