Editor’s Note: Although this proposed legislation is being presented to the general public as exempting law enforcers from the restrictions on collective bargaining, sources tell PoliceOne that this bill could potentially impact the bargaining rights Corrections officers, Conservation Wardens, Capitol Police, Forest Rangers, Department of Justice Agents, and others. We will continue to follow this story and keep you posted.
By Dean Mosiman
Wisconsin State Journal
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz is considering calling an emergency City Council meeting for Thursday to pass contracts and contract extensions so all city labor unions would have settled deals through 2012.
A decision to act on the contracts, which spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson said the mayor would make today after he’s had a chance to consult with council leaders, comes in the wake of a plan by Gov. Scott Walker to prohibit public employee unions from bargaining labor issues other than wages.
The mayor also ordered the city’s lobbyist to make opposition to Walker’s plan his top priority.
Walker, seeking to address current and projected state budget shortfalls, late last week proposed legislation that would repeal rights to all collective bargaining except for wages for most state and local workers.
Police and firefighters would be exempt. The governor wants the Legislature to pass the bill this week.
If the bill passes, city and other public employees may face hundreds of dollars in new monthly costs for health insurance and pensions and lose bargaining rights on work rules and other contract provisions, union officials have said.
Cieslewicz, in a memo Monday to the council and managers, said Walker’s bill fundamentally changes the relationship between management, public employee unions and all municipal employees.
The mayor called for the bill to be slowed down “so that thoughtful consideration can be given to this massive change in municipal labor relations.”
Former Mayor Paul Soglin, Cieslewicz’s chief rival in today’s mayoral primary, said there are better solutions to the city’s fiscal problems than “busting unions.”
The city has 3,530 employees. Five unions, including its biggest - AFSCME Local 60 and Teamsters Local 695 - have contracts through 2012. Four have deals through 2011 and four unions, including the police, are without a deal.
The city also has 424 unrepresented employees.
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