Monday, February 23, 2015

Right to Work is Wrong For Wisconsin


 

By Jeff Simpson

 Mayor Paul Soglin tells how wrong the Republicans are in trying to rush through Right to Work in Wisconsin.  


MADISON (WKOW)-- Saturday Madison Mayor Paul Soglin blasted plans to pass right-to-work legislation in the senate next week.
The Senate is set to hold a public hearing on the bill Tuesday and take a vote Wednesday. The bill would make it illegal to require a person to join an union or pay union dues as a requirement of their employment.
Mayor Soglin says it will hurt workers and credits unions with boosting the local economy.
“In Madison and Dane County where we have one of the most robust economies in the nation, where we are going contrary to the trend in the rest of the state, which is what really needs to be presented in a legislative hearing process, we have strong unions,” Mayor Soglin said.

The Wisconsin Business Alliance, a business group that actually cares about Wisconsin and has some actual business sense, has found out that Right to work isn't popular in Wisconsin.   



I spent this morning calling local chambers of commerce in Republican state senate districts in an effort to get their take on the so-called “right to work” legislation that is scheduled to be introduced at the State Capitol this week.
Since the State Chamber of Commerce, or WMC, is strongly supporting the legislation, I was curious to learn where local business associations stand on the issue.
Specifically, I wanted to learn the answer to this question: Is WMC really representing Wisconsin’s broad and diverse business community when it claims that businesses want legislators to enact “right to work” laws?The answer was astonishing: I could not find a single Chamber in the districts of senators Fitzgerald, Cowles, Moulton, Petrowski, Nass, Lasee, or Harsdorf that supports “right to work.”In fact, I heard statements like these again and again: “We’re not taking a position on that.” “We don’t take a stand on political issues.” “We only advocate for political issues when there’s a strong consensus among our members — and we don’t have consensus on this.”
Let's see, the Mayor of one of the best cities in the country to live is against it, the Chambers of Commerce in every Republican Senators district will not speak in favor of it, so who is for it.  

O yeah ALEC

There is of course a full daily dose of Irony, that the party that was abhorred, by one of Mary Burke's consultants copying his earlier work while writing policy, then introducing as their first bill, one plagiarized word for word from their masters at ALEC.

Of course it would take a media that cared about objective facts and the search for truth to actually bring that up.   It even took one of the Republicans long time donor's and cheerleaders to point out that not a single Republican campaigned on this issue that they are now fast tracking.   



What does a campaign mean when almost none of the major policy departures contained in the budget were proposed or debated during the year-long exchange of policy ideas by Democrat Mary Burke and Republican Scott Walker?
The major issue in that hard-fought and money-drenched contest was job creation. That priority has almost disappeared from the Republican dialogue now coming out of the governor’s office and Republican-controlled capitol. As if to declare victory, the current focus is now about workforce development and filling jobs.
Lest we celebrate prematurely, there are still about a half million unemployed or underemployed adults in the state, many in the central city of Milwaukee; we still have a brain drain of more than 10,000 college graduates; and our wage levels are still in the bottom third of states.
A little digging though and we see exactly where this bill is coming from:

WISCONSIN RIGHT TO WORK COMMITTEE, INC.

MICHELLE LITJENS

3765 MAXWELL RD
PO BOX 296
OSHKOSH , WI 54904 

Hmmmm I wonder if Robin Vos will recuse himself?   




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