collective bargaining

The ultimate example of conservative heads exploding:

A public employee union representing faculty, counselors and professional staff at the Milwaukee Area Technical College negotiated a one-year agreement with the school, which the MATC board approved. Officials say the deal will save the school $122 million over the next 25 years, due to long-term reductions in early health benefits that will go forward. A one-year deal that saves a nine-figures amount of tax dollars ... Now THAT is good government. Unless, of course, you're a Republican.

Conservative reaction (summarized): This deal is an outrage! Schools can't negotiate with defrocked public employee unions, even if a judge rules they can! The Wisconsin Republican Party made it so!

Conservative action: Sue MATC! That'll make things better, oh yeah.

One of the key arguments in the continuing legal battles to overturn Gov. Scott Walker's anti-union law is that citizens of this state and country have the right to associate freely. By arbitrarily "decertifying" public employee unions that refuse to jump through Walker's expensive, time-consuming legal hoops in order to gain virtually nothing, Wisconsin Republicans want to pretend that those unions and the employees they continue to represent are somehow now "illegals," just like many of those lawmakers regard undocumented immigrants brought in by businesses to work on the cheap.

The 7th Cirtcuit Court of Appeals today upheld Wisconsin Act 10, which removed most collective bargaining rights from public employees in the state.  Parts of the act had been declared unconstitutional previously in federal court, but a 3-person panel today re-instated the law in its entirety.

Predictably, both A. G. VanHollen and Governor Walker praised the decision this afternoon while WEAC and other plaintiffs in the case are re-considering their options for appeal.

It is currently not clear what effect this decision may have on the other appeal of the law which is currently workin its way through Wisconsin courts.

Public jobs downWisconsin state employees, if they're represented by a Scott Walker-finagled, "certified" public labor union, and assuming they will ever succeed in getting absolutely everything Walker's "collective bargaining law" allows them, will at best throw away time and money "negotiating" with the GOP authoritarians for an inflation-capped, base-wage increase.

Aside from the ruling itself, which is an important if partial win for Wisconsin public employee unions, one of the most interesting aspects of Federal Judge William Conley's order overturning two key aspects of Act 10, Gov. Walker's anti-union law, is a key precedent he cited in favor of the unions.

OutrageousWhen you read about some horrendous new decision from the Walker administration,  never overlook the disturbing likelihood that  there sometimes is even more awful stuff going on behind the scenes -- or, in some  cases, nothing going on when it should be. For example:

On Monday, two state employee unions, the  State Professional Education and Information Council and the Wisconsin State Attorneys  Association, filed unfair labor practice complaints with the Wisconsin Employment  Relations Commission (WERC).

The complaint in each case: Gov. Scott Walker has failed to bargain with the unions since he took office 14 months ago -- both before and after he got the Republican-dominated legislature to gut collective bargaining with most public employees, local and state.

Walker's signature measure all but ending meaningful collective bargaining finally was enacted late in June 2011 after court challenges. Since then, say the two unions, the Walker administration has not responded to their repeated requests  for a  bargaining date, even though they succeeded in elections to certify their bargaining status.

Starting in 2003 and continuing under the Walker administration, the State of Wisconsin has been nothing but miserly in paying state prosecutors who oversee criminal cases in every county. Result: A worsening shortage of legal talent that makes it easier for some of our state's baddest boys to skate or get plea bargained deals because of overburdened courts and districts attorney.

The Appleton Post Crescent reports in today's edition about greater than usual departures among prosecutors serving Brown County. It reviewed a study from the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin. Here's the critical passage, low in the story, that tells you just how dysfunctional and self-destructive Wisconsin state government has become over the past decade under bipartisan government now under the unitary Walker regime: