From the Washington Post...

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Republican Wisconsin senators bypass Democrats in vote on collective bargaining

By Michael A. Fletcher Thursday, March 10, 2011; 2:04 AM

Senate Republicans abruptly passed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's plan to sharply curtail collective-bargaining rights for public employees Wednesday night, using a legislative maneuver to approve the measure without 14 Democratic senators who fled the state in an effort to block it.

After stripping the bill of fiscal measures that require a 20-member quorum for action, the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Senate passed the collective-bargaining measure. Analysts say the legislation would cripple most of the state's public employee unions.

On Thursday, the slimmed-down bill is expected to go to the GOP-run state Assembly, which has already passed another version of it.

The standoff in Wisconsin has gone on for three weeks, thrusting public employee unions into a deep crisis. States are grappling with record budget deficits, which some governors have tried to close by trimming what they call the generous benefits public employees receive.

The measure to curtail union power has been followed similarly in other states, including Indiana and Ohio.

The legislative maneuver used to pass the bill in Wisconsin was met with outrage by Democrats and their allies, who vowed that the governor and his fellow Republicans in the state Senate would pay with their jobs.

"The vote does nothing to create jobs, does nothing to strengthen our state, and shows finally and utterly that this was never about anything but raw political power," said Mike Tate, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. "We now put our total focus on recalling the eligible Republicans who voted for this bill. And we also begin counting the days remaining before Scott Walker is himself eligible for recall."

Walker appeared undaunted as he applauded the Senate's action. In a statement, he said the state could not afford to be paralyzed any longer by a controversy that had caused Democratic senators to flee for Illinois and brought tens of thousands of protesters to the Capitol in Madison.

"Senate Democrats have had three weeks to debate this bill and were offered repeated opportunities to come home, which they refused," Walker said. "In order to move the state forward, I applaud the legislature's action today to stand up to the status quo and take a step in the right direction to balance the budget and reform government."

The bill would eliminate most collective-bargaining rights for public employees across Wisconsin. It also would prevent unions from collecting dues with payroll deductions and would not allow unions to require members to pay dues. Collective bargaining is negotiation between an employer and a group of employees to determine the conditions of employment.

Walker's measure would require state workers to pay more for their health-care coverage and pensions - something they had agreed to do.

Although Wisconsin's budget problems are modest compared with those of other states, Walker called the bill necessary to ensure the state's fiscal health.

Not only would the measure help him close a $137 million gap in the current budget, Walker has said, but it would also help local governments deal with the deep cuts in state aid contained in his biennial budget proposal without raising taxes.

He said that approach would help improve the state's business climate and create jobs.

Without unilateral power to divert more of state workers' wages to pay for health-care and pension benefits, Walker has said, state and local governments would have to lay off as many as 12,000 employees over the next two years. Last week, he notified unions that he would lay off as many as 1,500 state workers if his budget bill was not passed.

Union leaders say the legislation's impact would be devastating for their organizations. But they also are calculating that Walker has gone too far. Activists have begun recall campaigns against eight Republican state senators, efforts they hope will culminate next year in a recall effort directed at Walker.

GOP activists are targeting some Democrats for recall. But polls show that although most people support reining in public employee benefits, they oppose removing unions' collective-bargaining rights.

"By stripping out the fiscal items and leaving only the elimination of collective bargaining, the governor has exposed himself as a fraud," said state Sen. Robert Jauch, one of the Democrats who left the state. Jauch said he will return Thursday to stand with protesters. "Tonight he has guaranteed that the people of the state of Wisconsin are going to stay engaged until this government changes."

National Democratic activists are hoping that the battle in Wisconsin energizes their supporters and creates energy that carries into the 2012 presidential contest.

"This has the potential of being a spark that builds a fire on the progressive side going into the presidential campaign," said Robert Borosage, co-chairman of the Campaign for America's Future, a liberal activist group.

The governor's approach appears not to be playing well with Wisconsin voters, who elected him with 52 percent of the vote last fall.

A Rasmussen poll last week found that 57 percent of likely voters in the state disapprove of the job Walker is doing, while 43 percent approve.

The plan to pass the budget measure went into motion Wednesday when Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, leader of the state Senate's 19 Republicans, called a conference committee of leaders from both houses with just two hours' notice.

As some onlookers shouted "Shame, shame," the committee passed the streamlined bill over the protests of state House Minority Leader Peter Barca (D). "This is clearly a violation of the open-meetings law," he said of the meeting.

Barca said state law requires 24 hours' notice for public meetings, unless there is "good cause" not to provide it. But Republicans ignored his complaint, passing the measure out of the conference committee over his objections.

Speaking to reporters afterward, Barca called the maneuver "a continuation of a pattern of naked abuse of power" by Wisconsin Republicans. "They trample on democracy," he added.

Barca said he will refer the maneuver to the attorney general and will meet with fellow Democrats to seek other ways to stop the action. "This will not stand - that is one thing I will predict," he said.

After Wednesday night's vote, hundreds of protesters were assembled at the Capitol, witnesses said.

"I think you will see signatures being gathered on recall petitions at four times the rate they were yesterday," Jauch said. "This is just outrageous behavior."

From the New York Times...

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Wisconsin Senate Limits Bargaining by Public Workers

By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO — The bitter political standoff in Wisconsin over Gov. Scott Walker’s bid to sharply curtail collective bargaining for public-sector workers ended abruptly Wednesday night as Republican colleagues in the State Senate successfully maneuvered to adopt a bill doing just that.

After a three-week stalemate, Republican senators pushed the measure through in less than half an hour even as the Senate’s Democrats remained many miles away, trying to block the vote. Democrats in the State Assembly complained bitterly, and protesters, who had spent many days at the Capitol, continued their chants and jeers.

The Republicans control the Senate but had been blocked from voting on the issue after Senate Democrats left the state last month to prevent a quorum. But the Republicans used a procedural maneuver Wednesday to force the collective bargaining measure through: they removed elements of Governor Walker’s bill that were technically related to appropriating funds, thus lifting a requirement that 20 senators be present for a vote. In the end, the Senate’s 19 Republicans approved the measure, 18 to 1, without any debate on the floor or a single Democrat in the room.

The remaining bill, which increases health care and pension costs and cuts collective bargaining rights for public workers in the state, still needs approval from the State Assembly on Thursday morning, but that chamber approved the measure once before, and many in Wisconsin’s Capitol now consider approval a foregone conclusion.

Mr. Walker, a Republican whose efforts to diminish collective bargaining rights have placed him firmly in the national spotlight during his less than three months in office, applauded the Senate’s move on Wednesday night, and said it brought the state a step closer to balancing its budget. “The action today will help ensure Wisconsin has a business climate that allows the private sector to create 250,000 new jobs,” Mr. Walker said, in a statement released minutes after the unexpected vote.

Democrats, meanwhile, condemned the move as an attack on working families, a violation of open meetings requirements (most of them did not know there was to be a vote until not long before), and a virtual firebomb in state that already found itself politically polarized and consumed with recall efforts, large scale protests and fury from public workers.

“In 30 minutes, 18 state senators undid 50 years of civil rights in Wisconsin,” said Mark Miller, the leader of the Senate Democrats who fled to Illinois on Feb. 17 to block just such a vote from occurring. “Their disrespect for the people of Wisconsin and their rights is an outrage that will never be forgotten.”

The 14 Democrats — many of whom watched a live stream of the vote on the Web from their undisclosed locations in Illinois — said they did not intend to return to Wisconsin on Thursday; some said that they suspected the Republicans might yet have additional voting maneuvers planned, and that they needed to assess all that had occurred.

“Tonight, 18 Senate Republicans conspired to take government away from the people,” Mr. Miller said. “Tomorrow we will join the people of Wisconsin in taking back their government.”

The Democrats complained angrily that the manner of the move directly contradicted what the Republicans had contended all along: that collective bargaining rights had to be cut not for philosophical reasons but merely for financial ones, to fix the state’s budget gap.

“To pass this the way they did — without 20 senators — is to say that it has no fiscal effect,” said Timothy Cullen, another of the Democratic senators. “It’s admitting that this is simply to destroy public unions.”

The bill makes significant changes to most public-sector union rules, limiting collective bargaining to matters of wages and limiting raises to changes in the Consumer Price Index unless the public approves higher raises in a referendum. It requires most unions to hold votes annually to determine whether most workers still wish to be members. And it ends the state’s collection of union dues from paychecks.

Wisconsin’s battle has been the leading edge of a wider fight over public workers and collective bargaining across the country. Similar, if somewhat less dramatic, fights have played out in statehouses in places like Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Indiana, and more are expected.

In Wisconsin, Republicans and Democrats had been at an impasse over Mr. Walker’s bill for weeks. Because the bill was initially deemed a fiscal bill, it required 20 members — thus at least one of the Democrats’ 14 members — to be in the room.

On both sides, as the Democrats camped out in Illinois, there had been negotiations, angry news conferences, breakdowns in negotiations, and talk of more negotiations. Senate Republicans had voted to fine each of the missing Democrats $100 a day. The Senate Democrats had talked almost every day, sometimes disagreeing over whether it was time to give up and go home or to keep demanding that the Republicans lessen the cuts to collective bargaining rights.

As the impasse dragged on, senators from both parties found themselves the focus of recall efforts — efforts that all involved now said were certain to grow still more intense. Late Wednesday, hundreds of demonstrators crammed into the Capitol as news of the vote trickled out. And Mike Tate, the leader of the state’s Democratic Party, pledged to put “total focus” on “recalling the eligible Republican senators who voted for this heinous bill,” adding, “and we also begin counting the days remaining before Scott Walker is himself eligible for recall."

Even as recently as Sunday evening, a possible deal seemed in sight. In private e-mail exchanges with the Democrats, Mr. Walker’s representatives appeared willing to agree to some limited changes.

But by Wednesday afternoon, after talks had clearly broken apart, Republican senators met privately for hours, and eventually called a conference committee meeting of the leaders in the Senate and Assembly for 6 p.m. Peter Barca, a Democratic leader in the Assembly, protested vehemently as Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate Republicans’ leader, called the meeting to order, announced that a new bill — without specific mentions of appropriations — was being considered, and called for a vote.

“This is a violation of open meetings laws!” Mr. Barca cried out repeatedly, demanding to hear a summary of the bill and what had changed. Mr. Fitzgerald swiftly moved to the Senate chamber, calling his Republicans to order, and called for another vote in a matter of minutes.