This is what Sen. Jon Erpenbach posted on Facebook last night, before the details of Walker's budget repair bill emerged:
The Governor's job is to bring us together not divide us. Here in Wisconsin we sit down together to solve our problems. I urge the Governor to stop bullying and to sit down to talk with the people that provide vital services in our state. In the meantime I hope that all local and state employees continue to go to work and do the best they can do.
Kelda Helen Roys on Facebook today:
Wisconsin: open for big business, but closed for workers. I guess Walker thinks working people aren't real parts of the economy. Do we really want a society of low-wage workers with no benefits? Investing in labor is a key to economic growth: they teach that in basic economics.
Brett Hulsey, in a press release:
"It's upsetting but not surprising that Governor Walker has chosen to continue his battle against Wisconsin working families by introducing legislation that would end the state's long support for the right of workers to collectively bargain for benefits and work conditions.
The Governor calls himself CEO of the State of Wisconsin, but this bill is an attack on his own employees, who he sees as his enemy. With public servants already making almost 5% less than those in the private sector, he's too afraid to ask corporations, his special interest backers, and the wealthy to pay their fair share."
Sen. Mark Miller, in a press release today:
This is the Republicans picking big corporations and special interests over workers and their families by literally eliminating the collective bargaining rights of tens of thousands of workers.
Wisconsin workers have shown they're willing to make concessions to help balance the budget. They've stepped up at the state and local level going without raises and taking pay cuts, more than 3% at the state level.
Mark Pocan:
Republicans leaked details of Governor Scott Walker's policy-filled "budget adjustment bill" almost two weeks after the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau released a memo showing the state would end the biennium with a surplus.
This historic bill is expected to end public employee unions as we know them.
"The right for public servants to organize in an effort to protect themselves and their families has been on the books for over half of a century," said Pocan. "In one fell swoop, Governor Walker is trying to institute a sweeping radical and dangerous notion that will return Wisconsin to the days when land barons and railroad tycoons controlled the political elites in Madison."
