Check this video out from Wisconsin Eye, courtesy of the Wisconsin State Journal, showing just how eager Republicans were on Friday to strip 50 years of collective bargaining rights away from public workers.
How eager were they? So excited that they decided to move Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill toward final passage without waiting for Democratic lawmakers to even enter the chamber and vote.
Amazing. Unprecedented. Insulting. Disgusting.
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Not surprisingly, Gov. Scott Walker rejected a compromise that would have delivered the budget savings he was seeking from public employees … showing once and for all that this whole debate is about union busting, and little else.
From the Journal Sentinel story:
“Gov. Walker has repeatedly said that we won’t negotiate the budget and we can’t balance the budget on a hope and a prayer,” Werwie said in the statement. “That remains true. State and local government need the flexibility to manage this and future budget crises. In addition, as government workers pay a modest amount toward their pension and healthcare premium, about half the national average, it is fair to give them the choice of additional savings on their union dues.”
Oh, so now the issue is more than just giving local governments the “flexibility” and “tools” they need to balance their budgets (tools we don’t need). It’s about giving public workers “the choice of additional savings on their union fees.” Sure.
Why can’t the governor just say that he wants to end unions in Wisconsin? I’d respect him for admitting it.
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Public employees, including teachers, will apparently agree to Gov. Scott Walker’s request of benefit givebacks if Walker and legislators agree to take the removal of collective bargaining rights off the table.
That’s according to State Sen. John Erpenbach, a Middleton Democrat, in today’s Journal Sentinel.
This is a fair, common sense compromise that should win the support of lawmakers. Of course, I highly doubt it will.
Walker and Senate and Assembly Republicans are out to bust the unions, plain and simple. What they’re seeking to do is about 10 percent “budget repair” and 90 percent sticking it to the unions. I just wish they would admit it. At least that way it can be an honest debate.
At this point, both sides are so entrenched that compromise seems a distant dream.
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I respect South Milwaukee State Rep. Mark Honadel.
I just happen to disagree, strongly, with his position on Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting plan.
Honadel was quoted in a story on WTMJ-TV a few days ago. From it:
Rep. Mark Honadel (R-South Milwaukee) could certainly hear the voices from his office, but they are unlikely to change his support for Walker’s budget plan. “They are going to pay a little more for their health care, but by golly, they’re still going to have a pension, unlike 80% of my friends in the private sector who lost their business or their company went belly up,” Honadel said.
Of course, a vote for Walker’s plan is more than just a vote for benefit givebacks (which I’d support). It’s also a vote to put an end to collective bargaining rights for public workers in communities across the state.
Walker told the Journal Sentinel in an interview on Friday that he is simply giving local governments “the tools to control their own budgets” and “flexibility” they need to deal with looming cuts in state aid.
He added: “I know as a local official, collective bargaining time and time again was the thing that stood in the way of local governments and school districts being able to manage their budgets.”
Really? We’ve managed our budget just fine while preserving collective bargaining rights. Now, it’s not been entirely pain free, but we’ve done it.
We did for the past two years with the help of our public safety unions, who, recognizing the financial situation of the city, agreed to no pay increases in 2010 and a 2 percent pay increase in 2011, as well as increased health insurance contributions.
And we’ll do it again in 2012 … hopefully with the partnership of our unions. Unions are not the problem. They can be part of the solution.
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Common Councils across the state are preparing resolutions against Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to trivialize unions while at the same time cutting pay and benefits for public workers.
Check out a roundup of resolutions from the League of Wisconsin Municipalities here. And expect to see more added to this list in coming days and weeks.
It’s especially interesting to see others raise the same primary concern I do: The loss of local control and local say in how we negotiate with our unions. This should be something we decide, not Madison politicians.
As I’ve said, I don’t have major issues with the governor seeking givebacks on pay and benefits from unions, as long as they are negotiated. And many union workers, I’ve read, are in agreement.
My complaint, like the complaint of others, is with over-reaching to also strip unions of their rights going forward. Walker and Republican lawmakers have no business ramming that type of bill through the legislature in a matter of days.
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Update: School Superintendent Rita Olson has informed me that the School Board did indeed approve contracts for five of its unions on Wednesday. The deals still need to be ratified by each union. I will keep you posted when I get more details.
The South Milwaukee School Board is working to approve union contracts with teachers and other represented employees ahead of new restrictions on organized labor coming soon out of Madison.
Check out the Journal Sentinel story here. From it:
In South Milwaukee, Superintendent Rita Olson said her school system does not have a tentative agreement with its unions yet, but she hopes the board might be able to make offers that would be accepted by all of its employee bargaining units at the Wednesday meeting. She said the sides have been negotiating for a long time and are not far from settling anyway.
“We want to offer a voluntary settlement before everything goes into effect,” Olson said of Walker’s proposal.
School administrators have been told that Walker’s changes would go into effect immediately and affect any unsettled contracts.
I am anxious to see what kind of contract settlement is reached, if one is at all. I will keep you posted.
In the meantime, I commend the district for its willingness to work with its union employees in the 11th hour to get a deal done that I’m expecting will be fair. It goes back to the crux of my argument on this issue: Let local units of government decide what’s best when it comes to how they bargain with their unions and what they bargain for.
Let the School Board and school unions, in this instance, hammer out a contract how they see fit.
There is simply no room for the governor and state legislature to get involved here … except, of course, when the goal is to decapitate public sector unions, which is Scott Walker’s ultimate aim in this whole charade.
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I support unions and their right to collectively bargain. Let me start by saying that.
Are unions perfect? Of course not. I have my share of concerns about how some unions operate and the tactics some of them use … and I do not support every reform they propose and every position they take.
Still, in the end, I believe in unions and believe strongly that workers should have the right collectively negotiate a fair and equitable contract with their employers when it comes to wages, benefits and work rules.
Knowing that, of course I have big problems with Gov. Scott Walker’s union-killing effort announced on Friday, a plan to gut organized labor under the guise of fixing the state budget. The proposal is draconian and mean-spirited, more political payback than sound policy, as it unfairly vilifies the workers who deliver the services we use every day and wrongly dictates to local governments how we should do business.
So, yes, I think his plan is bad for the state.
But, more importantly, I think his plan is bad for South Milwaukee.
At its core, I hate the fact that Walker is telling us what to do. He and the legislature should leave us alone and let city leaders – all local governmental leaders across the state, for that matter — decide what is in the best interest of our community.
The answer? It’s not. Walker and state lawmakers should stay out of our business.
I hope many of my readers will at least agree with me on that point, no matter what you might feel about Walker, unions and what path the state should take to solve our budget crisis.
But, to me, this is much more than an argument in theory about local control. Walker’s proposal will have real negative impacts on how our city is run.
Will South Milwaukee save money on employee costs under his plan? I’m anxious to see the numbers, but I assume we will, especially because these changes will impact all city employees, not just unionized ones. Keep in mind that we typically pass the same wage increases and other important benefit changes on to our non-union workers that we do to our represented ones, so union worker restrictions are really restrictions on all employees.
At what cost do these savings come?
Consider, for instance, the linkage between pay raises and CPI. Consider what we would basically be telling our employees should the legislature pass Walker’s plan: No matter how hard you work, no matter how sound the city’s finances are, no matter the economic outlook of the city, you will never receive a pay raise higher than 2%, give or take a few bucks.
What message does that send to our hard-working city employees, the people who make the city go, the people who plow your streets, pick up your garbage and keep the city safe? What message does that send to the people who teach our children?
And how will that message resonate if and when these workers consider their future in the public sector vs. employment in private industry?
Of course, that’s just one concern I have with Walker’s plan. There are others, such as the proposal that public safety unions, the same unions who supported Walker during his campaign, be exempted from many of its provisions. This sets up a “have and have nots” scenario pitting employee vs. employee, where one class of workers receive more favorable treatment (not to mention wages and benefits) than the others. This benefits no one.
Then there is Walker’s plan to require yearly union certification and no longer require public workers to pay dues to their unions – two tried and true union-busting techniques that have nothing to do with fixing the state budget and everything to do with Walker’s vendetta against organized labor. The fact that Walker even included these provisions in his proposal at all show the real aim of his “budget fixing” plan more than anything.
Indeed, this much is clear: Walker is out to put unions out of business.
However, I urge you to keep in mind who these public workers are. They are your friends, your next-door neighbors, the people you sit next to at church. They are taxpayers. They are us … and they should not be made scapegoats and political commodities by elected officials who on one hand espouse small government and on the other impose new, unfair and unwelcome regulations on how local communities run their operations.
How hypocritical.
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The Capital Times, in an editorial, is calling for former State Sen. Jeff Plale to step down from his new state post following his admission that he was actively seeking a job in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration when he cast a controversial vote against new state labor contracts.
From the editorial about the one-time South Milwaukee legislator, a Democrat, and new state facilities director.
Plale, whose actions as a Democratic legislator frequently raised ethics concerns, voted as Walker wanted on a definitional issue — approval of state employee labor contracts. That vote saw Plale, traditionally a labor-friendly legislator, vote against unions and their members; as such, it raised questions about whether the legislator was tailoring his votes to appeal to a potential employer.
Those questions are all the more serious because of a failure on the part of Plale to act in a minimally responsible or transparent manner.
“Yes, just to be clear …” notes Journal Sentinel columnist Dan Bice, “Plale was actively seeking employment from Walker when he voted against the union contracts — something Walker wanted him to do — in last month’s lame-duck (legislative session). He did not disclose this at the time.”
Plale should have made that disclosure. And he should have recused himself from the vote on the contract — and on any other vote that might have been of interest to the administration with which he was seeking employment.
Plale’s failure to take these basic steps may be a matter for further investigation by prosecutors and ethics watchdogs. But he has an immediate responsibility to the voters of the state to acknowledge that his misconduct disqualifies him from serving in the Walker administration.
If the former senator does not make that acknowledgment and step down, then Walker will need to remove Plale.
What do you think? Should Plale step down, or should Walker remove him?
Vote in the poll on the right-hand side of this page, and post your comments below.
I admittedly am torn here. As I’ve said, I agree with his vote on the union contracts. Yet Jeff was clearly wrong not to disclose his efforts at gaining employment on Walker’s team while making that vote. At the very least, he owes everyone an explanation.
The Journal Sentinel has more details on Jeff Plale’s new position in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration, including quotes from Plale himself, here.
From the story:
Plale told No Quarter that Walker’s team did not come to him offering a post in state government.
“I turned in my resume to the transition team shortly after the election, had an interview a couple weeks later and was hired this Wednesday,” he said in an e-mail.
Yes, just to be clear, that means Plale was actively seeking employment from Walker when he voted against the union contracts – something Walker wanted him to do – in last month’s lame-duck session. He did not disclose this at the time.
While I’ve stood up for Jeff on his hiring, the fact that he was under consideration for a job with the new regime during the time he was voting on issues impacting his potential new boss should have been disclosed. He was wrong not to do so.
That said, I still think I would have voted the same way on the union contracts issue.
For starters, I don’t believe any substantive legislation should be passed during lame duck sessions like this, especially this lame duck session, after which voters had spoken so strongly against the party in power.
And there’s the whole spring-Jeff-Wood-from-jail-so-he-can-cast-the-deciding-vote-in-the-Assembly thing. That was just wrong, an example of politics at its worst.
Let me be clear: I supported the new contracts. They seemed more than fair, and overdue.
But I am also not one to believe that the ends always justify the means. While the end result here — new union contracts for state workers — would have been positive, the means to get there were nothing short of disgraceful. In other words, I couldn’t have held my nose long enough to cast a “yes” vote.
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Update: Here is the Journal Sentinel story.
Jeff Plale, the former Democratic State Senator representing South Milwaukee and current 4th District resident, has apparently landed a job in Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s administration.
Here is The Associated Press story, and here is even more from the Wisconsin State Journal.
Congratulations to Jeff. I respected him as a legislator, and it’s unfortunate how some are spinning this story as Jeff being “rewarded” for his vote against new state worker union contracts in December. As I’ve blogged about, I agreed with his vote on that issue, especially given how the vote went down.
That said, Jeff and I didn’t agree on everything (we agreed more often than not), but I think he was a strong voice for the South Shore and South Milwaukee while in Madison. I hope newly elected State Sen. Chris Larson has just as strong a voice. Only time will tell.
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Update: Plale explains his vote in this BizTimes.com story.
State Sen. Jeff Plale is making his presence felt before he leaves office.
The South Milwaukee Democrat — who lost to incoming Sen. Chris Larson in the senatorial primary in September — was one of two Democrats to vote against controversial labor contracts for state workers late Wednesday night.
The other was Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker.
All Republicans joined Plale and Decker in voting “no” and, with one senator absent, the contracts failed to pass on a 16-16 vote (after passing by one vote in the Assembly). That means Gov.-Elect Scott Walker will have an opportunity to reopen those contracts when he comes into office in January.
Here is the Journal Sentinel story.
From springing a lawmaker from jail to secure a necessary vote to deposing legislative leadership at the last minute, the “inside baseball” involved here is about as ugly as it gets.
Of course, I’d like to know your opinions about how this all went down, including Plale’s vote. Post your comments below.
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