When asked by NPR today whether there was any room for compromise on Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to strip most state government workers of their collective bargaining rights, State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) said no.
“No compromise on backing off of the bill and where the bill is at right now,” Fitzgerald said. “You know, when my Democrat colleagues decided to jump in a bus and drive to Chicago and are held up in a hotel down there, we moved through the legislative process. They had an opportunity to amend the bill in the second reading in the state Senate, and they decided not to participate in that.”
Fitzgerald said that Mary Bell, the president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, is only telling “half the truth” when she says that public employees have agreed to Walker’s pension and health care concessions, thereby solving the budget issues.
“Well, and even with those concessions, it still does not allow those locally elected officials the ability to be able to manage that,” he said. “Everything from workplace safety to some of the egregious items that are part of collective bargaining now in Wisconsin have a fiscal piece to it. And, you know, Mary’s not acknowledging that right now.”
When asked if the proposals were really saying that public employees shouldn’t exist at all, Fitzgerald responded that wasn’t the case. But he did say that employees should not be “forced” to join a union.
“The $900, the $1,100 a year that the individual workers are forced to kick into the union whether or not they represent them or not, we have because of the fair share provision in Wisconsin, that’s part of the flexibility I think is needed for not only the employers, the county boards and the school boards, but also for the employee to make a decision on whether or not they want to be part of that union,” he said.
Listen to the rest here.
