ALEC conquers and divides in Brookfield...

[midnight]

More proof it was all about union busting. the City of Brookfield's personnel director is suggesting that offering higher non-union wages to municipal employees might be an incentive for unionized workers to decertifiy their collective bargaining units. The personnel director added: "It's not expected that a lot of these unions (statewide) are going to survive. The law is really incentivized to disband the union."

Give him points for being candid, but even with all the anti-union politicians infesting our state right now, it doesn't get any lower than this guy's cogitating. Sounds like yet another unfair labor practice to me.

The nasty notion is documented at BrookfieldPatch.com, a local online news service for that Milwaukee 'burb. Also be sure to read down to this excerpt, where the story reports police and fire union managers won't have to make pension contributions because of "wage compression." Excerpt (highlighting added):
The city's personnel director dangled an unusual carrot before city workers in arguing why they should vote to decertify their unions next year: the potential for larger raises.
Future annual pay increases would be capped at the consumer price index for union-represented city employees except for police and fire fighters, under the state's budget repair law still being litigated in court.
But that law does not require local governments to cap wage increases for employees who are not represented by unions, city Human Resources Director Jim Zwerlein explained to aldermen on the city's Human Resources and Public Safety Committee Tuesday.
Theoretically, the city could approve larger pay raises to non-union staffers. Whether aldermen would actually do that is unknown... .
Excluded will be non-represented police and fire command staff — police and fire chiefs, assistant and deputy chiefs and police captains, lieutenants and sergeants... .
The state biennial budget exempted police and fire managers to avoid wage compression problems, in which the command staff would pay toward their pensions and potentially earn less than their union-represented police officers and firefighters who will not have to pay toward their pensions... .http://uppitywis.org/blogarticle/belong-public-employee-union-brookfield-may-pay-you-less-your-no#comments

[iwishiwas]

1. It has already divided workers in Wi with Walkers help.

[tinwi]

2. Police and Firefighters were included in the budget

Any new hire has the same wage contributions as the rest of the public workers. When contracts expire it is expected that this will bring all of them into it. Plus there will be no bargaining allowed on health benefits. I expect that Walker plans to completely bust their unions too. Nobody is surviving Walker unscathed.

What some cities have been doing is hiring new people right before contract negotiations and then holding unions responsible if they have to lay off the new people, which they will, if they dont take cuts.

Its all unfair labor practice if you ask me. Where is the NLRB? I know it has some defense contractor troubles, but is it not able to handle more than a case at a time?

[midnight]

3. I read somewhere that the police unions were leaving the Republican party in droves.

I never could understand how the police could vote Republican?

[CatholicEdHead]

4. Sounds like divide and conquor

by pitting the non-union employees against the union employees. SOP for historical union busting techniques.