WISCONSIN SENATE STALLS VOTE
ON GOP GOV’S ANTI-UNION PACKAGE
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer
MADISON, Wis. (PAI)—Even among this year’s new wave of Republican governors, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker sticks out for his anti-union anti-state worker legislative package. But his proposals, due for a vote in the GOP-run state legislature on Feb. 17, went down the drain that night in the state senate.
That’s because the 34-member Senate, which is 19-15 Republican, needs 20 senators for a quorum to conduct business – and all the Democrats walked out.
The walkout brought to a screeching halt Walker’s efforts to jam through a package of pay cuts, health care cuts and attempts to turn historically progressive Wisconsin into a right-to-work state. Huge protests for days on end in Madison, and protests elsewhere statewide opposed Walker’s plan. He wanted it by Feb. 22.
Walker’s plan has caught so much flak that even Democratic President Barack Obama denounced it, in a Feb. 17 interview with a Madison news radio station. The Catholic archbishop of Milwaukee, in a state with many Catholics, urged compromise.
"Some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin, where they're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions," Obama told the radio station. He praised public workers’ “enormous contributions” to states and cities. “It’s important not to vilify them,” Obama added.
Walker’s package, unveiled in early February and enclosed in a budget bill, would limit unions representing state and local workers to bargaining on wages – as long as the final figures don’t exceed the rate of inflation – but not benefits. Walker would also make dues payments voluntary and enact “paycheck protection,” outlawing voluntary labor campaign finance committees’ donations to political campaigns.
Walker claims his moves would help close a 2-year $3.6 billion budget gap. The legislature’s joint budget committee approved his budget plan on Feb. 16, 12-4 and the GOP-dominated Wisconsin House did, too, the next day. The Senate balked.
Walker’s moves are in line with anti-union agendas of other GOP governors and legislatures nationwide, but go farther. In Ohio, new GOP Gov. John Kasich questions pay and pensions for state workers and wants to yank collective bargaining rights for home health care aides. Indiana GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels and the GOP-run legislatures in Minnesota, Missouri and Michigan are considering right-to-work laws.
Even before Walker officially unveiled his package, which he forecast in his inaugural address after saying not a word about it in the 2010 campaign, top Wisconsin union leaders warned the anti-worker anti-union blitz is bad for the state.
At a Feb. 16 mass protest in Madison, union leaders said Walker was stripping workers of both their right to collective bargaining and to decent living standards. Mass protests in Wisconsin reminded other observers of Cairo, and the AFT president in Madison compared Walker to overthrown dictatorial Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
“It is politically fashionable at the moment to attack public workers and their unions,” state AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt and AFSCME Council 48 executive director Rich Abelson wrote in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “At the county, city, state and national level, it is easier to look for scapegoats than to offer real solutions that will create good jobs, increase the tax base and get our economy going again.
“Rhetoric that demonizes public workers, seeking deep cuts without recognizing the reality of deep consequences, does little to balance the books and even less to make sure that vital services are delivered consistently and well,” they added, in a column provided by the Milwaukee Labor Press.
Walker’s cuts would mean hardship not just for state and local government workers and their families, but for all state residents, the two leaders added. They said “public-sector unions help ensure all citizens receive good value for their tax money.
“We all must be vigilant, lest our public services cross the line from lean and mean to frail and ineffective,” they said. “Union negotiations are the most democratic way to make sure that government workers have the tools and incentives that they need to do their jobs properly…No one, with the possible exception of a few shortsighted politicians, benefits when the relationship between public workers and taxpayers becomes adversarial.”
Walker’s proposals set off protests all over Wisconsin before the vote, prompting Walker to threaten to call out the National Guard against public workers. One protest was in Wausau on Feb. 12, and hundreds of University of Wisconsin students marched on the state capitol on Feb. 14 to show solidarity with the state workers on campus.
Leaders of unions representing Teamsters, machinists, electricians, construction industries, teachers, University of Wisconsin employees and nurses spoke at a press conference the same day, and 14,00 showed up for the Feb. 16 hearing. Teamsters representative Danny McGowan said Walker declared war on unions. “Even if you don’t like unions, surely we all can agree that anti-freedom attacks that deny public employees the right to negotiate a fair contract are outrageous and wrong,” Abelson said. ###
