Anti-Union Law Squeezes Wisconsin Teachers

[Omaha Steve]

http://labornotes.org/2011/11/anti-union-law-squeezes-wisconsin-teachers

Evan Rohar | December 5, 2011


Wisconsin teachers are feeling the pinch as the consequences of Governor Scott Walker’s anti-union bill set in. The campaign to recall Walker announced late November it had 300,000 of the 540,000 signatures needed by mid-January to force a vote. Photo: Wisconsin AFL-CIO.


Wisconsin teachers are feeling the pinch as the consequences of Governor Scott Walker’s anti-union bill set in. Some are facing 11-hour workdays and reduction in sick leave as school boards unilaterally set punishing new standards.

Education budget cuts of $1.6 billion eliminated about 4,000 teaching and support positions statewide. The union is reaching out to parents and grandparents to stress the impact the layoffs will have on students—and hopes to build on those relationships in its effort to recall Walker and overturn the law.

Christina Brey, a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), noted that elements of the law’s implementation, such as what specifically constitutes collective bargaining, are yet unclear. “The legislation was created that way—to keep everything in chaos,” she said. “Instability is something that this administration has thrived on when it comes to public workers.”

Now many school districts are imposing new employee handbooks on teachers in place of contracts, unilaterally establishing more onerous work conditions.

Teachers in the Milwaukee suburb of New Berlin have been organizing against a handbook that was implemented without teacher input at the beginning of the school year.

FULL story at link.

[Scuba]

1. Thanks Steve! n/t

[patrice]

2. K&R

[starroute]

3. They're not just squeezing teachers -- they're degrading them

This is of a piece with those horrifying shots of the protesters arrested at Occupy Los Angeles who were forced to lie face down on the ground with their hands zip-tied. The physical brutalization isn't there -- but it's got the same goal of disempowering, humiliating, and depriving people of self-respect.

This, by the way, is one reason why "entitlements" are important -- and why the right has been doing its best to demonize the term. If you're entitled to something, if nobody can take it away from you, then you can stand up for yourself in the face of oppression. But if you're powerless and dependent on the goodwill of your oppressors, you become a groveling supplicant.

The teachers are being taught to grovel -- and that is a horrible situation for those we trust to educate the next generation.

[digonswine]

4. I have done a little looking around-

on individual city "Buzz" sites and the like. There are many vocal supporters of this gov and his policies. About the recalls---they act like the fact that recalls of this scope are unprecedented means that it is simply the left playing politics. "You got your chance to speak--when you voted." They warn that whenever people don't like a policy in the future, that a recall will result. They spew nonsense about the cost of recalls, when Walker has pushed through voter-suppression, I mean voter ID laws that cost the state much money.
They also say that teachers did not lose the right to bargain for wages--which is true. They pretend not to see that an individual educator petitioner trying to get a fair wage in an entire district is different from someone going to their employer asking for a raise. They are either stupid, or being intentionally obtuse.
They can't see the hypocrisy in the idea that the Gov took away a right, a RIGHT to collectively bargain that they themselves have!Dicks all.