Expensive Austerity

http://cognidissidence.blogspot.com/2012/06/expensive-austerity.html

While Milwaukee County Executive, Scott Walker tried to do a prototypical form of Act 10.

In 2009, Walker claimed that Milwaukee County was in the midst of a fiscal crisis and thus wanted to impose a reduced work week, where workers would lose five hours of pay each week. Walker wanted to make this work reduction indefinite in length, claiming it necessary to fill the supposed hole in his budget. The unions grieved this illegal decision, as they should, and won in arbitration. It was ruled that per a previous arbitration ruling, the County could only impose 45 hours of reduced work time. Not only that, it was discovered during the proceedings that there was actually no crisis and that there might not even have been a deficit.

While crafting his 2010 Milwaukee County Budget, Walker decided to include a money saving provision of nearly $20 million in concessions from the unions, even though he never sat down and asked the unions to make the concessions, even though he was supposed to be negotiating a new contract with the unions at the time.

Since he never came to the bargaining table much less made a proposal for the concessions, the unions were unable to reject or accept the wanted concessions. Despite this fact, and with the aid of the corporate media, most significantly the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Walker waged a publicity war with the unions, claiming that the "greedy unions" wouldn't make the concessions he needed from them.