Bob McLinn, president of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, which represents blue-collar workers, said his union may instead seek to keep representing members as a voluntary organization without the official recognition the union now receives from the state.
"There has been a discussion about not recertifying because of the fact that there would be little or no benefit," McLinn said.
To stay alive, the unions under Walker's legislation would have to get 51% of the vote of all the potential union members in their bargaining unit, not just the ones who actually cast ballots. They also will have to win the vote again every year or their union will cease to function and be unable to reconstitute itself for at least a year after that.
May 6, 2011
"If Gov. Scott Walker's union bargaining measure becomes law and forces do-or-die recertification votes for public employee unions..."
"... some large public unions may simply skip the votes and drop their official status with the state..."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
33 comments:
So, if given the choice, employees don't want to be unionized?
Color me stunned.
So that's what Democracy really looks like ;)
It all sounds so ... reasonable.
Why do I think some blue states are looking a bit purple?
Take away union influence and a lot of places open up.
But that will mean no more weekends, 80 hour work weeks and child labor.
Not a chance they will do this.
Litigation or PR ploy.
I don't know what the percentage was before Jerry Brown I passed the fair share fee act, but I'm sure CA employees would not elect a union, given a chance.
These entities are avoiding embarrassment and a preference cascade.
By their fears shall you know them.
Mike Langyel, president of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, said, "We would continue to pursue all avenues to be a voice for our students and our members in Milwaukee."
So how do the unions act as a voice for students? Isn’t that the responsibility of the student’s parents? Oooppss, did I just say something about parental responsibility and involvement in their kids’ lives.
“In Dane County, there was a stack of ballots in a clerk's office.” Hmmm? It doesn’t give an amount but 7,500 ballots makes about how big of a stack?
http://the-leader.net/recount-moves-along-but-not-without-questions-p9937-61.htm
Give students a choice, not a voice.
WOW! Win-WIn-Win!
I'm sure some of the teacher's heads will explode. (Which kids would find entertaining.)
And, the sheriff done run da' bad guys out of da' town!
Or is the union just making an empty threat?
What will da' democraps do?
And, to think how the bamster just fumbled a perfectly good ball, too.
Well, David, there may be a small problem-o with lawsuits. Kloppenhoppen hasn't exactly jumped over da' moon, yet.
Prosser wouldn't have to excuse himself, either.
Shirley Abrahamson won't be sitting on the state supremes years from now. And, "sue-me" is busy holding up other legislation.
Who runs out of steam, first? Kloppenhoppen? Sue-me. Or Abrahamson?
A close neighbor, who works in Public TV, suggested to me that the Unions should have to run annual Pledge drives. If you think the Union is doing a good job, much like Public TV or Radio and you are deriving some benefit from it, then you pony up some bucks. I like the idea.
I suspect a lot of people are in Unions either because they have no choice or because of inertia.
So, let's see. The clerk in Dane County's office "has a stack of ballots."
Ya know, tellers in banks have "stacks of bills." But if they should take one home (as a souvenir), the FBI would come along and put said teller in jail.
There's a reason the tellers in banks don't steal from their cash drawers.
And, there's a reason even a dummy with a clerk's job MIGHT get terrified about coming out 7,500 ballots ahead. Ahead.
Just saying.
Look what happened to the clerk that corrected an error on election night? Her life wasn't miserable enough? Now someone else wants to try this scheme out?
I'll bet they don't pay the clerk enough money to make her fanagle her numbers.
Let alone if her "stack" only contains Kloppenhoppen votes. that Kloppenhoppen, herself, just happened to have dropped off.
Besides, the union has its hands full now just on staying "in da' money." Do you know how fast people would check the box NOT to pay dues?
Maybe, you just don't know democraps who clip coupons?
But, yes. Kloppenhoppen has to make "some gains." Or she's really gonna look stupid.
Ya can't cover stupid with Botox, ya know?
Yes! The country needs more fund drives to prop up losing liberal ideas & causes!
[Mad Man - is there perchance an impenetrable bubble separating Madison from the real world?]
Are unions taxed? If not then why not? I think any entity that can lobby for higher taxes should at least have to pay taxes. I would bet subjecting a lot of these groups to the regulations and taxes they lobby for would do a lot to dry up their enthusiasm for sticking it to everyone else.
It is probably time to do away with tax exempt organizations which are not churches or charities. Most of what is left are just leftist front groups running scams on everyone else while avoiding paying THEIR FAIR SHARE!
Unions brought us the 40 hour work week, health care, work safety and you all just want to throw it away. Take us back to 1890 sweat shops and exploitation. Yeah run on THAT platform. Good luck.
Like almost all liberal policies, if given a real choice the public will reject them! If not for the MFM propping them up daily, most would simply implode.
Finally, the unions have discovered the free market.
"Unions brought us the 40 hour work week, health care, work safety and you all just want to throw it away."
Funny. I have all of these things without a union. Most Americans do. Right now, though, unions are giving us massive state budget deficits, socialist protests in the streets, fleebaggers, unemployment ...
I could go on, but I don't need to. Most Americans can recognize that unions once played a role in protecting workers, but that time has long passed. We all know that getting rid of unions won't take anything away from us, but it will help in solving a very long list of problems. Which is why, when given a fair vote, most workers would rather not be a part of a union. They recognize that the time of the union has passed.
Unions did not give us the 40 hour work week. It was Henry Ford who figured out he could run more shifts at his factories if he did that.
Health care and other such things have similar stories that have been attributed to unions but in reality unions had nothing to do with.
Such are the lovely little narratives the unions have woven for themselves after all these years.
When the state stops acting as the collector for unions, membership in those same unions falls. Given the opportunity to write their own checks to pay union dues most workers decline to do so.
In Indiana, a case study in ending collective bargaining
"Prior to 2005, 16,408 Indiana state workers paid union dues out of about 25,000 who were eligible, or 66 percent, according to state and union figures. Today, just 1,409 out of 20,000 eligible workers, or 7 percent, pay dues."
So there's no downside, right?
Michael said...
"But that will mean no more weekends, 80 hour work weeks and child labor."
Remember when the left used to accuse Republicans of stoking fear to win elections?
James said...
"When the state stops acting as the collector for unions, membership in those same unions falls. Given the opportunity to write their own checks to pay union dues most workers decline to do so"
This shouldn't surprise us. Most Americans, polls tell us, want to cut the deficit but we won't accept any cuts in the programs that cause the deficit. We may want to read the New York Fishwrap online, but asked to pay for it, we shrug and go somewhere else. We rely on our servers and internet connections for our companies to function, but we pay for the bare minimum packages and fail to renew support contracts. We're not good at calculating real value or facing real choices. It therefore doesn't surprise me at all that workers won't pay union dues when given the choice, but, given what I've said above, I don't think that we can infer from that fact that they want to abolish unions. It is no less plausible to suppose that they want the benefit but don't want to pay, believing it will be available regardless of whether they do so; that they do not assign financial value to the union commensurate with their actual derived value of its services, and so on.
This is somehow meant to be a warning, meant to get workers up in arms all over again, but it might have the opposite effect. I don't believe for one minute these union thugs are going to give up that easily. The best way to deal with public employees unions is the exact same way Ronald Reagan dealt with air traffic controllers back in the eighties. Fire them all. Yes, it would be difficult, problematic, and initially, yes, more expensive.
But it wasn't the end of the world then, and it wouldn't be the end of the world now.
I was listening to Beck on the way to fishing yesterday, and he was saying that the way forward for the Republicans is to put themselves as the party of choice and freedom while showing how coercive and intrusive the Democrats are.
Outside of the abortion issue, I think it might work. The Ds would be the party of forced union membership, sucky lightbulbs and car monitors.
Trey
I swear Blogger has a "serious thought filter".
I try to write a substantive comment, short or long in length, and blogger gets all confused and gives me an error message.
Frilly or throw-away comments never get axed.
said his union may instead seek to keep representing members as a voluntary organization without the official recognition the union now receives from the state.
Good!
Why should the state have "recognized" public sector unions anyway?
@Alex
"But that will mean no more weekends, 80 hour work weeks and child labor."
What utter bullshit. So OSHA isn't enforced in your state? I'm pretty sure all 57 states have child labor laws on the books.
As to a 40 hour work week, not many enjoy the luxury of same in this economy when many hold second jobs to keep afloat. Small business owners who create the majority of the private sector jobs don't enjoy that luxury either. I worked 60+ hours a week for years, not taking a vaction for over 10 years and I might add; unpaid when capital was tight.
Oh...and in case you haven't noticed; tens of millions willingly work on the weekend and holidays, it's called flexible scheduling which allows us 24x7 access to retail/services.
In other words the true blue union members are a minority of public employees...
Why am I not surprised?
Alex,
You're missing a sarcasm tag.
Alex: Unions brought us the 40 hour work week, health care, work safety
Yes, your Grandfather's Unions may have done some of those things, although thats open to argument.
But not these Unions. They are parasites bankrupting the taxpayer without a shred of remorse.
Bust them all.
Post a Comment