The End for Unions in America?

One would certainly hope so. Given a choice, no small business owner in America would deal with a union. Unions killed America’s auto industry, and public sector unions are responsible for the horrid state of public education in the U.S. It’s unions that are the root cause of the bankrupt state of cities and towns across America. All must be decertified and cleansed from the American landscape. Wisconsin is a model for how to purge the union horde and put a state back on sound fiscal footing. Here The Wall Street Journal lays out the Scott Walker success story. Americans have a perfect template for statewide fiscal responsibility. Follow Scott Walker. Follow Wisconsin. It’s just that simple.

One of 2011’s biggest political stories was the conflagration in Wisconsin over Governor Scott Walker’s plans to reform the state’s relationship with public employee unions. Two years later the fires have ebbed. Reason? Many union members are deciding there’s little point in belonging to a union.

Witness the city of Kenosha. This month the Kenosha Education Association was decertified after it missed a deadline in the certification process, eliminating its ability to bargain for wages. That was the latest in a series of similar decisions by teachers-union members to jettison union representation. In 2011 and 2012, some 13% of 207 Wisconsin school districts and 39 municipal and state units were decertified.

Under Governor Walker’s 2011 union-reform law, a majority of union members have to vote each year to recertify the union as their representative. If less than 50% of members vote to keep the union and pay union dues, the union effectively loses its ability to bargain for wages. A spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state affiliate of the NEA, said recently, “It seems like the majority of our affiliates in the state aren’t seeking recertification, so I don’t think the [Kenosha union] is an outlier or unique.”

That’s a remarkable repudiation of union representation in a state long considered a stronghold. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that since Mr. Walker’s union reforms became law, state unions have lost tens of thousands of members, as workers opt to drop out of the union.