MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Republicans on Sunday increased the pressure on Democrats who fled to Illinois to return home and vote on a bill that would limit public employees’ collective-bargaining rights, with the governor calling them obstructionists and a GOP lawmaker threatening to convene without them.
Gov. Scott Walker said the 14 minority Democrats who left Madison on Thursday were failing to do their jobs by “hiding out” in another state. And Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said his chamber would meet Tuesday to act on nonspending bills and confirm some of the governor’s appointees even if the Democrats don’t show up.
Senate Democrats acknowledged that in their absence, the 19 Republicans could pass any item that doesn’t spend state money. The budget-repair bill they have been blocking requires a quorum of 20 senators to pass, while other measures require only a simple majority of the chamber’s 33 members.
Nonetheless, Democrats said they were standing firm in their opposition to the budget-repair bill, which would take away the right of most public employees to collectively bargain for their benefits and working conditions. Hundreds of protesters filled the Capitol for a sixth straight day, noisily calling on Walker to drop the plan they consider an assault on workers’ rights.
Mary Bell, the president of Wisconsin’s teachers’ union, called on teachers to return to work as scheduled today rather than continue absences to protest that have shut down public schools across the state. She said unions agreed to cuts in health-care and retirement benefits that could reduce take-home pay for many workers by about 8 percent, and it was time for the Republican governor to compromise.
In a Sunday morning interview from Madison with Fox News, Walker said he did not believe union leaders were really interested in giving up their benefits and cities, school districts and counties will need weakened unions to cut spending for years to come.Walker said he would not compromise and predicted Wisconsin would pave the way for other states to follow suit, much like it did with a welfare overhaul and school vouchers in the 1990s.
States face deficits that may reach a combined $125 billion in the next fiscal year, and Republican governors including Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich and New Jersey’s Chris Christie are trying to change rules for collective bargaining and worker contributions for health care and pensions.
“We’re willing to take this as long as it takes because in the end we’re doing the right thing,” Walker said.
The sweeping measure led to protests that started Tuesday and have gained steam, with an estimated 68,000 people turning out Saturday inside and around the Capitol. Most opposed the bill, but the day marked the first time that a significant contingent of Walker supporters showed up to counter-protest.
Sunday’s crowd was much smaller, as snow and freezing rain moved the protest inside the Capitol. But the crowd swelled throughout the day, and protesters chanted for hours in opposition to the bill. Another large protest was expected today, when many state workers are being furloughed to save money.
Mariah Clark, an emergency medical technician at University of Wisconsin hospital and a volunteer firefighter, said she stands to lose $250 per month from her income with the benefits concessions. Standing on a bench holding a sign reading “EMT. Firefighter. Not the public enemy,” she said the pay cut would hurt but that’s not why she was protesting.
“I really believe this is about workers everywhere, not just public employees,”said Clark, 29. “It’s pathetic that in Wisconsin, one of the places where the labor movement started, that this would happen.”
Jacob Cedillo Tootalian, a 27-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student and teaching assistant, said his biggest concern was the possibility of losing the union.
“Normalcy would be nice,” he said. “But it seems the governor and the state Republicans are intent on taking these rights away.”
The bill would limit government workers’ collective bargaining to pay increases less than the Consumer Price Index unless approved in a local referendum. Workers could not negotiate their benefits and working conditions. Unions could not force their workers to pay dues, and would face a vote every year to remain certified.
Public workers also would have to pay 5.8 percent of their salaries for pension costs; they pay nothing now. They would have to foot 12 percent of their health-care premiums, up from 6 percent. Police and firefighters wouldn’t be covered by the measure.
Wisconsin’s bill is needed to cut costs in the face of a budget deficit projected at $137 million in the current fiscal year and $3.6 billion in the next biennium, Walker has said.
Walker denied the bill was an attempt at “union busting” and said the measure is needed to deal with the state’s projected $3.6 billion budget shortfall for the two-year period that ends June 30, 2013. He told Fox News he hoped the senators would return to work early this week.
Speaking from “an undisclosed location in northern Illinois,” Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller of Monona said he and others would not come back until Walker was ready to negotiate. He said Fitzgerald’s threats to pass nonspending measures would not faze them, saying they had the votes to pass even if the Democrats were present.
“The big issue we’re dealing with is whether or not we should strip workers’ rights and everything else is just a diversion,” he said.
“I think it’s time that the governor recognizes that he can’t always have everything he wants, and it’s time for him to sit down and treat the workers with respect.”
Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who remained at a Chicago hotel, said Democrats have reached out to Walker’s administration but their phone calls have not been returned. He said it may take a coalition of moderate Republicans in the Senate to try to negotiate an end to the stalemate.
One of them, Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, has proposed suspending collective bargaining rights temporarily to get through the state’s two-year budget, but then restoring them in 2013.
Information for this article was contributed from Milwaukee by Dinesh Ramde of The Associated Press and from Madison, Wis., by Mark Niquette and Emma Roller of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/21/2011