Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wages war on middle class

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's editorial board is waging an unrelenting attack on Wisconsin's middle class.

While supporting an extension of all of the Bush era tax cuts, including for those making over $250,000, it continues to demand more cuts in Milwaukee County workers' very modest wages and benefits.

In a recent editorial the editorial board opinied: Private employees have been required to take pay cuts, furlough days, cuts in their companies' contributions to retirement benefits and have made other sacrifices. They see no reason why public employees shouldn't feel some of the pain. That's one of the messages voters sent Tuesday. Union leaders and county supervisors who fail to recognize that have blinders on.

Surely the MJS editorial board knows that County workers are already saddled with 26 furlough days, an avergae salary cut of $5,000 annually.

And surely the editorial board knows that more than one thousand middle class County jobs have been eliminated, including 65 layoffs last year, contributing to Milwaukee's soaring poverty rate which the board routinely bemoans.

It is gross dishonesty for the MJS editorial board to imply that County employees and other public sector workers haven't made sacrifices because they have.

The MJS editorial board has consistently supported demands for employee concessions by firms like Mercury Marine and Harley Davidson without ever exploring whether the firms' financial position requires these concessions. Now that private sector employees have been forced to accept the destruction of their middle class wage and benefit structures that took generations to build, the editorial board is using these concessions to whipsaw public sector employees into even more concessions.

But to imply as the editorial did that County workers haven't made concessions is either dishonest journalism or misinformed reporting.

Either way, the MJS editorial board is waging a dishonest and one-sided class war against the state's hard working, middle class while urging tax breaks for millionaires.

How much do middle class workers need to give up to satisfy the MJS editors?

How much of a pay cut is enough?

Harley Davidson demands concessions because it can!

Jack Norman, the research director for the Institute for Wisconsin's Future and a former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel economics reporter, asks:

Was Harley forced by market conditions to demand enormous cuts in jobs, wages and benefits? Or was it a deliberate strategy to take advantage of the economic crisis?

His answers suggest that many large corporations are using the threat to relocate to secure significant labor cost reductions not because the market requires them, but because they can.

Norman's analysis is linked here.

Wall Street Values Rock Mercury Marine

The year before the Great Recession, Mercury Marine and its union settled on a new contract indicating that their business model, including the negotiated wage and benefit structure, worked.

Once the recession hit, the demand for Mercury's discretionary product, outboard motors, plummeted.

In past recessions when sales declined, firms laid off their hourly employees until demand picked up. The national unemployment compensation system is designed precisely for such circumstances. It provides the unemployed worker with a weekly check and saves companies money by ensuring their skilled and experienced labor force will return when the economy begins to grow again.

Mercury cynically used the Great Recession to restructure its labor costs and externalize its costs.

It whipsawed the Fond du Lac plant against an offer from right-to-work Oklahoma demanding concessions including a 40% wage cut. The local union that represents the hourly employees initially stood up to Mercury's naked money grab, but under pressure from community and political leaders eventually agreed to the significant concessions.

Mercury's threat to relocate also got the state, Fond du Lac County and the City of Fond du Lac to pony up almost $125 million, $50 million of which will be generated by an increase in the county's sale tax.

Now Mercury Marine is handing out bonuses to all its non-union folks. The Wall Street ethos has come to Main Street.

As union president Mark Zillges says: "Fifty years worth of benefits they took away from these people in one swoop. Now they give themselves bonuses. That's the biggest slap to these people there is...This is not right. It's not right for these people to get rich off the sweat of these other people who just lost it."

For more check out this video: www.620wtmj.com/news/local/84748697.html