Free Republic

The day after Thanksgiving, teachers and other school employees across the state will begin voting on whether or not to recertify the unions that have represented them for decades. The voting is done by phone over 20 days, concluding on Dec. 19 and is tallied by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. The elections are taking place despite a ruling by Dane County Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas that ordered WERC to not go ahead with the elections, which were mandated by Gov. Scott Walker's signature legislation curbing public employee union bargaining rights, Act 10. Colas ruled that WERC was in...

MADISON — Some kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders in Madison public schools are apparently preparing for futures in either political cartooning or time on a psychiatrist’s couch. Kati Walsh, an elementary art teacher at the Madison Metropolitan School District in July posted some of her students’ drawings of Gov. Scott Walker in jail. Walsh suggests her young Rembrandts’ ideas for their sketches popped up out of thin air. “One student said something to the effect of ‘Scott Walker wants to close all the public schools’… So the rest of the class started drawing their own cartoons and they turned very political....

The Kenosha Education Association (KEA), the state's third largest teachers union, was officially decertified on August 31, 2013 according to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. Mark Belling, who broke this story on Thursday, said that the decertification came after a recent vote by members in which only 37 percent voted to reauthorize the union. KEA is the largest teachers union to disband since Act 10 was signed into law in 2011. The union had 2,400 members according to their website. Act 10 limited collective bargaining rights for public employees and required public unions to have an annual vote to recertify....

In a long-awaited opinion, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin today rejected yet another attack on Act 10 brought by public sector labor unions. The case, Laborers Local 236, AFL-CIO v. Walker, was filed shortly after WEAC v. Walker was filed in the same court, raising some claims not brought in the WEAC case. In the WEAC case, the court held Act 10 unconstitutional in March of 2012, but was reversed the following January by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Act 10 against all of the unions’ challenges. We have been awaiting a...

MADISON – Thanks for nothing. No, really, thanks for nothing. Sen. Glenn Grothman, a staunch fiscal conservative, has nothing but praise for his peers in the Democratic Party who, he says, have done nothing to repeal Wisconsin’s controversial Act 10. The law, signed by Gov. Scott Walker in 2011, guts collective bargaining for most public employees in the state. “The press always focuses on disagreements, but the bipartisanship shown in agreeing that Act 10 should not be repealed is an untold story of us working together,” the West Bend Republican said in a statement, written, it would seem, with tongue...

Wisconsin's public employees are leaving their unions in droves, which should be no surprise: With passage of Act 10 in 2011, public unions in the Badger State lost many of their reasons for being. The "budget-repair bill" pushed through the Legislature by Republicans and signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker limited bargaining to wages only, and then only up to the cost of living; it also required unions to recertify each year and barred the automatic collection of union dues. Relying on federal financial records, the Journal Sentinel's Dan Bice found union membership has declined by 50% or more...

Some unions' finances also suffer after Scott Walker curtails powers Gov. Scott Walker's signature plan to slash collective bargaining has set off a Darwinian struggle for survival among Wisconsin's public employee unions. In the two years since Walker's plan became law, tens of thousands of teachers and state and local workers have dropped out of their unions, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of little-used federal financial records. No labor group has been hit harder than the one representing Milwaukee city and county workers. In 2010 — the year that Walker was elected governor — the American Federation of State,...

MADISON – The conclusion is succinct.“Wisconsin teacher unions currently have substantial resources from their members and have been an active force in Wisconsin state politics,” wrote the authors of the “How Strong Are U.S. Teachers Unions” report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an advocate for education reform.“But recent legislation, which sharply erodes their collective bargaining rights, likely heralds an era of diminished strength for public unions in general, and teacher unions in particular in the Badger State.” IN THE BEGINNING: Hallis Mallen, of Madison, Wis., takes part in a January 2012 Recall Walker rally at the Wisconsin State Capitol....

Who says government can’t get anything done? Union-backed lawmakers in Dane County and the city of Madison didn’t waste any time, using a judge’s suspension of Act 10 to hustle through extensions on expensive union contracts. One state lawmaker has reacted with equal dispatch. State Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, said he’ll do everything to kill state funding to Dane County in next year’s 2013-2015 budget. Nass made the claim in a news release last week within hours of the Dane County Board of Supervisors' 29-8 vote to extend current contracts until 2015. Dane County supervisors climbed through a window opened...

New Berlin - Jill Werner thought she'd retire in the School District of New Berlin. A 15-year-employee of the district, she started as a math teacher and then became a guidance counselor at New Berlin West Middle/High School. Colleagues and parents commend the way she connects with students as a counselor and coach, and Werner said she loves West's students, staff and families. But when Waukesha North High School came calling earlier this year, Werner, 42, accepted. The counseling position at North comes with less salary and benefits, she said. But it's a ticket out of a district she and...

MADISON — The dark fiscal clouds are starting to lighten in Wisconsin’s largest school District. But Milwaukee Public Schools‘ fiscal picture could be a lot brighter, had its teachers’ union chosen to open up its labor contract with MPS and agree to some salary concessions. Tweaking the deal could have saved scores of positions, opening up the opportunity for more teachers in the classroom, more programs to bolster the academic achievement of a school system that has seen its share of failure, and perhaps offering relief to Milwaukee taxpayers. Life is all about choices, and the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association...

Madison - The state medical school disciplined 20 doctors and fined 11 of them up to $4,000 for handing out sick notes to demonstrators at last year's labor protests, newly released records show. The records, requested by the Journal Sentinel last year under the state's open records law, show for the first time the extent of the discipline given to those doctors by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. In several cases, doctors in more senior positions within the school also had to step away from those roles for a period of four months over one...

MADISON — While there is no disputing the divisiveness and political bitterness Act 10 has created, the law that redefined collective bargaining in Wisconsin has made a dramatic difference for the state’s financially struggling school districts, according to a report slated for release this week. But superintendents tell Wisconsin Reporter they worry about the long-lasting emotional scars left by the contentious reform battle. Wisconsin school districts have realized significant savings either through the implementation of collective bargaining changes or the threat of them, according to an analysis by the Michigan-based Education Action Group Foundation, [1] known as EAG, a nonprofit...