Two years after a law passed restricting collective bargaining rights for many public employee unions, union membership has plunged in two major organized labor delegations, and 93 percent fewer workers received raises.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 48, Milwaukee’s largest union, has lost 61 percent of its members since 2011. AFSCME Council 40, a union represented in all but one county in Wisconsin, dropped in membership 35 percent, a MacIver Institute for Public Policy report said Friday.
The Wisconsin State Journal reported Sunday average pay raises for public employees went up to 6.52 percent. However, only about 7 percent of eligible workers received this raise. Under the former collective bargaining agreement, the Journal said all eligible state workers received raises, although the raises were only up to 2 percent more money.
AFSCME Wisconsin spokesperson Rob Allen said pay raises were given to various state departments and employees within those departments without much explanation behind who receives them.
“Our concern is there’s an arbitrariness about it,” Allen said. “As the administration admitted, there are some departments that really don’t have systems in place to do it, but if you happen to work in one of those departments, too bad. You don’t get anything.”
According to the State Journal, the state gave salary boosts to 2,757 workers, nearly half of which benefited University of Wisconsin employees. A hundred or more workers received raises for five other campuses, too, the Journal reported. The WSJ reported the Wisconsin Department of Justice awarded 99 employees and the Department of Transportation gave 87 pay increases.
Allen added he fears the Department of Administration’s criteria for providing increased funding to specific workers or departments are too fluid and lead to favoritism.
DOA criteria stipulates workers are given raises based on merit, pay equity and retention.
AFSCME Council 40 Executive Director Rick Badger said in a February statement legislators cannot advance the economy when jobs, including those of public employees, get worse annually.
“It’s time to take the state out of reverse,” Badger said. “You can’t create good new jobs in a climate where existing jobs keep getting worse year after year.”
The State Journal said the $8.2 million total payout for public workers saved the state tens of millions of dollars because the DOA previously distributed the funds to most non-academic employees.
The majority of the merit awards to municipal workers were one-time lump sum payments this year that were not added to employees’ base salaries, according to the WSJ.
Like Allen, Citizens Action of Wisconsin Executive Director Robert Kraig also criticized the state’s new method of allocating pay raises to public workers. He reiterated the issue with switching out of a unionized system, as Wisconsin has done, is that the standards for giving raises becomes subjective.
“I’m sure there are some mangers who are really good managers who really are using the pay raise appropriately…but there are others who are simply rewarding their friends,” Kraig said.
