One state legislator believes that if state employees are to continue working under contracts the government has not ratified, they should have the right and the ability to strike.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, said yesterday he is introducing legislation that would allow state workers the right to strike and have binding arbitration options.
Organizations such as the Wisconsin State Employees Union have been outraged at the Joint Committee on Employee Relations decision against the employee contracts two weeks ago. The WSEU has said it will not return to the bargaining table in the contracts matter.
JCOER members voted against contract approval primarily because there is not enough money available given the abysmal state budget situation.
“For years, I have voted for virtually every contract that has come before the Legislature because they lived within our means,” Assembly Speaker and JCOER chair Rep. John Gard, R-Peshtigo, said of the vote. “However, times have changed, and we cannot afford business as usual.”
Pocan said the approval of the contracts was long overdue.
“It should have been done 19 months ago,” Pocan said. “It’s important people realize one of the problems, the reason we’ve gone 19 months with no contracts for state employees, is that the power is not in the hands of the workers.”
Pocan said the Legislature was “wasting time on something as simple as approving already negotiated contracts.”
“If we can’t take care of employee contracts the way they should be, then there needs to be some kind of mechanism to make legislators sit down and negotiate,” Pocan said.
He said Minnesota’s state employee-strike regulations would be used as a model in drafting the bill he planned to propose.
Minnesota state workers’ right to strike was exercised when then-Gov. Jesse Ventura’s administration decreased employees’ wages and asked them to pay additional health-care costs. By striking, the workers were able to reopen negotiations.
“Ventura put workers in a box, and the state employees struck — not vital services like first responders and public safety workers — and they brought Ventura back to the table,” Pocan said.
Earlier this month, workers at prisons across the state called in sick to work, participating in a strike-like job action. This drew immediate reprimand from the Department of Employment Relations, who called the action a strike and notified the WSEU that their members were in violation of state law. The WSEU ordered all workers participating in the job action to desist.
Last week, hundreds of state employees, including University of Wisconsin teaching assistants, packed the rotunda of the state Capitol and rallied in frustration.
“We had a done deal, as far as we were concerned,” UW sociology TA Rebekah Ravenscroft-Scott said of the contracts.
As negotiated, the agreements would have cost the state an additional $63 million every year, which is $6 million more than the reserves available to pay for them.
“My hope is that the spirit of these contracts stays alive as we go forward,” Gard said.