...on Wisconsin

[Chris_Wendt]

Developing story...

Wisconsin Republican Senators are reportedly negotiating by phone with the absent Democrat Senators to get the Democrats to return to the state and vote on the Governor's punitive Budget Repair Bill. If they do not return and vote, then the current law budget process will kick-in and the tens of thousands of layoff notices will start going out to public sector employees across the state.

The Democrats cannot defeat the draconian Budget Repair Bill. What is being discussed is an alarming compromise, reportedly:

• Pass the Budget Repair Bill, as-is
  
• Amend the Budget Repair Bill to allow for bargaining over health and safety issues in union contracts (in addition to only bargaining about wages)
  
• Change recurring union certification elections from the proposed annual cycle to a 2-year cycle.

"Alarming" is my own word for this, perhaps a bit over-the-top. But, it sounds like this is going to happen, based on "reports". It will be difficult for me to grasp how this could happen, if and when it does.

Deeply intrigued at the increasing possibility of history in the making,

Chris Wendt

[sadpharmd]

Chris,
I respectfully disagree with your characterization of the Wisconsin bill as "punitive". Anybody in Wisconsin can just as easily say that the current law is punitive to anyone not associated w/ a PSU. Would that be fair?

I would however characterize it as SERIOUS. Which begs the question.. As a nation, how serious are we? We're about to find out.

Good read: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/24/AR2011022406520.html

Steve

[Chris_Wendt]

You are correct, Steve. I actually struggled with using the word 'punitive' or the alternative, "retribution". I am glad you called me on "punitive", because that would depend on where a reader was coming from, which is often not the same place as the writer.

I think there are features of the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill which have nothing at all to do with repairing a budget, or repairing anything else. Those features are apparently, from my perspective, retribution by the authors of the bill against the traditional concept or construct of collective bargaining:

• mandatory decertification elections without the normally required employee-initiated petitions to hold a decertification election
  
• mandatory re-certification elections on a prescribed periodic basis (1- or 2-year cycle)

Forget whether you or I agree with those two facets of the bill. They are so reactionary (read, taken in retribution) as to engender a lasting hatred of those provisions and to empower long-lasting and widespread resistance to ending collective bargaining for state and local public sector employees in other places, including New York State.

Then you may expect follow-on federal legislation in Obama's second term or Hillary Clinton's first term that will inculcate collective bargaining for teachers as a "right" by amending the Wagner Act to remove the existing exclusion of state and local government workers from the protections of the National Labor Relations Act. To every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction, but not always at the exact same time.

Pushing too hard, as I perceive the Wisconsin political leadership to be doing, taking retribution instead of just making fiscal repairs, and they should expect to get pushed back, equally as hard, eventually.

Do not take what I have here written as advocating, either for ending collective bargaining for teachers, or, for including collective bargaining for teachers under the Federal Wagner Act, or, for whomever may elected President.

For us, let's sit back and watch the show!

Chris Wendt

[lilly]

::::pulling up a chair and grabbing a fistful of popcorn to watch::::