In the aftermath of the rejection of state employees’ contracts Thursday night, Gov. Jim Doyle announced Friday that his cabinet secretaries would not accept a pay raise.
The State legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations voted to return 15 tentative bargaining agreements to the Department of Employment Relations for renegotiation. The DER will now have to renegotiate the bargaining agreements with the unions that represent state workers.
Doyle’s cabinet secretaries will donate the difference between their current salaries and the salaries of their predecessors back into the state’s general spending fund.
“I have asked that my cabinet secretaries return any difference between their salaries and the salaries of their predecessors,” Doyle said. “We are asking all of state government to cut back, and my appointees have to lead by example.”
As negotiated, the agreements would cost the state an additional $63 million every year, which is $6 million more than compensation reserves set aside for the 2001-2003 biennium budget cycle.
“For years, I have voted for virtually every contract that has come before the legislature, because they lived within our means,” said Speaker of the Assembly John Gard, R-Peshtigo. “However, times have changed, and we cannot afford business as usual.”
The JCER said that considering a budget deficit estimated at $3.6 billion over the next biennium, raises would result in greater layoffs of state employees than what is already expected to occur.
The joint committee asked the DER to renegotiate the employee agreements in a way that would be more in line with taxpayers’ ability to fund them.
“With this action, we are allowing the DER to make fundamental reforms needed to keep good faith with the taxpayers,” Gard said. “My hope is that the spirit of these contracts stays alive as we go forward.”
The JCER had not brought the agreements to a vote, until the Wisconsin State Employees Union and the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit against the legislature suing for a forced meeting of the JCER and a vote on the agreements, naming the state of Wisconsin and Gard, chairman of the JCER, as defendants.
In response to the vote, the WSEU reminded its constituency that members of the JCER receive $88 for a day’s work in committee, more, they say, than the lowest-paid custodian member of the WSEU makes in a day’s wages.
“I, as one of your leaders, was moved and so very proud of our members and our leaders as they carried the fight to the JCER meeting,” said Martin Beil, executive director of WSEU, who expressed frustration from the decision.
The WSEU, representing 31,000 state employees in the negotiations, will hold an emergency meeting of its leaders in the next week to discuss strategies for a return to bargaining.
State employees have become increasingly dissident over JCER actions, as evident by prison sick outs across the state on Feb. 6 and 7, when hundreds of prison guards and employees called in sick.
Immediately upon notification of the sick out, Department of Employment Relations secretary Karen Timberlake notified the WSEU that such activities were illegal pursuant to state statute. Beil ordered all WSEU to desist strike-like job actions.
WSEU has encouraged its members to contact their state legislators, and some union members have planned rallies for today at the state capital.
State legislators have also been forgoing the 3 percent pay raises budgeted for them in light of the budget situation. Some have pledged to return the amount of their pay raises, while others have asked that their raises be frozen until the state employees’ contracts are ratified.
“At a time when we are asking local governments, state workers, businesses and families to tighten their belts, I feel state legislators should do the same,” said Rep. Terri McCormick, who declined her raise.