Workers rights stripped in Wisconsin.

Outbackjack: MADISON, Wis. — Over shouts of protest from Democrats, the Republican-controlled Wisconsin State Assembly passed a bill in the early morning hours Friday that would strip state employees of most of their collective bargaining rights. But there was no sign that a stalemate over the proposal would end, as Democrats in the Senate remained out of the state after fleeing to prevent their own vote on the proposal.


Will the governor's war on public employees' collective bargaining rights sweep the nation?

The 51-to-17 vote just after at 1 a.m. in the Assembly drew boos and shouts of “Shame! Shame!” from Democrats who said that leaders had abruptly cut off debate and prevented more than a quarter of the legislators from casting votes. It came during the second week of sustained demonstrations inside and around the Capitol. Union workers and others from Wisconsin and nearby states continued to protest the proposals backed by the new governor, Scott Walker, a Republican elected in November.

Some Republican leaders in other states have moderated their talk against state employee unions in recent days. But in Wisconsin, Mr. Walker traveled the state on Friday in an effort to put more pressure on the Senate’s 14 Democrats to return from Illinois.

Democrats said the early-morning vote showed that Republicans had little interest in negotiating. They “rushed a vote in seconds, cheating Democratic representatives of the opportunity to vote against this horrible legislation,” said the leader of the Assembly’s Democrats, Peter Barca. “Then they fled the chamber surrounded by armed law enforcement agents,” he said.

Republicans said the Assembly debated the bill long enough during a three-day Democratic filibuster. Mr. Walker said in a statement, “The 14 Senate Democrats need to come home and do their jobs, just like the Assembly Democrats did.”

While Republicans have a majority in the Senate, they are a vote short of a quorum for fiscal legislation. Democrats say they will not return until the governor agrees to negotiate on his proposals to strip unions of power, which include forbidding collective bargaining except for basic wages, and limiting raises to no more than the rate of inflation.

Democrats have already indicated that they would accept provisions that would cut the take-home pay of state employees by diverting money to help finance pension and health care costs.

A spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Administration said the increased contributions to pensions and health care would amount to about a 6 percent decrease in take-home pay for a state employee with a $50,000 income, the average for state workers. Workers would pay more than 12 percent of their health care premiums, up from 6 percent, while 5.8 percent of their pay would be diverted to finance pensions, up from less than 1 percent for typical workers.

A fight over similar legislation in Indiana was stalemated as well, after 37 of 40 Democratic House members walked out, preventing a quorum. B. Patrick Bauer, the House minority leader, said from Urbana, Ill., that Democratic lawmakers would be staying in Illinois through the weekend, and beyond.

Tink: You know what ticks me right off about Wisconsin (and yes, I am going off topic)

The governor brags that their unemployment rate is only 7% and that is well below national levels.

Hmmm, well if their workers didn't work in Minnesota their unemployment levels would be right up there with the rest of us.

Now on topic, Minnesota State workers already pay and contribute to the tune that Wisconsin State workers are being asked to contribute.

Our State employee's are still highly paid (in my opinion) My brother is a State worker.

Sorry, just not feeling bad for them.

Tink: If Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wins his quest to force state workers to contribute more to their pensions and health care costs, he won't exactly plunge the state to the bottom on public worker benefits.

He will put it on par with Minnesota.

Wisconsin's 267,000 public workers pay next to nothing out-of-pocket toward their pensions. State and local governments are supposed to pay half the retirement contribution, with employees paying the rest. But in Wisconsin, many union contracts stipulate that the employer -- which means taxpayers -- picks up the employee's share.

(Star and Tribune)

Wampum6: Outback's post isn't what I would call totally accurate reporting, from the title right on through the c/p article.

franklin1950: follow the money .... union dues .....
who controls the money ? ..... the national/international headquarters.
what is their agenda ..... ?
who are their affiliated to. ?

speaking from experience and observation big union leadership can be as corrupt , self serving and evil as big buisiness or big government .

chronology: Same old story Jack, 'the race to the bottom of the Barrel'. Instead of lowering State Employees Standard of Living, why not 'raise' the quality of life of Private Sector Employees. People should not be thrown into competition with each other to see who can survive on the lowest wage.

franklin1950: what happens when the worker of the world unite .
all the workers of all the world will demand equity with their brothers in america
pay and benifits parady.
all the worlds union brothers rizing to top union wage and benifit .
solidarity for ever
world union demands not met ...... world union strikes.
redistribution of wealth ... eat the rich .
no more piece of the pie ....... the whole pie [[ equally distributed by the union at international headquarters ]
cmfortably retired at 55
god bless the union .

Malobear: Associated Press – Fri Feb 25, 6:33 pm ET
MADISON, Wis. – Wisconsin school districts are warning teachers, each one on the payroll in some cases, that their contracts might not be renewed as Gov. Scott Walker's plan to cut nearly all public employees' collective bargaining rights remains in limbo.
The proposal took a concrete step forward Friday when Republicans in the state Assembly abruptly approved the bill and sent it to the Senate after three straight days of punishing debate and amid confusion among Democrats. But with all 14 Democratic state senators still out of state, another stalemate awaits the measure that Walker insists will help solve a looming budget deficit and avoid mass layoffs.
The legislative gridlock prompted the Wisconsin Association of Schools Boards to warn districts that they have until Monday to warn teachers of possible nonrenewal of contracts. That's because if Walker's bill becomes law, it would void current teacher collective bargaining agreements that lay out protocol and deadlines for conducting layoffs.
New London district administrator Bill Fitzpatrick said he had been authorized by his school board to issue nonrenewal notices to all 180 district teachers, but was negotiating a deadline extension with local teachers union officials to avoid sending the notices en masse.
"It's like going to the doctor and being told you might have some kind of disease but that's the only thing they can tell you," Fitzpatrick said Friday. "This fear of the unknown, of not knowing the future of your livelihood — that's what the people in this building are worried about right now."
Despite the uncertainty created by the absence of the Senate Democrats, who fled more than a week ago to block a vote on Walker's bill, Marshfield kindergarten teacher Jane Cooper said she blames Republicans.
"They are trying to bust our union," Cooper said. "That is huge."
The flashpoint in Walker's proposal is language that would require public workers to contribute more to their pensions and health insurance and strip them of their right to collectively bargain benefits and work conditions.
It contains a number of provisions he says are designed to fill the state's $137 million deficit and lay the groundwork for fixing a projected $3.6 billion shortfall in the upcoming 2011-13 budget.

Malobear: Democrats and unions see the measure as an attack on workers' rights and an attempt to cripple union support for Democrats. Union leaders say they would make pension and health care concessions if they can keep their bargaining rights, but Walker has refused to compromise.
None of the nearly 8,000 members of the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association had received notices as of Friday, although president Mike Langyel said they expected some by early next week. Third-grade teacher Alaura Cook said teachers remained united against Walker's bill, despite his insistence it would save at least 1,500 jobs.
"It's never good when anybody loses their job," Cook said. "But we know in the long run if we keep our rights they could somehow find the money to hire those teachers back."
Among those who already have received nonrenewal notices is the wife of Senate Republican Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a key Walker ally. Lisa Fitzgerald is a counselor in the Hustiford school district, where all 34 teachers have gotten the warnings.
"The layoffs are real," Scott Fitzgerald said Friday. "I don't know if the Democrats understand that. This isn't some game of chicken."
Several Democratic senators said the layoffs threat wasn't enough to bring them back to Madison. Sen. Chris Larson stopped short of calling it a bluff, but said he believes Walker hoped to pit middle-class workers against one another.
"It's quite despicable that he would use layoffs as a political tool," Larson said. "A lot of his tactics are veiled threats. We can see right through them."
Milwaukee elementary school teacher Kelly McMahon agreed.
"There's no reason for him to take my rights away," she said of Walker. "There's no reason for layoffs. He's being more stubborn than some of my kindergartners are."
Walker wasn't backing off Friday, saying at an afternoon appearance in Green Bay that although "we got to find a way to make it comfortable for those 14 senators to come back home," Republicans had no intention of backing off the main tenets of his bill.
Walker himself had raised the specter of layoff notices if the bill was not passed by Friday, contending the state would miss a deadline to refinance $165 million of debt. But the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau said this week that the debt refinancing could be pushed as late as Tuesday to achieve Walker's desired savings.
Tens of thousands of people have jammed the Capitol since last week to protest the measure, pounding on drums and chanting so loudly that police providing security have resorted to ear plugs. Hundreds took to sleeping in the building overnight, dragging in air mattresses and blankets.
Lawmakers have spent multiple nights as well.
The Assembly debate had reached 60 hours, with 15 Democrats still waiting to speak, when the vote started around 1 a.m. Friday. The voting roll opened and closed within seconds. Democrats looked around, bewildered. Only 13 of the 38 Democratic members managed to vote in time.
Republicans marched out of the chamber silently. Democrats rushed at them, pumping their fists and shouting "Shame!" and "Cowards!"
Assembly Democratic Minority Leader Peter Barca called the tactic an underhanded trick later Friday. He said his staff was exploring whether the vote was legal but that it was too early to say whether Democrats could challenge the result.

Tink: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) and his proposals to deal with the state budget deficit have drawn criticism from President Obama. Ed Schultz of MSNBC's "Ed Show" is now reporting from Madison as if he were on Tahrir Square, and protesters are comparing Walker and the GOP to mullahs, Mubarak, Mussolini and Hitler. Targets drawn on the governor's face? Who knew that liberals did that sort of thing. So much for civil discourse.

The ghastliness that has provoked such loathing boils down to this: Walker proposes to make state employees pay into their retirement program (they now pay nothing), increase their share of their health insurance payments to 12% (they now pay 6%), and restrict their rights of collective bargaining to pay, not benefits.

Public employees earn more than their private-sector counterparts. This is true from Washington on down. Federal employees earn an average of $120,000 in pay and benefits, double the private sector average. The disparity is less at the state level, but in Wisconsin the average full-time state employee earns over $70,000 in pay and benefits, about $15,000 more than the average private-sector employee.

Public workers are quick to point out that they are better educated than their private counterparts, and when you adjust for education, they actually make slightly less. This ignores the fact that most of those public workers at the state level are school teachers. If it's unfair to compare college-educated and high school-educated workers, it's also unfair to compare education and engineering majors. All college degrees aren't the same. State and Federal governments absorb more than their fair share of "soft" degrees.

Tink: In the bleak fiscal landscape of our nation's future, public sector pay isn't really the problem. It's those benefits. Public employees get defined-benefits retirement programs, while the vast majority of private employers offer defined-contribution programs. The former guarantee you a certain level of income; the latter collect set contributions from employees with no guarantees of any particular return. In the case of Wisconsin's public employees, defined benefits come with no contribution from the workers—none at all—years and decades of income for free, or if you prefer, for the extra income those teachers and sociologists could get if they worked for private firms in Milwaukee and Green Bay.

Some public employees in New York and California are retiring at 50 with $100,000 pensions and more. In some cases they get these pensions after only a few years on the job, though it's rare to become vested with fewer than ten years of service. Unfunded public pension liabilities across the country are at the very least in the trillions of dollars, the numbers varying hugely depending on how strict the accounting standards you apply happen to be. According to the standards businesses use, it's estimated they double our national debt. These pension liabilities are a loaded gun aimed at every statehouse in the country, at hundreds of cities and thousands of towns.

Asking public sector employees in Wisconsin to contribute a 5.8% of their pay into their pensions (the national average for the private sector) is probably the very least the state's taxpayers should ask. Asking them to pay 12% of their health insurance costs (about half the national average for the private sector) is also a minimal demand. Neither seems sufficient provocation to compare Walker to Hitler or pretend that Madison is Cairo.

Most of us would be delighted to get what the Wisconsin public employees will be offered under Walker's plan. We don't empathize strongly with people who get raises during recessions (as Federal workers have) and who get retirement benefits that we have to pay for. We shouldn't begrudge public workers a decent wage and a fair pension, but public workers are only a privileged class in places like Egypt and France.

When President Obama reminds us that public-sector workers are our neighbors and friends, he might remember that we're their neighbors and friends, too, and fair goes both ways. The private sector can't carry the public sector in the style to which it's becoming accustomed. It will have to start carrying itself. And the irony of that will surely be lost on the revolutionaries in Wisconsin.

(Washington Post)

chronology: Tink. Try getting your facts right before you Post long opinionated and patronising Posts.

'Fact' Taxpayers pay nothing for Wisconsin State workers Health and Pensions. Out of every dollar that is paid in Pension to Wisconsin State Workers 100 Cents comes from the Workers Paycheck.

The Health and Pension Benefits are paid for by a 'Deferred Payment' Plan. In other words, workers accept a lower wage in return for a Pension and Health Plan thrown in with their Wage deal.

End of story.

Tink: Hmmm, I would ask my fellow readers who they think is more credible, the Washington Post, or Chrono?

My above Statement was from the Washington Post dated Feb 18, 2011

davidk14: .

Um...Washington Post or Chrono...hummmm.....ahhh....ummm....I would have to side with the Washington Post. But I would love to see Chrono's reference materials. Can you do that Chrono? Thanks.

.

Wampum6: I'm going in with David.

chronology: Now why would a fanatical Zionist like David put sooooooooo much faith in the Washington Post? Could it be the owner?

Well anyway, the facts I got were from Forbes Blog. Not that that would mean anything to David. In his parallel Universe only facts that support his arguments are facts.

davidk14: .

Chrono,

You were cut and pasting from a blogger? Who?

And at this time, I trust the reporting from the Washington Post and even Al Jazeera more than you.

And name calling is not sexy at all Chrono you silly, silly man.

.

Outbackjack: I see as usual Wampum has nothing to contribute and just seeks to have a go at the messenger.If the workers rights are not being stripped then what would you call it Wampum?

Maybe they just flew away?
Maybe the workers decided to give them away and offered to pick cotton instead?
Maybe the workers decided to work for free?
You figure.

I have always considered collective bargaining to be a compromise.I favour pattern bargaining.Having worked with(and negotiated) both pattern bargaining and collective bargaining there is no protection left for workers to collectively organise when these rights are stripped away.

Egypt,Tunisia and Libya today but as your economy crumbles and the rich get richer and the poor get poorer will it be America tommorrow?

Outbackjack: Even the cops are supporting them!

BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!!

More than 100 police officers showed their solidarity with union protesters in defiance of Governor Scott Walker.

The Wisconsin police have entered the fray at the State Capitol building in Madison -- and in dramatic fashion. More than a hundred police officers entered the Capitol today and joined up with the hundreds of protesters who have waged demonstrations in the building for a week and a half.

According to the Understory:

From inside the Wisconsin State Capitol, RAN ally Ryan Harvey reports:

“Hundreds of cops have just marched into the Wisconsin state capitol building to protest the anti-Union bill, to massive applause. They now join up to 600 people who are inside.”

Tink: So what would you like to see happen Jack? How would you fix it?

I don't think any State can afford to lose more teachers and I also don't think that any State can afford to pay union members benefits the same as it has been in the past.

Outbackjack: The workers should have the right to collectively bargain otherwise our industrial work landscape will start to resemble the Dickins Victorian age.

Tink: They get to keep their bargaining rights in everything except health and pension benefits. They are not being asked to give up everything when it comes to bargaining.

Tink: Even at that they will still maintain better health care and they will actually have pensions. Something that the private sector doesn't even have access too.

Private sector pays close to 25% of their wage for medical benefits. Pensions are a thing of the past for the private sector.

davidk14: .

"Bonuses and paid Medical coverage by the employers in the private sector not too long ago used to be a part of the "compensation package" connected to the salary package. Due to the economic climate, both of those have dried up but salaries did not increase so consider that a pay cut...a huge pay cut. Businesses did not do take away those “benefits” to "increase their bottom line", they did it to stay in business.

.

Outbackjack: Health and pensions would be very important in the U.S.

In Australia ALL employers by law must contribute 9% of the gross employees wage towards supperannuation (rising to 12% in a few years) which is accessed on retirement.

25% of wage on medial benefits???
This truly is shocking!
We pay 1.5% of our wage (compulsory) on a medicare levy which ensures universal healthcare for everyone.

At 25% someone is making heaps of money somewhere and it is obviously at the expense of the sick and injured which I find truly disgusting!

It is sad that these workers are forced to fight for these rights that every Australian(union or non union ) takes for granted.
But I truly understand why they have to.

Wampum6: Well, Jack, in this instance, the messengers are not the best sources of information! Compensation and pension benefits for many Wisconsin workers are totally out of line, compared to other workers in that state. The cause of that is attributed to the manner in which salaries and pensions are administrated now. It isn't working! Something needs to be done to prevent throwing good money after bad. The proposition that has been offered is a way to address the matter, and get things going in a reasonable direction. Similar problems exist in a number of other USA states, and those conditions also need attention!