The economic crisis that this country is experiencing doesn't seem to have any light at the end of the tunnel. In Wisconsin, Gov. Jim Doyle is in the difficult position of deciding what the priorities are for the state budget. Thus far, the two lowest priorities seem to be education and worker contracts.
As part of the emergency plan to correct the crisis, the UW System suffered a $250 million cut. To offset this extreme cut, our governor is proposing to increase tuition across the board by 15-18 percent. But don't worry, students aren't the only ones facing extreme economic pressures; state workers are being targeted as well.
On Feb. 13, the Wisconsin Legislature's Joint Committee on Employment Relations refused to consider contracts for teaching assistants as well as for 30,000 other state employees. The contracts have been in the making for several years now and are long overdue. The Teaching Assistants' Association has been working hard with the UW administration to create a contract acceptable to all, but nonetheless, the committee sent it right back to them and refused to pass it on to the full state Legislature. TAs have been forced to work under an extension of their old contract since June 2001.
State workers are facing the exact same situation, as they were also forced to continue working under the last contract from June 2001. Recently, it has been much easier for the state to ignore the workers' demands due to our economy. However, the state was stalling efforts to settle a contract well before any economic pressures were on the horizon.
Labor and education go hand-in-hand. For a strong and stable society, it is crucial that workers are respected and valued. We need to ensure that workers make enough to sustain a standard of living accepted in American society. This includes all workers--temporary and permanent, blue collar and white collar.
What makes the American society unique among industrialized countries is our disintegration of labor and education. Students are placed on a pedestal and considered to be of an elite intellectual class. There are many factors that play into this, but one is that the cost of education has been consistently rising at a much higher rate than the income of the average household. Workers and students make up the driving force in society. The government's attempt to sweep us aside shows that its priorities lay in the green instead of the people.
The United States ranks 14 out of the 16 industrialized countries in the amount of spending per student for education. But of course, we're No. 1 when it comes to military spending, at $396.1 billion for fiscal year 2003. That's more than the 15 other industrialized countries' military budgets combined.
As war on Iraq becomes imminent, budgets are freezing up and states are confused on where cuts can happen. Sadly, there seems to be a common trend to cut funding for education and for workers before touching top administrators' wages, \corporate welfare"" or military spending. Instead, putting workers' lives in limbo and making TAs feel as though their work is not worth anything, will only create extreme degrees of tension within our society, which will cause severe long-term effects. Long-term investments into worker benefits and wage increases would help stimulate the economy by beginning to pull together the wage gap.
In this struggle, it is crucial for students to help fight for a fair contract for their TAs and the state workers who keep this state running. Uniting in this fight is the only way for students and workers to achieve our goals in lowering tuition and giving workers what they deserve. This Thursday, there will be a state worker rally at 5 p.m. on the Capitol Square steps. I hope that students will realize the importance of labor in our community and join the workers in solidarity.
