saying MONDAY AND TUESDAY!
On Friday, February 11th Governor Scott Walker proposed his Emergency Budget Repair Bill. This legislation MEANS THAT PUBLIC SECTOR WORKERS WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO BARGAIN COLLECTIVELY OR HAVE A SAY IN NEGOTIATING THE TERMS OF OUR EMPLOYMENT. Workers' political voice and power will effectively be completely removed based on these terms:
· The only subject of Collective Bargaining will be wages, which will be capped at the rate of inflation
· Bargaining over health care, tuition remission, pension contributions, grievance procedures, and other benefits will be prohibited.
· Unions will be required to hold a re-certification vote every year, securing a 51% majority in order to exist. Unions will spend all their energy on merely surviving.
· Fair Share Dues will no longer be required of union-represented employees. This means some people can opt out of paying dues, thus making it likely that unions will cease to function.
· All public employees will be required to cover at least 12.6% of health insurance coverage. We previously paid out in the low single digits for those benefits.
· Any worker absent for over three days without the approval of the employer will be subject to termination. This qualification is meant to prevent any organized form of protest (such as work stoppages or strikes) against an employer.
· UW Faculty and Staff are prohibited from organizing a union to bargain collectively
· As of March 13, 2011 all Union Contracts will be null and void. Our previous agreements on tuition remission, health care, wages, and much else will no longer apply.
Why This Will Destroy the Lives of Wisconsin Citizens and Workers:
· This has nothing to do with the budget. Wisconsin's state deficit was not created by public sector workers and it WILL NOT BE SOLVED by Walker's proposed changes. The budget deficit is estimated at roughly 3 billion dollars, and the savings estimated by cuts to public sector workers' benefits amounts to roughly only 300 million dollars. What Gov. Walker is calling a strategy to fix the budget deficit is really an all out attack on public workers and the Wisconsin Idea.
· Gov. Walker's strategy for changing long-standing Wisconsin laws has been undemocratic; he’s attempting to ram it through in less than a week, with no public hearings.
· This legislation takes away our right to have a say in the terms of our employment, to shape our working environments, to protect ourselves from workplace abuses.
· Forcing low wages and higher health care costs for grad employees, this legislation will make it almost impossible for the UW system to recruit competitive graduate students. Because the UW relies so heavily on graduate student labor, the quality of research and education will most definitely suffer.
· Public Sector Workers have already shouldered a serious burden in the wake of State budget crises, accepting 16 furlough days and $100 million dollars in concessions. They are also already paid less than their private sector peers. Many public sector workers will not be able to maintain any decent standard of living, pay their bills, or take care of their families if this legislation passes.
· According to the Economic Policy Institute, Wisconsin public employees earn 4.8% less in total compensation per hour than comparable full-time employees in Wisconsin’s private sector.
· The impact of this bill on both K-12 and higher education will be devastating. Teachers, professors, and students will be forced to leave, resulting in a "brain drain" that will ultimately have catastrophic effects on our economy in the long term.
· This will hurt the people who teach our children, the plow drivers who keep our streets safe, the medical researchers seeking life-saving cures, the analysts who help solve crime and the people who care for our elderly and families when we are sick.
· Infrastructure and basic services in Wisconsin will suffer as workers are forced to take on extra jobs or leave their current jobs for others.
· This kind of reckless yet permanent policy change should have ample public input, and this process of decision making needs to be loudly rejected as an acceptable form
We Can Defeat This, But We Must Mobilize Now:
There is no time to wait and see what happens. There is no tomorrow and there are no excuses. We have LESS THAN A WEEK to organize and prevent this bill from passing, so we have to turn out en masse now, and we have to turn out with force against these draconian measures and attacks against public sector workers. In order to do this, thousands of people MUST turn out for the following events:
· Monday afternoon, February 14th: Meet us EITHER in front of the Memorial Union at 11:30 A.M. or at the Capitol at 12:00 P.M. to deliver thousands of signed Valentine's Cards asking Gov. Walker not to cut the UW Budget, and to stop attacking those who make the UW work.
· Monday, February 14th at 5:30pm: Come to the TAA's Emergency General Membership meeting in Humanities 2650 to get a political update and to discuss our direct action campaign.
· Tuesday, February 15th and Wednesday, February 16th – DAYS OF ACTION: Meet us at the Capitol starting at 11:00 A.M. to rally with other union members, workers, and students. At 1:00 P.M. we will be meeting with legislators to convince them to vote against this legislation.
Who to Contact:
There are seven Republican Senators that have voted pro-union in the past and that need to be convinced by people voting in their districts to reject this bill. If you are from or know people from these districts, you and they need to start contacting the following Senators. Email AND Call them ASAP and let them know you do not support the Governor's Budget Repair Bill. Here’s a link to help you find out who your representatives are, and to help you with talking points:
http://leadernet.aft.org/formmaker/take/survey.cfm?id=183c9a7c-5056-b94b-11dd-b7f47603bbaa--Robert Cowles: 2nd District:
Telephone: (608) 266-0484 OR 1-800-334-1465
Email: Sen.Cowles@legis.wisconsin.gov
--Scott Fitzgerald: 13th District
Telephone: (608) 266-5660
Email: Sen.Fitzgerald@legis.wisconsin.gov
--Luther Olsen: 14th District
Telephone: 608) 266-0751
Email:
http://legis.wisconsin.gov/senate/sen14/news/Contact.asp--Dale Schultz: 17th District
Telephone:(608) 266-0703
Email:
http://legis.wisconsin.gov/senate/sen17/news/--Randy Hopper: 18th District
Telephone: (608) 266-5300
Email: Sen.Hopper@legis.wi.gov
--Michael Ellis: 19th District
Telephone:(608) 266-0718
Email:Sen.Ellis@legis.wisconsin.gov
--Van Wanggaard: 21st District
Telephone: (262) 930-6503
Email:
http://www.voteforvan.com/contact-van.html--Dan Kapanke: 32nd District
Telephone: (608) 266-549
Email: Sen.Kapanke@legis.wisconsin.gov
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