Support Your Fellow Citizens – Support Wisconsin Workers!

I’ll have more on this later, but for now go read Steve Benen’s post about it.

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February 17, 2011 - Posted by ExtremeLiberal | Politics | Unions

17 Comments »

I think it’s disgusting how Obama can criticize Walker’s “assault on unions” only weeks after freezing the pay of federal employees.

Comment by frank | February 17, 2011 | Reply
It’s one thing to freeze pay but quite another to take away the right to collective bargaining. You wingnuts have some weird fantasies that unions actually still have power.

Comment by Extreme Liberal | February 17, 2011 | Reply
E.L
It seems here in Michigan we might experiencing the same thing with governor nerd.

Comment by Johnny C. | February 17, 2011 | Reply
- Ain’t it the truth, brother. I suppose he can’t be any worse than Engler….can he?
  
  Comment by ExtremeLiberal | February 17, 2011 | Reply
Ed Shultz criticized Obama for not getting involved enough but isn’t that government over reach of power? I mean if Obama went to Wisconsin and made speeches would that be a good or bad thing for him?

Comment by Jeff | February 17, 2011 | Reply
- I saw that on Ed last night too and almost wrote about it, but decided that my digital ink would be better spilled on supporting the people of Wisconsin instead of nitpicking Ed’s usual strange idea of what a president should and can do about local and state issues.
  
  I think the president did speak out as much as he should have yesterday. The other weird thing about Ed’s rant is that unions ARE the Democratic Party and they were out in the streets in huge numbers in Wisconsin. He seems to separate out the people who make up the Democratic Party, the people, from the politicians within the party. There is some sort of mental block going on there, maybe one of you can explain it to us.
  
  Comment by ExtremeLiberal | February 17, 2011 | Reply
  - just read that the democratic lawmakers have left the state of wisconsin and boycotting the vote.
    
    Comment by Jeff | February 17, 2011 | Reply
  - The Democratic Texas legislators all left the state in 2003, camped out in Oklahoma motels, in protest over Tom DeLay’s redistricting Texas Congressional Districts AFTER it had been done after the 2000 Census. Gov. Perry sent Texas Rangers to Oklahoma to arrest and bring back the Democrat lawmakers in essence, “in chains” so that a quorum could be achieved in the State Capitol. However, Oklahoma had a Democratic governor who would not allow Texas police to come into his state to kidnap legislators!
    
    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,86820,00.html
    
    Comment by Grant in Texas | February 17, 2011 | Reply
Now we have another governor who says enough is enough. He is not eliminating benefits he is just asking for teachers to pay a little of the cost. That same policy is in effect in most businesses for both union and non-union workers. The people who get everything for nothing is our elite politicians, course they retire with full pay and full benefits after one term.

Comment by atlanta ralph | February 18, 2011 | Reply
- My union negotiated with the university and we are all paying more for our health insurance and I’m dealing with it. But we can still collective bargain, which is what the unions are really upset about. Sure, they aren’t happy about having their health care raised, who would be? But even two Republican’s in WI are working on a modified plan to retain the collective bargaining rights. That is the big issue as I see it.
  
  Comment by ExtremeLiberal | February 18, 2011 | Reply
  - Many states don’t have Union strength at all. In Texas, only a few of the largest school districts (like Houston’s) even have collective bargaining. I worked in a district with only a couple hundred teachers and only about a half dozen of us even belonged to the AFT teachers’ union.
    
    Comment by Grant in Texas | February 18, 2011 | Reply
  - I agree they should not eliminate any provisions in the collective bargin process and I think that is where it will end up, thats the reason the call it negotiated collective bargin.
    
    Comment by atlanta ralph | February 19, 2011 | Reply
Texas State Teacher Retirement has notified me that my monthly net pension has been reduced by $40 to near $800 per month in 2011. Social Security maintains the $427 I received last year. So I am expected to live on little more than $1200 A Month. If I had to rent, you cannot find a decent apartment in Houston for less than $800 a month unless you want to live in a crackhead ghetto with bars on your windows and drive-by bullets parting your hair. So I am left $400 a month for food, clothing, utility bills, drug copays and other copays when Aetna doesn’t quite cover a bill. My 2004 car is paid for now but there is still insurance, gasoline, maintenance, license fees, etc.

THANKFULLY, I once had a healthy stock portfolio and can still sell stock (most always at a loss) to get by. But not everyone inherited from parents like I did. I am sure there have to be retired teachers here in Texas living close to homelessness. I cannot see Gov. Perry and the Republicans cutting pensions any more.

In Texas we get an average of the last 3 years we taught, divided by 3. After 15 years, I had worked up to $39K per year so my pension is $13K.

Comment by Grant in Texas | February 18, 2011 | Reply
It is my understanding that elected officials can be recalled in Wisconsin. The elected official has to be in office at least one year, so that excludes Gov. Walker, but there are 8 Republicans who have been in office more than a year. A petition drive must be started in those districts and the amount of signatures needed varies as it is a percentage of votes received, but in most districts would be about 15 to 16 thousand. Any body from Wisconsin who could start this?

Comment by Lady Lib in Texas | February 18, 2011 | Reply
- Recalled!! -the only one who should be recalled are these ridiculous DEMS in Wisconsin who ran away and are not showing up for work. They should be FIRED!
  
  If this tactic were used by the Republican in the federal government to deny Obama Care from being voted on you LIBS would have been screaming bloody murder! You can’t deny that!
  
  Comment by CommonSense | February 19, 2011 | Reply
I don’t believe very many people really know how collective bargaining works (on the State level.) If they did they would KNOW that ending (strict union) collective bargaining contracts ARE an absolutely necessary if Wisconsin wants to survive economically. (By the way, Federal Workers collective bargaining ‘rights’ were terminated by President Jimmy Carter.)

Comment by Robert Kilpatrick | February 27, 2011 | Reply
- In 1962 the federal government gave collective bargaining rights to federal employees. Jimmy Carter did not abolish federal unions nor their right to collective bargain (but I keep reading this on REICH-wing websites, probably where our TROLL Robert Kilpatrick got his info since he left us no links). Carter did sign the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. It encompassed a wide variety of management reforms, including creation of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA). These new agencies replaced the former U.S. Civil Service Commission. In addition, the CSRA accomplished the following:
  
  It established the Senior Executive Service, composed of 8,000 top civil servants having less tenure but greater opportunity for productivity bonuses than under previous classification arrangements. This was seen as a step toward the widely-advocated reform of creating a senior management system in the United States, allowing top managers to be recruited and paid on a basis comparable to and competitive with the private sector.
  
  Also, it established the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) as a federal analogue to the National Labor Relations Board in the private sector, including formalization in law of employees’ rights to join unions and engage in collective bargaining on certain subjects such as:
  
  * Employee discharge
  * Working schedules
  * Seniority
  * Grievances
  * Vacations and individual merit raises
  * Christmas bonuses and profit-sharing retirement plans
  * Rules on breaks and lunch periods
  * Safety rules
  * Physical examinations of employees.
  
  etc.
  
  The unfair labor practice provisions of Title VII of the Act are similar to those of the NLRA; however, there are five major differences between private-sector employees under the NLRA and federal employees under the Civil Service Reform Act as follows:
  
  1.Federal employees are denied by statute the right to strike. (reason Raygun fired the Air Traffic Controllers).
  
  2.The right of federal employees to picket is limited to informational picketing only. It is an unfair labor practice for a labor organization to picket a federal agency in a labor-management dispute if such picketing interferes with an agency’s operations.
  
  3.The scope of mandatory collective bargaining for federal employees is limited to personnel employment practices only. Basic working conditions such as wages, hours of work, and employee benefits are instead subject to statutory provisions.
  
  4.Union and agency contract provisions as well as all other forms of compulsory union support are prohibited in the federal civil service.
  
  5.Recognition of labor organizations as exclusive employee representatives occurs only by a majority vote of employees through a secret-ballot election.
  
  The WHOLE ball fo wax…
  http://www.opm.gov/biographyofanideal/PU_CSreform.htm
  
  American Federation of Government Workers (AFGW-AFL) recently kept their right to bargain for the 54,000 TSA employee which Republicans in Congress recently tried but failed to deny them such rights.
  
  http://www.afge.org/index.cfm?Page=PressReleases&PressReleaseID=1250&from=home
  
  NTEU (National Treasury Employees Union) represents 150,000 public employees in 31 federal agencies through collective bargaining.
  
  http://www.nteu.org/
  
  Then there is the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), etc. etc….
  
  Comment by Grant in Texas | February 27, 2011 | Reply