Obama Tells Governors Public Workers Must Not be ‘Vilified’

President Barack Obama said public employees shouldn’t be “vilified” or lose collective bargaining rights as states seek to balance their budgets.

The president, speaking to a bipartisan group of the nation’s governors at the White House, said that while everyone will need “to give up something” to bring state and federal spending into line, government workers shouldn’t have to bear the entire burden.

The president didn’t specifically mention the battle in Wisconsin between the state’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, and unionized state workers that has sparked protests in Madison.

Walker wants to let public workers bargain only over wages. He also proposes to double their health-care premiums and would require them to start paying part of their pension costs. The minority Democrats in the state Senate have fled Wisconsin to block passage of the legislation.

The fight is likely to spread to other states, including Ohio, which will be a key battleground in the 2012 presidential election. Unions are a prime Democratic Party constituency and the workers in Wisconsin have gotten help from Obama’s political organization and aligned political advocacy groups such as MoveOn.org.

Obama earlier this month called Walker’s proposal an “assault on unions.” Walker stayed in Wisconsin and didn’t attend the three-day conference of governors in Washington.

‘Shared Sacrifice’

In a meeting with governors at the White House today, Obama said “everybody should be prepared to give up something” to solve state budget problems. He said “most public servants agree with that,” Democrats and Republicans.

He called on states to invoke a practice of “shared sacrifice” where “everyone should be at the table.”

“If all the pain is borne by only one group, whether it’s workers or seniors or the poor, while the wealthiest among us get to keep or get more tax breaks, we’re not doing the right thing,” he said. “I don’t think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon.”

He said doing so will make it more difficult to attract the best teachers for public schools or recruit firefighters and police officers.

Obama also used his address to the governors to defend his budget priorities. He said the federal government, like the states, must get spending under control. Still, he said, that shouldn’t be done by cutting spending for education, building infrastructure and encouraging innovation.

The U.S. can’t “sacrifice our future” by trimming in those areas because it will make the country less competitive in the global economy, Obama said.