Wisconsin Repeals Public Employee Collective Bargaining Rights
About 50 years ago then Wisconsin Governor Gaylord Nelson was the first governor to enter into collective bargaining with public employees. Tonight the Wisconsin Senate stripped from the bill passed by the Assembly those provisions which were non-fiscal and dealt only with collective bargaining rights of public employees, Then they passed the bill 18-1. The fleebaggers got wind of this but could not make it back in time. Legal Insurrection is running a live feed.
Reportedly the unions are meeting to consider a general strike.
UPDATE:
The Weekly Standard offers this description of what the Senate voted on:
Update 7:38 p.m.: Wisconsin senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald confirms in a statement that the bill passed includes both the collective bargaining provisions and the requirements for state workers to pay more for their pensions and health insurance premiums:
“Tonight, the Senate will be passing the items in the budget repair bill that we can, with the 19 members who actually DO show up and do their jobs. Those items include the long-overdue reform of collective bargaining needed to help local governments absorb these budget cuts, and the 12 percent health care premium and 5 percent pension contribution.
Original post here:
According to Wisconsin GOP sources, the state senate is moving towards a vote tonight on the budget repair bill–without senate Democrats present.
The legislation being voted on tonight has few changes from the bill as initially proposed. It would save just $30 million less than the original budget bill by stripping out a refinancing provision. But it would still save the state $300 million over the next two years by requiring state employees to contribute about 5% of income toward their pensions and by requiring state workers to pay for about 12% of their health insurance premiums. It would also save $1.44 billion by requiring public employees in school districts and municipalities to pay 5% of their salaries toward their pensions and by removing collective bargaining for benefits, thus giving school districts and municipalities the option of requiring their employees to pay about 12% for their health insurance premiums.
UPDATE:
From Matt Miller
Thanks to this bill — which doesn’t touch any of the civil service protections afforded public workers, nor any private-sector unions — public sector workers will have a choice over whether to join a union. Thanks to this bill, public workers who elect not to join a union won’t be forced to pay dues anyway. Thanks to this bill, elected officials won’t be negotiating away taxpayer dollars the people who finance their campaigns. So, naturally, the Democrats call it the the undoing of fifty years of “civil rights.”
“Reportedly the unions are meeting to consider a general strike.”
v.
“Your assertion that the Commissioner was wrong cannot justify the wrong of leaving the city unguarded. That furnished the opportunity; the criminal element furnished the action. There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, any time. … I am equally determined to defend the sovereignty of Massachusetts and to maintain the authority and jurisdiction over her public officers where it has been placed by the Constitution and laws of her people.”
– Telegram from Governor Calvin Coolidge to Samuel Gompers — September 14, 1919.
Excellent! The fleebaggers played political brinksmanship and just fell off the cliff.
score a big one for responsible, accountable government
This is fantastic news! I am delighted. Fleebaggers, you deserve to be tarred and feathered when you return…it is enough to know that your attempt to hold the government hostage has failed. You gotta hate that the other party is learning to beat you at your own game.
…and the rich just got richer. Governor Scott Walker and many of his 18 Republican colleagues in the Senate (besides Schutz) just committed political suicide.
Did they? Only time–and the next election–will tell.
Better make another donation to OfA quick, so they can orchestrate the astroturfed recall petitions.
By the way, speaking of the rich, did you know that AFSCME (that’s American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) President Gerald McEntee made around $480,000 in 2009?
And NEA (National Education Association) President Dennis Van Roekel made nearly $400,000, along with 31 other NEA employees who pull down over $200,000 a year.
But, hey, keep supporting those rich people that get rich off your union dues.
Source: http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2964/
Is it some kind of leftist tick or something that when anything they do not like happens they automatically blabber about the “rich?”
now the Sentators of the Fed govt should take all federal funing from Wi and ruin them all
Oh really? Should the Fed take funding away from the other 20-some states that don’t have collective bargaining for public employees too?
Nah; it’s obvious from your post that the unionized teachers don’t spend that money on teaching, so its loss will only ruin them.
We the people have been here before under the King of England.
Today teachers, fireman, police etc. rights taken, whose rights will be next?
Who are these people who do not understand what’s at stake (everyone’s rights)?
Where do you work, for whom?
You will be targeted next.
They did this in Germany…they did this in the beginning of our country(England’s rich),divide and
will we have to retake our government back from these dictators?
Recall all of them!
Hopefully The courts will uphold the rights of the workers!
This will be over turned.
Piffle.Hyperbolic and ill-informed, For most of our history public employee unions were not allowed and when they were they were not permitted to strike. John Kennedy by executive order first permitted federal employee unions. The federal government employees still have no right to strike.Wisconsin was the first state to allow them–under Gaylord Nelson. For a cogent explanation of why the Wisconsin bill is essential, here’s the Governor’s op ed in the WSJ.
Quite so, Ms. Feldman.
Collective bargaining is not a right, it’s a privilege. Privileges that are abused are eventually lost.
The government has NO rights, it only has powers that WE the people grant to it. Tonight, WI took away the power of the government to bargain against the tax payer. The government should not be allowed to DEMAND money from the tax payer, and then hold up services until the tax payer gives into those demands. That’s called tyranny. The people create the government to serve THE PEOPLE. The people dictate terms of service, not the government. Anybody crying over the fact that the government has lost its “right” to lash out against the tax payer, is a FASCIST. Fascists were people who believed that the people served the government, not the other way around. Fascists were people who believed the government made demands, and the people had to go along with them. Fascism was defeated tonight in Wisconsin!!!
We the people are not losing a thing. We the people are the folks the public sector unions have been looting.
You want to be a we the people? Get a job, get out of public employment and be a private citizen.
Especially clerical types and degreed professionals have no business or right to engage in collective bargaining when they are employed by a municipal, county or state government agency, if for no other reason that they are exempted from the Federal Labor Law. But, obviously, there are other resons why employees paid by public funds should not be allowed to collectively bargain and should NEVER be allowed to conduct a labor action.
You people screwed the pooch on this one, and that is why your house of cards is tumbling down. Your unions funnel your dues to bribe elected officials, almost exclusively Democrats, to get you your salary scales and defined benefit plans; that the bribes are in the form of political contributions makes them doubly reprehensible.
We the people are pulling your collective snouts out of the tax trough. Get used to it.
PS: For public employees that provide vital services, such as firemen, policemen, EMTs, and the like, pay and benefits should be fair and commensurate with the risk they take on our behalf, provided that they do not betray the public trust as the Capitol Police and the Sherrif’s department did in Madison. A no strike clause for these employees must be a basic condition of employment.
For the rest of you, I suggest you reconsider your delusion that your worth to we the people is even a fraction of what you think it is.
You know what they say about stuck pigs.
I hear an awful lot of squealing right about now.
Dearest John, The repeal of a statututorily created entitlement is not the taking away of rights. Are you a Milwaukee public school graduate? I thought so.
Of course said Wisconsin Democrat Senate deserters are already accusing Republicans of “hijacking democracy” by not allowing them to participate in the proceedings. It is to laugh, what infants. Actual democracy is anathema to Democrats, could it be possible for this party to be more inappropriately named?
ROBBER BARONS ARE BACK! History repeats itself, but most of the conservatives I know do not read but get their marching orders from the pulpit. Manufacturing jobs have gone south, there is the extinction of family farms, deregulation, and now a desperate workforce.,and WI has unlimited natural resources such as “white gold” (water)..ripe for the taking. Yes Wisconsin is “Open For Business” for forcible rape that is!! …ASSHOLES..WAKE UP…you are nothing but worker ants now. Your dad and granddad fought so you could have a better life…who fought for you 80 years ago?…The paper mill owners? the coal mine owners? the automakers?? Wisconsin and America is the NEW CHINA, INDIA, BANGLADESH.