Tag Archives: Scott Walker

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Wisconsin Supreme Court strongly upholds Walker’s union restrictions

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Remember when that awesome Republican governor Scott Walker limited the unions from extorting massive amounts of money from the state using their collective bargaining powers? Well, some judge halted the legislation. That judge has now been overruled by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Here’s the story from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. (H/T PJ Tatler)

Excerpt:

Acting with unusual speed, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the reinstatement of Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial plan to end most collective bargaining for tens of thousands of public workers.

The court found that a committee of lawmakers was not subject to the state’s open meetings law, and so did not violate that law when it hastily approved the collective bargaining measure in March and made it possible for the Senate to take it up. In doing so, the Supreme Court overruled a Dane County judge who had halted the legislation, ending one challenge to the law even as new challenges are likely to emerge.

The changes on collective bargaining will take effect once Secretary of State Doug La Follette arranges for official publication of the stalled bill, and the high court said there was now nothing to preclude him from doing that. La Follette did not return a call Tuesday to say when the law would be published.

[…]The court ruled that Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi’s ruling, which had held up implementation of the collective bargaining law, was in the void ab initio, Latin for invalid from the outset.”The court’s decision …is not affected by the wisdom or lack thereof evidenced in the act,” the majority wrote. “Choices about what laws represent wise public policy for the state of Wisconsin are not within the constitutional purview of the courts. The court’s task in the action for original jurisdiction that we have granted is limited to determining whether the Legislature employed a constitutionally violative process in the enactment of the act. We conclude that the Legislature did not violate the Wisconsin Constitution by the process it used.”

The court concluded that Sumi exceeded her jurisdiction, “invaded” the Legislature’s constitutional powers and erred in halting the publication and implementation of the collective bargaining law.

Ace of Spades explains what the phrase “ab initio” means.

Excerpt:

Generally, when a higher court calls bulls**t on a lower one, it’s called a remand, a declaration that the lower court got it wrong, and to try again.

Commenters are telling me the court ruled here ab initio, which (context clues, it’s been forever since I did anything law-oriented) means it’s expunged from memory altogether as being improperly entertained from the start, which means there is no remand to the lower court to try again. The higher court has said “Not only did you get this wrong, you got it so wrong we don’t trust you with another bite at the apple, so we’re directing your decision from here. It’s over. Done. Finished. Kaput.”

And more. This judge, Sumi, attempted not to rule a law unconstitutional but a bill — a not-quite-yet-a-law — unconstitutional, as she ordered the law to be unpublished, that is, to remain a bill without going to the final step to make it a law.

Ace actually brought out the flaming skull and the bear for this story… so it must be big.

Here’s some other good news from Wisconsin – they just passed a bill to legalize concealed carry. That’s good for law-abiding citizens and bad for criminals, who will now have a tougher time committing crimes.

News

What is a “right-to-work” law, and why do Democrats oppose them?

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From the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

It’s hard to imagine Uncle Sam telling Walt Disney where to make movies or McDonald’s how many hamburgers to make, but if you take a look at the case of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) versus Boeing, you’ll see that the federal government is trying to do just that: dictate where and how private industry may do business. And it’s doing so to bolster one of President Barack Obama’s favorite special interests—labor unions.

To catch you up on the story, Boeing Corporation decided to build a new assembly plant in Charleston, South Carolina, in order to produce the 787 Dreamliner. The NLRB (which is responsible investigating unfair labor practices) got wind of the decision and last month filed a complaint against Boeing, alleging that the company decided to build the plant in South Carolina out of retaliation for union strikes at its Washington state facilities. Nevermind that Boeing actually added 2,000 jobs in Washington on this particular project.

South Carolina is a right-to-work state, meaning that Boeing can hire non-union workers. For fans of big labor (like President Obama and his allies), right-to-work states are a threat to unions’ dominance. (It’s worth noting that the NLRB today is composed of four members, three of whom are Obama appointees.)

The NLRB’s intentions, then, could be easily inferred. It is doing all it can to help unions at the expense of right-to-work states, corporations and at the end of the day, American workers. But in this case, we have even more than inference.

This is important. The way to destroy the Democrats as a political party is to go after their funding.And a lot of their funding is taken from union workers, many of whom are social conservatives who don’t agree with Democrat priorities like taxpayer-funding of abortions and legalizing same-sex marriage.

Here’s a good explanation of the difference that right-to-work laws make to individual union members.

Excerpt:

As Oregon teachers and lawmakers continue brainstorming various education reforms, getting rid of mandatory union dues should be at the top of the list.

That’s nothing against the Oregon Education Association. As far as I can tell, OEA has well-meaning, knowledgeable people working for it. And unlike in Washington, where the state-level teachers union was recently riddled with lawsuits over how it spends members’ dues, Oregon teachers who have had unacceptable run-ins with their state-level union either don’t exist or are hard to find.

But no matter how decent a job a union does, a teacher should never be forced to give it money as a condition of his or her employment, especially when unions are known to engage in all sorts of politicking. Just imagine if your employer took a portion of your paycheck each month and spent it furthering causes and issues and candidates with which you disagreed.

As Susan Stacy, a special education teacher in Seaside, said, “I don’t agree with a lot of the policies or pursuits of the NEA or the OEA. And when they support organizations or causes I flat out disagree with, I don’t think I should be forced to support them. Even when it comes to organizations I think are good, it should be my choice to support them.”

Stacy has been teaching in Oregon for 12 years. Before that, she taught for five years in Utah, a state without compulsory unionism. When she was hired here, she was surprised when she received her first paycheck to find a deduction for union dues. She asked her district what it was all about since she wasn’t planning to be a member and then was informed that in Oregon she had to pay dues.

“I was incensed,” she said.

[…]Taxpayers should be against compulsory union dues, too. After all, taxpayers employ teachers, not unions. It’s crazy that the state allows a union to take hundreds of dollars from 47,000-plus educators each year to help further its agenda. While the majority of the union’s work involves collective bargaining, the union regularly opposes charter schools and partakes in legislative battles to eliminate them. It routinely backs Democrats, endorsing just eight Republicans from among 90 state races in 2008.

There is a move to pass a right-to-work law on right now in New Hampshire. This would allow workers to work without being forced to join a union, and to pay union dues.

News

Wisconsin governor’s union regulation bans automatic deduction of dues

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From Human Events.

Excerpt:

How much will the union bosses’ income stream fall, when dues money no longer flows from employee paychecks directly into their coffers?  Writing in the New York Post earlier this month, Rich Lowry laid out the worst-case scenario for Big Labor, based on some previous examples:

“When Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels ended collective bargaining and the automatic collection of dues in 2005, the number of members paying dues plummeted by roughly 90 percent. In 2007, New York City’s Transit Authority briefly stopped automatically collecting dues for the Transport Workers Union, and dues fell off by more than a third.”

The financial damage to unions will actually be even worse than the amount of dues withheld by defiant, or delinquent, public employees.  The state of Wisconsin has actually been performing an extremely valuable service by collecting these dues automatically and handing the bundled loot over to the union hierarchy.  Private companies pay a great deal of money to maintain Accounts Receivable departments and collections agents.  Imagine the WEAC was a private concern with 98,000 customers.  The amount they would spend on collecting fees from those customers would be a significant line item on their budget.

This will all leave the unions with much less money to slip into Democrat pockets – but again, the damage is even worse than the total amount of campaign dollars lost.  Many union members are not Democrats, and some of them will likely begin demanding more control over how union money is spent, now that the dues don’t magically disappear out of their paychecks.  This will greatly reduce the unions’ ability to make promises to Democrat politicians, in exchange for political services.

Money is a very important thing. You can encourage people to do all kinds of things when you give them the right financial incentives. And policies create those financial incentives. That’s why we need to win elections.