Post by Chris_Wendt on Mar 2, 2011 15:10:31 GMT -5
There is so much news centered on Wisconsin that I thought it would be helpful to distill it down to a few manageable and easy to grasp pieces.
The Budget Repair Bill features the following:
Retirement
Now the coup de grâce: Labor leaders have been touting protection of their collective bargaining "rights" under the Federal Wagner Act, The National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Unfortunately for them and their defensive position, they failed to read the Wagner Act, else they would have noticed:
Fairly amazing developments in the offing.
Please don't shoot the messenger over this post, which is intended to enlighten, rather than to advocate.
Chris Wendt
- Wisconsin has a serious fiscal deficit
- The Wisconsin Budget, based on current law, would require excessing 21,325 government workers.
- Under current law, the WI budget requires 5.8% pension contribution and 12.6% health insurance contribution from government workers other than police and fire departments.
- Contains a Property Tax Cap of ZERO percent, except for net cost of new construction, for two years.
The Budget Repair Bill features the following:
Retirement
- Requires participating employees to contribute one-half of all actuarially required retirement contributions as determined by the Employee Trust Funds Board.
- Prohibits covered employers from paying any employee-required contribution
- Police and Fire Departments excluded from pension changes
- Limits collective bargaining to the subject of base wages.
- Limits base wage increases to a percentage no greater than the percentage change in the consumer price index, unless a larger increase is authorized after local referendum.
- Prohibits collective bargaining on matters not permitted under the Wisconsin Municipal Employment Relations Act.
- Requires an initial certification election in April 2011 to determine whether a majority of bargaining unit employees still want to be represented by an existing union. If a union receives less than 51 percent of votes actually cast, the union would be decertified at the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement. Thereafter, certification elections of organized public-sector employers would be held annually.
- Limits union contracts to one year in length.
- Prohibits covered employers from collecting union dues through salary deductions. A union would have to collect its dues money directly from employees.
- Allows employees to stay in a union without paying union dues.
- Eliminates collective bargaining for employees of the University of Wisconsin System, UW Hospitals and Clinics Authority, and certain home-care and child-care providers.
- Allows numerous new charter schools, especially charter schools started by campuses of The University of Wisconsin
- Removes requirement that Charter School teachers be certified teachers; only requirement for Charter School Teachers would be a Bachelor Degree.
- Requires that all reductions in debt service be used for property tax relief.
Now the coup de grâce: Labor leaders have been touting protection of their collective bargaining "rights" under the Federal Wagner Act, The National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Unfortunately for them and their defensive position, they failed to read the Wagner Act, else they would have noticed:
" The Act does not apply to...federal, state or local government workers...."By now, the governors of several states and the mayors of many large cities (including New York and New York) have read the Wagner Act, and are aware that there is no federal protection for collective bargaining for state & local government workers, which, alas, is not a "right" after all. Here in NY, only the Taylor Law extends collective bargaining ability to state and local government workers.
Fairly amazing developments in the offing.
Please don't shoot the messenger over this post, which is intended to enlighten, rather than to advocate.
Chris Wendt