Monday, April 21, 2014

Act 10 Continues To Crawl It's Way Through The Legal System

Amongst the Good Friday news dump was a blurb about Act 10 and how how a panel of three federal appellate court judges upheld it.

Actually, it wasn't union rights that were struck down as much as it was the rights of individual workers:
In their lawsuit, the unions noted they could normally ask for raises no greater than inflation under Act 10, while individual employees could seek increases of any size. They argued that differential treatment is unconstitutional, but last fall Conley found it was allowed.
In other words, the Appellate judges said that cronyism and nepotism were perfectly fine in their eyes.

In practical terms, what this means is that there will be a lot more lawsuits being filed for discrimination and unfair labor practices which is going to cost taxpayers even more.  So much for conservatives being fiscally responsible or people of integrity, but we already knew that.

And if the gentle reader wonders how the judges could make such an egregious indiscretion in their judgement, just look at who they are:
The decision was written by Joel Flaum, an appellate judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan. It was joined by appellate Judge Ilana Rovner, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and by Virginia Kendall, who normally serves as a federal district court judge in northern Illinois and who was appointed by President George W. Bush.
This story will not be as interesting as the Wisconsin Supreme Court's ruling on the Colas decision.

Constitutionally, the Colas ruling should stand.  However, David "Chokehold" Prosser and his other Big Money-owned justices have already shown that they do not really care about the law.

Even though many people expect the four conservative, company-owned state justices to follow their orders and vote against the unions, even in violations of the law.

And where it will be most interesting when that ruling comes out is Milwaukee County.  As I have explained before, it's a lose-lose situation for Emperor Chris Abele.  He'll either have to start respecting the workers (the thought just makes him shudder) and admitting that they have rights or he will have to find the money as 1,200 workers are suddenly eligible to retire.

Add that to the other lawsuits that Abele is losing and he will have a lot of explaining to do to the voters.

7 comments:

  1. "The Appellate judges said that cronyism and nepotism were perfectly fine in their eyes."

    No, they did not. The court ruled that under Act 10, individual employees can seek pay raises commensurate with their performance.

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  2. David Blaska chief fuck stick and ass wipe. Every raise and position bump has gone to a walker toady in my division. We have someone that jumped 7 positions and 5 pay grades. Went from pt employee to ft just because of who she is married to.

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  3. DOC employees asked for raises and the answer given from the very top was that it is an OSER decision. Need a good sense of humor to work for the state now.

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  4. Blaska is a poster boy for nepotism, so he as usual is the first to defend it. What a tool.

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  5. This is simple: When dealing with unions, the government can't provide across-the-board raises greater than inflation. When dealing with individuals, they can. That isn't an erosion on individual rights at all. Rather, it's a limiting of the scope of what can be provided to employees via a third party. It's easy to say, "yeah, but if employees WANT to be represented by a third party, then they should have that right!", and they do, but there's no reason that the state should have to deal with those third parties in the same way. This is actually promoting individual rights and individual liberty by encouraging employees to be their own advocates. If they don't want to, that's fine, but in that case, Act 10 provides relief to the state by preventing them from being in a position of having to provide large across-the-board raises to groups of employees even when some of the individual employees in that group may not deserve a raise at all.
    You know who should be happy about this? People that take pride in their work. People that are good at what they do will be rewarded commensurately. That's the way the world works. If they aren't rewarded to the level they feel is appropriate, they are free to pursue employment elsewhere. Let's not forget - "public employees" aren't a class of people. They are simply people who happen to work for a particular type of entity. They are not slaves. If, all of a sudden, a huge mass of public employees decided they weren't getting paid enough or weren't getting big enough raises and they decided to quit, and suitable replacements could not be hired at those current pay levels, then the pay would increase until such time as a balance was once again reached. And that, friends, is how the free market works.

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    1. Free market doesn't work too well when....... Every raise and position bump has gone to a walker toady in my division. We have someone that jumped 7 positions and 5 pay grades. Went from pt employee to ft just because of who she is married to. We all know how walker likes to reward certain people!!!

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  6. Uggg, You have no idea how the "free market" works nor what public employees do. How do you measure what most public employees do? Who ever plows the most roads? plows them best? hits the least amount of mailboxes? how about education?

    are you willing to forgo a couple of years of qualified nurses quitting and hiring unqualified ones until "balance is reached again"?

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