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Wisconsin union battle ‘helped define’ Democrats, Trumka saysBy Kevin Bogardus - 04/04/11 05:14 PM ET AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Monday that standoff between public sector unions and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has highlighted the contrasts between the two political parties heading into the 2012 election. "By and large, I think this helped define the Democratic Party,” Trumka told reporters, adding Democratic lawmakers are now more likely to say that they support unions’ collective bargaining rights than before. “They now say that regularly. Before, it was not as clear-cut.” He said the skirmish has also put Republicans firmly among...

Members of Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, have begun circulating letters to businesses in southeast Wisconsin, asking them to support workers’ rights by putting up a sign in their windows. If businesses fail to comply, the letter says, “Failure to do so will leave us no choice but (to) do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members." Jim Parrett, a field representative of Council 24 for Southeast Wisconsin, confirmed the contents of the letter, which carries his signature. But...

Unions were once the solution. Now they are the problem. In the troubled light of recent events in Wisconsin, the questions many of us have begun to ask regarding the value and necessity of public sector unions urgently require to be answered. Do they contribute to the public welfare or have they become at best distractions and at worst militant organizations aggressively invading the social and political arena to achieve their ends? My own experience once predisposed me in their favor, but the love affair ultimately went sour.When I first began teaching at a community college in Montreal, my salary...

Members of Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, have begun circulating letters to businesses in southeast Wisconsin, asking them to support workers’ rights by putting up a sign in their windows. If businesses fail to comply, the letter says, “Failure to do so will leave us no choice but (to) do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members."

A Wisconsin judge on Tuesday ordered "no further implementation" of the Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill that limits collective bargaining rights. Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi said that her earlier restraining order saying the law shouldn't be enacted had either been ignored or misinterpreted. Sumi stopped short of saying the law was not already in effect. She said she will take more testimony on that issue. The Legislative Reference Bureau posted the law on a legislative website Friday, leading Walker's administration to declare the law was in effect. Sumi revised her original March temporary restraining order blocking the...

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi issued an order this afternoon blocking further implementation of the collective bargaining bill. Sumi stopped short of signing off on a proposed declaration that publication by the Legislative Reference Bureau does not make the law take effect. But she made clear during her ruling that "further implementation of the act is enjoined." The judge reiterated that lawmakers could easily implement the law through another, properly noticed committee hearing and legislative vote, commenting that "when taxpayers are paying the bill, that needs to be part of the discussion" of continuing litigation. Sumi also warned that those...

As the dust settles in Madison, Wisconsin Republicans face a troubling coda: Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill is being tripped up in the courts. Union heavies smell blood. And the unruly parade of lefty activists and hulking Teamsters that occupied the state capitol for weeks is back for a bruising final round. On paper, at issue is whether senate Republicans violated the state’s open-meeting laws. In mid-March, after a three-week stalemate, GOP lawmakers hustled Walker’s bill to the floor. The senate clerk approved the maneuver. But 14 Democratic state senators, on the lam in Illinois, howled in absentia. So did...

Madison - Gov. Scott Walker's administration is no longer collecting dues on behalf of state unions and as of Sunday began charging employees more for health care and their pensions, even though nonpartisan legislative attorneys say the changes are not yet law. Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch said Monday administration attorneys have determined the law is now in effect. State workers will receive paychecks April 21 that reflect the changes, he said in a conference call with reporters.

Madison - Law enforcement agencies ran up more than $3.2 million in pay, overtime, mileage, food and hotels while providing security during weeks of protests at the Capitol, according to preliminary numbers compiled by the Journal Sentinel.The total bill is certain to go higher, largely because some municipal police departments and county sheriff's departments have not completed totaling their bills, some invoices are incomplete and costs for some larger law enforcement agencies, including the Wisconsin State Patrol, were not immediately available.

Madison teachers who missed school last month to attend protests and turned in fraudulent doctor's notes have been given until April 15 to rescind those notes, officials said Thursday. The district received more than 1,000 notes from teachers, human resources director Bob Nadler said. A couple hundred of those were ruled fraudulent because they appeared to be written by doctors at the Capitol protests against Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to limit collective bargaining. Teachers who don't rescind fraudulent notes could receive a disciplinary letter of suspension, the most serious form of discipline aside from termination, Nadler said. The suspension would...

By Jason Stein of the Journal Sentinel Updated: March 25, 2011 4:48 p.m. |(34) Comments Madison - A controversial bill limiting collective bargaining for public workers has been officially published despite a temporary restraining order barring its publication. The legislation was published Friday with a footnote that notes the restraining order, but says the law "requires the Legislative Reference Bureau to publish every act within 10 working days after its date of enactment." The publication of the law means that it will take effect Saturday. The restraining order was issued against Secretary of State Doug La Follette, not the reference...

MADISON, Wis -- The Wisconsin law taking away collective bargaining rights that a court had ordered not to be published by the secretary of state has been published instead by the Legislative Reference Bureau. The action was noted on the Legislature's home page Friday. It's not immediately clear whether the publication has the force of law. But if legally published, the law takes effect Saturday. A judge last week issued a temporary restraining order blocking Secretary of State Doug La Follette from publishing the law.

Madison — A state appeals panel said Thursday a case over a new collective bargaining should go directly to the state Supreme Court.The move puts the issue squarely before the Supreme Court less than two weeks before Justice David Prosser faces re-election.

In the wake of changes to government employee unions’ power in Wisconsin and elsewhere, The Communist Party USA is working in conjunction with national labor unions and other left wing political groups to organize protests in Madison, Wisconsin and across the nation on April 4th. Scott Marshall, Vice Chair of The Communist Party USA said his organization is working with the likes of MoveOn.org, the SEIU, the AFL-CIO and others to make April 4th, the anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., a national day of action. “Support is beginning to grow,” said Marshall in an...

Public employee unions, the last bastion of an American labor movement in decline, are facing the fight of their lives this year as strapped state and local governments seek to permanently downsize their pensions, pay, benefits and bargaining rights. Powerful unions such as the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) have been bruised in battles with Republican governors and legislators in Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana and other states that are grappling with record budget shortfalls and fighting to stave off insolvency. Even where state governments are controlled by Democrats, public employees such...

Madison — A judge's hold on Gov. Scott Walker's union bargaining bill should be kept in place, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne argued Tuesday. In a filing with a state appeals court, the Democratic district attorney argued that the law, which sharply curtails collective bargaining by public workers, is effectively void because a committee violated the state open meetings law in passing it.Without the allegedly improper committee vote, the later passage of the law by the Senate and Assembly "could not and would not have happened," Ozanne argued.

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ___________ In December 2009, though little attention was paid to it at the time, Wisconsin’s then-Governor Jim Doyle signed a bill into law that force feeds unions on schoolchildren: Wisconsin schools will be required to teach the history of organized labor under a bill signed by Gov. Jim Doyle. The bill Doyle signed Thursday also requires Wisconsin schools to teach the history of collective bargaining. The proposal has been around for years but never passed. This year it...

More on County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi & SonBloggers use son to attack judge in union bargaining case By Jason Stein of the Journal Sentinel March 21, 2011 11:31 a.m. Madison -- In a sign of how contentious the struggle over Gov. Scott Walker’s union bargaining law remains, conservative bloggers are using a Dane County judge’s son to criticize her ruling against the measure. **SNIP** But conservative blogs have been noting that Sumi’s son, Jacob Sinderbrand, worked in the past for labor unions and questioning whether that could in some way influence Sumi’s judgment. In a brief statement, Sumi dismissed...

No wonder they hate Governor Scott Walker. Oshkosh teachers were getting 90 sick days a year… They only worked 180 days a year. Charlie Sykes reported: This is what the Walker reforms look like in practice. One dazzling detail: up until now Oshkosh teachers got 90 sick days a year. Unions representing teachers and other Oshkosh school district workers agreed to freeze wages, pay more for their benefits and allow administration to change health insurance providers in exchange for a one-year extension of their collective bargaining agreements. The tentative contracts with the teachers’ union, paraprofessionals’ union and non-teaching employees’ union...