Wednesday marked the one-year mark that state employees have been without a contract approved by the state legislature.
The legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations rejected the contracts last month to the dismay of state employees waiting to receive raises already budgeted for them.
Wisconsin State Employees Union has had small numbers of its constituency protesting in the rotunda of the Capitol each day of the past week, and the Teachers’ Assistant Association has organized informational pickets outside the University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Union.
The Wisconsin State Employees Union remains stoic in its position of not returning to the negotiating table, as does the TAA.
“There are no negotiations underway at the moment,” said Mike Quieto, president of the TAA. “We want our contracts resubmitted to the Joint Committee on Employment Relations.”
After the Committee on Employment Relations voted against the contracts, they were sent back to where they were negotiated, in the Department of Employment Relations. The Department of Employment is part of the legislative branch of state government, which means Gov. Jim Doyle could resubmit the contracts to the legislature.
The governor’s press secretary, Dan Leistikow, said that Doyle was prepared to reintroduce the contracts if the legislative climate proved itself welcoming.
“Governor Doyle has said he is willing to go back to the negotiating table if that’s what the employees want,” Leistikow said. “And he has also said he would reintroduce the contracts if he received some sort of assurance from a majority of legislators that they would be approved.”
Quieto said the TAA is currently working to create that sort of situation.
“We’re trying to make it a comfortable environment for Doyle to do what’s in our best interest and reintroduce the contracts,” Quieto said. “We’re having a number of conversations with legislators in which we’re trying to get a majority of legislators to sign agreements they would vote in favor of contracts if they ever do hit the floor of the legislature.”
Quieto said the attempt of Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, to bypass the Joint Committee on Employment Relations ruling and allow the Assembly to vote on the contracts and the bill introduced by Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, to give state employees the right to strike were positive actions.
“This is obviously a good thing from our point of view. Whether it works or not, there is still a conversation going on,” Quieto said. “JCOER seems to be operating under the assumption that their ‘no’ was the last word, when it was really the first word in a whole new process.”
Quieto said legislators have ideas about the 2003-05 employee contracts, but those cannot start to be negotiated until the current contracts are approved.
“We were already celebrating the contracts,” Quieto said.
The TAA rented out the University Club March 16 of last year and threw a party in celebration of a well-done job negotiating the contracts. “Things have been weird and interesting since then,” Quieto said.
Last month the TAA and representation from every union with state employees working at the university met with UW chancellor John Wiley to discuss the current state of the contracts.
“We talked about how we can work with the state and put pressure on legislators to keep asking what is going on with the contracts. We’re used to bargaining against the chancellor’s representatives on these sorts of things, but instead we’re on the same side of the table talking about what can be done.”
Quieto said Wiley and the chief lobbyist for the UW have been walking up to the Capitol to lobby for the contracts, in addition to lobbying for smaller budget cuts to the UW System.
