VIDEO: Wisconsin State Workers Get No Raises 5pm news 10/25/2011
VIDEO: Wisconsin State Workers Get No Raises 4pm news 10/25/2011
VIDEO: State Workers 6pm 10/25/2011
Sec Huebsch Letter - All Employees Re Comp Plan
UPDATED Tuesday, October 25, 2011 --- 2:40 p.m.
Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch sent a letter this afternoon to Wisconsin state employees.
To read this letter, click on the link ABOVE marked "Sec Huebsch Letter - All Employees Re Comp Plan"
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UPDATED Tuesday, October 25, 2011 --- 2:00 p.m.
By SCOTT BAUER
Associated Press
MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Wisconsin state workers will not receive salary increases during the next two years under the first pay plan put forward by Gov. Scott Walker's administration under a law that no longer requires the state to negotiate wages with unions.
Terms of the agreement were outlined in a letter from the Office of State Employment Relations delivered to legislative leaders Tuesday and obtained by The Associated Press.
State workers have not had a raise since 2009. Additionally, starting this year under the same law that took away their collective bargaining rights they were required to pay more for their health insurance and pension costs.
Marty Beil, executive director of the 23,000-member Wisconsin State Employees Union, said he wasn't surprised that the plan included no raises for each of the next two years.
"We were of the mindset that it was a given they were going to come up with zero and zero," Beil said.
Beil had not seen the entire pay plan, but based on highlights included in the letter sent to legislative leaders, he expressed concern that many of the protections for workers negotiated and put into union contracts over the past 50 years were being removed.
He said there was no mention of the layoff process, how seniority would be treated, what the grievance procedure would be, how work hours would be scheduled or the procedure for transferring. Beil said the union's attorney was going to carefully review the entire plan to see if a lawsuit is warranted.
"There's a lot of unknowns here," Beil said.
Lawmakers on the Republican-controlled Joint Committee on Employment Relations, were briefed on the deal Tuesday morning. One committee member, Republican Assembly Majority Leader Scott Suder, offered no comments other than to say he wanted to review the plan and "see what we can move forward on."
A spokesman for Walker's administration declined to comment before an afternoon news conference.
A spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin, which represents 17,000 workers, declined to comment before having a chance to review the entire pay plan, not just the summary letter.
The plan covers all state workers who previously would have had their pay plans, benefits and other terms of work negotiated by their respective unions. The new law, proposed by Walker and passed by the Republican controlled Legislature in March, doesn't allow negotiating with unions over anything except pay increases no greater than the rate of inflation.
The measure passed despite protests that grew as large as 100,000 people earlier this year and the decision by all 14 state Senate Democrats to flee to Illinois in a vain attempt to block a vote. Lawmakers' actions on the bill also prompted nine state senator recall elections this summer that ousted two Republicans.
Democrats plan to target Walker and other Republican incumbents for recall in 2012.
In addition to no pay increases over the next two years, the plan released Tuesday also removes separate state agencies' ability to give merit raises and places it instead with the Office of State Employment Relations.
Beil called that a power grab and said Walker was a "control freak."
Copyright 2011. The Associated Press.
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Speaker Fitzgerald Statement on Compensation Plan
Madison – Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon) released the following statement regarding the proposed 2011-13 Compensation Plan:
“The vast majority of public employees will see few changes in their day to day work life. However, we are continuing to reform state government in ways that will improve service and save taxpayer dollars.
“Under the previous system, a public employee could take eight hours of sick leave and then work the following shift, getting paid for a 16 hour day. A small group of employees would repeat this pattern day after day, inflating their salaries to six figure sums. Since pension levels are determined based on the final three years of service, the result has been a double whammy to tax payers who have been on the hook not only for the inflated salaries but for the decades of padded pensions that follow.
“These commonsense reforms put an end to this abuse and are estimated to save more than $5 million a year at the Department of Corrections alone.
“Additionally, for the first time for many state employees quality of service will play a factor in their compensation. An expanded and improved merit pay system is being put into place to reward truly exceptional public employees.
“Together these reforms will reduce costs while simultaneously improving service.”
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Statement from AFSCME Wisconsin State Employee Union: Walker Grabs More Power With New Arbitrary Work Rules
Gov. Scott Walker continued to consolidate power and politicize state agencies on Tuesday when his administration unilaterally unveiled sweeping new rules governing state employee relations.
Walker’s top-to-bottom rewrite of the rules sweeps away decades worth of protections designed to minimize political influence and assure that state services are delivered equitably and those who provide state services are treated fairly.
“This is another huge power grab from an administration that is hell-bent on rewarding friends and intimidating anybody who dares to speak out,” said Marty Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24.
Beil said he and his staff are still evaluating the changes that wipe away objective rules reached over decades of mutually beneficial labor-management discussions.
But a first reading reveals a disturbing trend: continued consolidation of power into the hands of Walker’s political appointees. “Walker already eliminated civil service protection for dozens of top agency staff. Now he is giving that political staff all kinds of new power,” Beil said.
For example, political heads of agencies now will control work schedules and overtime with no regard for seniority or other objective factors. The head of the Office of State Employee Relations is granted broad new authority to settle unspecified disagreements, reward favored workers with raises based on unknown criteria, and rewrite the rules in the future with no legislative oversight.
“The governor wants to give political appointees unprecedented power over the lives of employees while employees have nothing to say about anything,” Beil said.
“There was a time when these things were talked about openly and in a spirit of cooperation, not handed down from on high. But, the more we see of this plan, we can understand why the governor would want to jam this through like the rest of his power grabs. It doesn’t pass the smell test,” Beil said.
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