Posted on 02/23/2011 8:51:14 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
The labor rights and budget standoff gripping Wisconsin is affecting chemistry departments at public universities statewide. Many chemists and chemistry graduate students have joined the throngs of protesters at the state capitol and elsewhere in Madison.
"The crowds at our capitol are growing," says Judith N. Burstyn, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and chair of the executive committee of the faculty senate. "It's not clear at all what's going to happen."
Wisconsin's Republican Governor Scott Walker is in a dramatic standoff with Democrats in the state legislature over a budget repair bill he introduced on Feb. 11, designed to stanch a multimillion dollar shortfall in the state's budget. Democratic state senators have fled Wisconsin to block a vote on the bill; the state assembly is debating the bill.
The bill calls for government workers to pay more for their health insurance and pension plans, but the protests were sparked by the bill's provision to limit collective bargaining rights of public employee unions to wages only. Prominent Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have denounced the bill as a partisan attack on unions.
"This is not really about money. This is about power and control," says University of Wisconsin, Madison, chemistry professor Robert J. Hamers. The proposed bill affects chemistry departments in the University of Wisconsin system, he says, because its teaching assistants and some department staff are unionized, and faculty and staff are state employees.
But the bill's financial impacts can't be ignored, argues another chemistry professor, James M. Cook of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Most chemists working in Wisconsin's state university system make lower salaries than their counterparts in the private sector, and affordable benefits go hand in hand with scholarly freedom as selling points of the job, he says.
As a senior faculty member, "I'm going to be able to get through this," Cook says. But junior professors, students, and support staff will be harder hit by added contributions to benefit plans, he says.
Scholarly activity continues on Wisconsin's campuses, albeit with some disruption. The teaching assistant's union and the faculty senate at the Madison campus called for instructors who wish to attend protests to use their discretion when cancelling or rescheduling classes.
In the Madison chemistry department, notes on hallway blackboards, fliers, and word of mouth have helped organize walks to the capitol, says Brent Amberger, a chemistry teaching assistant and graduate student in professor Robert McMahon's group. "I'm 24. I've never really thought about unions and collective bargaining before," he says. "This experience has certainly opened my eyes."
It's not Rocket Science! And I'm not even a Chemist! I'm not even a Rocket Scientist! LOL!
Dorks.
And to that 24 year old 'Grad Student' who still suckles off the teat of his mama & papa and has NEVER had to 'think' about these things before? MAN (the Ef) UP!
If you have kids at the University of Wisconsin, U- Wisconsin Milwaukee, U-Wisconsin Green Bay, etc. or the Madison or Milwaukee Public schools I would suggest pulling your kids out of these Hell holes immediately!!
Sure, anyone who lives off the government via taxes is scared. Gee imagine folks having to fork over $80.00/month for health care.
These idiots really feel victimized huh?
SHUT EM DOWN
Can the Buggy Whip Manufacturers Union be far behind?
While teaching assistants are not given state insurance in most places they are covered under policies designed to protect students which they all are. When I was a TA many moons ago I never even considered that it was anything but a help to me that I had the job. Ungrateful little shiites.
No kidding! Join us in the EVIL Private Sector where we chip in HUNDREDS each month between everyday premiums and the additional dollars we sock away into our health care savings accounts!
All the while praying that we, our spouse or children don’t become critically ill or injured because THEN we’ll have to pony up even MORE dough to take care of them!
I’m SO sick of these free-loading gravy-train riders! And I used to actually be one of them, LOL! :)
They are not doing their job. Fire them.
Joan was quizzical,
studied metaphysical science in her room.
Late night all alone with a test tube, oh..oh..oh..oh!
“It’s not clear at all what’s going to happen.”
I know what’s next. An announcement that in 5 minutes all the protestors are going to hold their breath til they turn blue. After that, they’ll all roll up in their blankies and take their afternoon naps just before recess.
Joan was quizzical,
studied metaphysical science in her room.
Late night all alone with a test tube, oh..oh..oh..oh!
“Most chemists working in Wisconsin’s state university system make lower salaries than their counterparts in the private sector...”
Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach.
And those who can’t teach want collective bargaining rights.
Chemists ast UW might want to tread lightly on this. It was just 40 years ago last August when Dow Chemical Company held job interviews on campus - an even that somehow tipped radical leftie nutjob Karleton Armstrong over the edge, and gave him the inspiration to use a 2000 pound homemade bomb to blow up Sterling Hall, killing one and injuring three others.
Chemistry and radical politics don’t mix.
We can safely assume that these “chemists” are all public employee teachers at tax-supported institutions, not normal people having real jobs.
Bad timing for the union thugs. Oil hit $100 bbl today.
Being this greedy and uncivil in a near deprssion is not
good PR.
Mr. chemist grad student and the parasite professor
need to grow up. The free lunch does not exist except for the
immature minds present in academia.
Well, yes.
Incompetence has its downside.
There should be no public sector unions at all.
Private unions, no problem with.
The private union folks will tell you they are needed to counter the company’s greedy bosses and owners.
Well, if that’s true, that the purpose of unions is to counter the employer’s greed, then that therefore means public sector unions exist to coounter the greed of THEIR employer - the citizens of the state....?
And that is what is going to convince most non-union citizens that the real problem here is with the public sector unions, and their mindset.
The public sector unions are the ones that are greedy. They wnat to have the power NO OTHER taxpayer has, to FORCE their neighbors to give them great salaries and benefits and such pro-union work rules that no private worker could ever have, much less ask for with a straight face.
The states are broke. The people in these states are already taxed to death. They are hurting. And these public unions are trying to drum up sympathy as slave victims, when they earn more than the average private worker, have much better healthcare plans, and hardly have to pay anything for them or their retirements, because their fellow citizens are footing the bill for them. And we’re supposed to swallow the line that we, the citizens that employ them, are greedy for wanting them to pay a small segment of their retirement and helathcare plans, and give up collective bargaining PRIVILEGES (they are not rights, but privileges) that they’d use to recover anything cut out of salaries?
This is why it ain’t flying with people. You can’t get sympathy from people when your actions and your basis for existing is because you believe your employer (the citizens of the state) is greedy. Not when those ‘greedy’ people make considerably less than you do on average, pay more for their lesser health care plans, don’t have 100% matching of their retirement plan, and don’t have civil service protection laws protecting their own jobs.
Ooh, Beatles ping. Nice one.
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