plainly and simply, the union has said we will take pay cuts, pay our pension, and pay our insurance, but we still want to bargain a contract. Watch the news, it has been reported for days now.

Collective bargaining entails sitting down with management, and negotiating pay, retirement, insurance and grievance procedures through arbitration.

Which means an outside source will listen to both sides and decide a fair deal for both parties. It also means, the union has the ability to look at the states financial status to bargain a contract.

I just want to know how many people that hate the unions so much, were you ever part of a union?

did YOU EVER WRITE A GRIEVANCE AND go to union meetings?

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I'm unfamiliar with the Tom Ament fiasco, but it seems consistent with his rumored pay increases for his newly appointed minions and the 117 million dollar tax break for out-of-state businesses just before he attacks the public sector.

I've said it before in this thread but we haven't seen the worst of this yet.

He's got roughly 3.3 billion to account for, and you might as well call it 4 + billion to account for the additional tax breaks and raises he'll give his buddies and people that supported his campaign in 2010.
Meanwhile, he'll fund his paybacks to friends with 900 million in cuts from public education among other public groups in his new budget on Tuesday - it's going to get really really really ugly in Madison!

Its nice to chat with someone who is informed.

I tell you, those cuts in public education are really scary to me. Why would any perspective teacher want a job in a nasty community, with low pay, poor insurance, and a weak retirement plan?

Milw. is going to become a ghetto like Detroit and Gary Ind. This is why I get pissed when a bonehead in Indiana tells me what is going on where I live everyday. The guy complains about the workforce not being trained, but wants to cut funding in public education. Wake up man!

Kids in the inner city will go hungry, have no hope, and resort to crime if the public schools lose even more funding. Not to mention closing down county parks as well as state parks.

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All those points are perfectly said for me

I could care less if someone is in a union and what they get for bennys...

I dont want to pay "double" to make up for what a employee wont be paying because of their unions

I just saw this morning it is starting up in Ohio now also, the unions are marching on the capital. Everyone ready for 2012 yet, at this rate we will be the little poor country looking for help from others.

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yeah, its cold outside, we're at war, ppl are protesting, it MUST MEAN THE WORLD IS ENDING!!!

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2012 = civil war in the united states. We are not the land of the free and people will get sick of it all.

As they always say " The South will rise again" lol

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I don't "hate" the unions.

I never have worked for a union, but I was on the opposing side in two plants, the management side.

Countless grievance hearings... and we tried to work through them fairly.

But a worker that had no business holding a job because of their effort, lasted far longer than they ever should have based on merit because the union had to protect them. They also failed to look at the big picture often that holding onto unproductive workers were actually putting more of their brothers and sisters that honestly put in a days work in a pinch because of the salary and productivity burdens that we placed on them because of the "turds".

When a Supervisor or we as management messed up and effected a productive worker.. I had no issue with working through the issue. But I would do that regardless of the union or not.

I guess it really depends on the situation and the management team, I know I took enough heat from my stance in working with the union verse fighting them tooth and nail on everything from the Board and Corner fourth floor office of the President.. but at the end of the day, I brought production up, cost down and generally had a solid relationship with the workforce at the Glass plant. The vinyl plant was being sold and the workers were being merged into the other plants.. the marching orders there were much different than running a productive plant, it was ramping down production, managing inventory to minimize loss and dealing with workers being displaced from their current positions.. 9 months of hating going to work, but we kept all but 3 workers out of 97. Just they whined about moving to one plant or another.

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This is a good point. I want to reiterate that I'm not opposed to the 5.8/12% contributions as long as comparable cuts are felt across the board.

With that said, this misconception perpetuated by the Limbaughs and Scott Walkers of the world that public employees are overcompensated, lazy, freeloading malcontents could not be further from the truth.

I'm by no means saying the private sector doesn't have some drawbacks, no compensation for long 50+ hour work weeks is one of many complaints I know many people deal with.

However, the public sector is already payed about 4.8% less than their private counterparts in WI, and the benefits and compensation through pay increases and job security for accumulated experience and education have often been the tradeoff for lower comparable salaries and other drawbacks to the positions.

However, this bill and the rumored 900 million in education cuts next week will severly handicap public education (not to mention where Walker will be cutting the other ~2.3 billion from) and make cheap, expendable, underqualified labor a desired trait in a public employee.

Wisconsin's Power Play