Last year, I wrote extensively about efforts led by former Chancellor Biddy Martin and her administration, donors, and alumni to privatize (or at least semi-privatize) the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  That effort was partially successful, for while Martin and colleagues failed to separate Madison from the rest of the UW System, or gain authority over tuition setting, they did succeed in getting Madison the authority to redesign its human resources system.  This new “flexibility” was praised by many on campus, including staff, faculty, and students, who recognize that the current bureaucracy is not working, especially for those outside of administration.

So, this year the Human Resource Design Project has been advertised as a tremendous opportunity, hard won, and far better than the alternative — the status quo.  Perhaps.  But few reforms are without consequence, and the recommendations recently offered by the working teams in HR Design suggest this case is no exception.  In fact, the potential long-term effects of this redesign process may result in an very different university culture, one that is far less progressive than Madison has historically been known for.  Instead, the recommendations will likely aggressively speed-up Madison’s transformation (I’d say descent) into a market-driven institution focused first and foremost on serving its paying customers.

Some specifics of the recommendations have been discussed over at Sifting and Winnowing and so I direct you to read the details there.  For example, the recommendations include combining the currently unionized classified staff and academic staff into one.  As severals members of the HR working teams point out, this has significant implications for the protections held by unionized workers: “If the state legislature does not amend these statutes, the combining formerly classified staff–the custodians, the office secretaries, financial specialists–into the employee category academic staff will take away the few remaining collective bargaining rights that they have fought and bargained for about 50 years.”  Both the classified staff and the academic staff object to this recommendation.

Another recommendation focuses on the distribution of employee pay based on labor market analyses. As members of the Wisconsin University Union point out, this can mean many things– some resulting in even lower pay for UW-Madison workers.  ”There is no standard labor market for any group or individual occupations (with the exception of building trades). There are often valid arguments to be made for or against choosing one group over another. However, choice of a particular labor market as the standard will frequently determine the result.”  Crucially, the current recommendations say nothing about providing cost of living increases to all employees, nor is there any consideration of years of experience with good performance.

Furthermore, the proper implementation of these recommendations will likely grow the size of central administration — not reduce it.  National studies indicate that growth in central administrations are the source of much of the increasing costs of college attendance, so we need to pay special attention here.  According to Joel Rogers, professor of Sociology, “Done properly, the task of specifying the real human capital requirements of hundreds of UW job titles; identifying jobs with the same requirements in external labor markets; collecting all relevant data on their compensation from private employers; and doing all this continuously enough to capture relevant changes, job titles, compensation practices, and labor market boundaries and participants is a massive amount of work.”

Finally, despite promises to the contrary, these recommendations involve cuts to employee compensation.  Specifically, academic staff will see their vacation benefits reduced.  As ASEC has pointed out, “newly employed academic staff will lose nearly 52 hours of vacation/personal time under this proposal. Children attending MMSD have 16 days of vacation that do not coincide with the UW’s current holiday schedule, which means a single parent would have four days of vacation left (after caring for her/his child when local schools are not in session).”  And yet UW claims that employees will not move backwards under the Redesign?

Now, to UW’s credit, this has been a somewhat transparent process.  Many public forums have been held, and there are many ways to provide input.  The 11 working groups on this effort involved many people– however, a closer look indicates that the vast majority (perhaps 2/3) are people currently in HR in the administration– there were not many faculty or union-represented workers involved.  Participation even among those on the work groups has been reportedly hampered by meeting times occurring early in the morning (e.g. before childcare begins) and during work hours.

Moreover, there has also been a continuation of last spring’s approach to talking to campus members– with administrators telling us what is “important” and “smart” without providing hard facts about the evidence on why.  Where does this proposed structure of titles come from? Where is the data regarding the effects of this sort of market-driven approach versus alternatives?  There is very little data given anywhere to back up the contentions in the recommendations, despite the very expensive contributions made by the Huron Consulting firm, hired under Martin to assist with this work.  The rhetorical approach is led by Robert Lavigna, who speaks about the importance of ensuring that the new system can attract and retain “the best talent.”  He utilizes the language of “flexibility”, “efficiency,” “effective.”  He promises a “greater connection between compensation and performance.”  In other words he talks a  lot like Biddy Martin, and others like her who are bringing business practices to education.

Thus, one key thing that the HR Redesign highlights is that the neoliberal politics embodied in Biddy Martin are not hers alone, and that she is indicative of a broader market-driven culture amongst those who surrounded and hired her, which continues to prevail in today’s UW-Madison (and indeed globally).  This recommendations were issued, and are being systematically advanced, despite her departure.  That is something we all must pay close attention to, as these political maneuverings will likely continue to shape the next stages in Madison’s development- especially the upcoming chancellor search.  Who will be in charge there? What “facts” will we be provided? What role will faculty, staff, and students play, relative to the roles played by WARF, donors, alumni, and administrators?

A thoughtful approach to considering the desirability of the marketization of Madison requires our community think about (1) What are the full set of alternative options under consideration? (2) What evidence is being presented about the likely intended and unintended consequences of each option? and (3) Who exactly stands to benefit, and in what ways, from each option?

Notably, these are not the kinds of questions Huron (our highly-paid consultant) is known for asking and answering. Instead, Huron emphasizes a one-directional model in which administration directs the activities of faculty and staff.  Laura Yaeger, VP at Huron, has said that “universities are getting a better understanding of what activities add value to students and stakeholders while  providing clearer guidelines for staff and faculty about which programs and activities should be supported.”   Does that sound like shared governance to you?  Who are those stakeholders?

We are told that once again, this is our only choice. Don’t listen.  This Redesign is neoliberalism at its finest, justifying marketization as a form of self-defense, redefining all interactions within the educational institution as essentially business relationships. We, the faculty and staff and our traditional protections, are being identified as the obstacle to market-based efficiencies.  The goal is to make UW-Madison less dependent on us.  This gives private investors greater opportunities to profit from state expenditure, while influencing the form and content of education. And it makes business and university administrators the main partnership, redefining student-professor relations.

It is imperative that educators across UW-Madison begin to understand and draw attention to how funding priorities, public-private partnerships, tuition and fees, cost-benefit analysis, performance indicators, curriculum changes, and new technologies change the content of academic work and learning, and how they collectively arise from global efforts to discipline academic labor for capital. The changes to Madison’s human resources system, and to its operations more broadly, are intimately linked to employment opportunities in Dane County and elsewhere, and to the kinds of education and services we deliver to the state.  If we are going to be market-driven in how we educate and serve Wisconsin, what we provide will be undoubtedly more unequally distributed.  Everyone should have something to say about that. As Lavigna has said “This system will affect everyone on this campus.”  He’s serious. You need to pay attention.

PLEASE: Send your feedback on HR Design to hrdesign@news.wisc.edu

Sara Goldrick-Rab
Associate Professor,
Educational Policy Studies

In the 2011-2013 state biennial budget, the Joint Finance Committee granted UW-Madison the authority to create a new personnel system in Human Resources. This legislation implicitly acceded to the creation of a public authority model that had sparked contentious debate about the relationship between UW-Madison and the state in the past year. Currently, eleven work teams are drafting recommendations for a new human resources system through the HR Design Project.

To ensure that readers understand what is occurring, it is essential to define a few key terms about employment on campus. Classified staff, or public employees hired through the civil service system, include blue-collar workers, technical workers, clerical workers, and the trades. Many classified staff were unionized before the implementation of Act 10. Academic staff are also public employees in UW System but are “unique to higher education” as defined in state statute. They include non-faculty lecturers, researchers, many administrators, and academic advisors. Academic staff are not subject to the same civil service system rules as classified staff and have been protected under statutory governance rights since the mid-1980s.

One noteworthy and perhaps soon-to-be notorious recommendation comes from the Employee Categories Work Team. This group has proposed to dissolve classified staff status and combine those workers with academic staff. What does this mean? Not only did Act 10 and the 2011-2013 biennial budget reduce the scope of collective bargaining rights to one compensation issue, wages, it also stripped faculty and staff in UW System of the statutory right to collectively bargain. If the state legislature does not amend these statutes, the combining formerly classified staff–the custodians, the office secretaries, financial specialists–into the employee category academic staff will take away the few remaining collective bargaining rights that they have fought and bargained for about 50 years.

The Employee Categories Work Team voted to explore this proposal because of two perceived benefits. First, it extends statutory governance rights to formerly classified staff. However, a proposal that retains a “classified staff” category and expands governance through university policy to this category can still allow for collective bargaining. The expansion of governance rights through university policy also may strengthen the diversity on many campus committees. Furthermore, governance rights are inherently weaker than bargaining rights because governance lacks contractual rights and are even perceived to be advisory by faculty and staff leadership. (ASM, however, disagrees.)

Second, the Employee Categories Work Team sought to improve workplace climate by reducing the “caste system” that currently exists between classified and academic staff, but disparities in recruitment, compensation, and benefits based on category primarily contribute to the caste system, rather than which category is marked on employee files. We do not believe that the dissolution of the classified category will mend historical issues in disparities in compensation and benefits. Furthermore, erecting barriers to collective bargaining for 5,500 employees who have already taken a pay cut this year because of Act 10’s hike in benefits contributions certainly will not improve workplace climate. The preservation of a civil service system, which prevents favoritism and the caste system that arises from favoritism, does in fact improve workplace climate by promoting a more fair workplace.

As student appointees to HR Design Work Teams, we do not support the combining of classified staff and academic staff. We realize that collective bargaining rights, as they currently stand after Act 10, are incredibly weak, and that “advisory” shared governance rights are, at best, a temporary solution to diminished bargaining rights and do not constitute a long-term answer to restoring their strength. But we also hope that the state’s mistake of greatly reducing collective bargaining rights will be reversed in the near future.

How do we ensure that classified staff, formerly protected by bargaining rights, have rights in the workplace right now and can regain their bargaining rights in the shortest possible amount of time after statutory change? How do we protect the current and future bargaining rights of university employees? We urge the Employee Categories Work Team pursue their mission to protect the current and future bargaining rights by preserving an employee category for workers represented by unions. To diminish the presence of a “caste system,” we recommend extending governance through university policy as well as reforming policy barriers to moving between classified and academic staff, rather than eliminating “classified staff” as well as their bargaining rights. While students want to end the caste system and improve workplace culture, the recommendation of the Employee Categories Work Team is not the solution.

Kevin Walters, member of HR Design Advisory Committee
Beth Huang, member of HR Design Employee Categories Work Team
Joshua Brazee, member of HR Design Benefits Work Team
Michael Mirer, member of HR Design Compensation Work Team
Allie Gardner, former chair of the Associated Students of Madison
Adrienne Pagac, Co-President of the Teaching Assistants Association
Alex Hanna, Co-President of the Teaching Assistants Association
Leland Pan, Dane County Board Supervisor, former member of HR Design Advisory Committee

A group of faculty and staff met last Saturday afternoon to discuss these questions. The individuals represented a reasonable cross-section of academic staff and faculty (in length of service) and most of the employee organizations such as PROFS, UFAS and academic staff governance groups. The meeting was organized by Wisconsin University Union (WUU) for the purpose of assessing interest in a campus-wide organization and figuring out what that organization would do.

There was a unanimous opinion that an employee organization is needed. Many of the discussion participants were members/leaders of the staff and faculty governance organizations and spoke to the limitations of those organizations. Academic staff discussed the inability of the Academic Staff Assembly to address most of the major issues facing the staff e.g. layoffs, promotions, pay inequities. And noted the low level of participation and interaction with those they purport to represent. Faculty noted that the Senate failed to take a strong position on the Public Authority proposal until it was effectively dead. Given the structural ties between the Faculty Senate and PROFS, that organization is often hamstrung from positions that most members of PROFS endorse.

Both governing institutions and their related lobbying arms, PROFS and ASPRO, have low revenue. ASPRO also has a very low percentage of the academic staff as members which limits their capacity.  Also, neither organization has played a role in representing individual employees in job-related disputes and as a result has little experience with some of the major issues facing employees.

If there was agreement on the need for such an organization, there was less agreement on what it would do. The discussion focused on two elements, internal objectives (employee-based, campus policy development) and external directed objectives (legislative, public information).

The main points raised in the discussion of campus objectives were:

• Participating in/ monitoring the development of a new personnel system. Most people don’t know UW employees lost civil service protections in the new budget or what it might mean. A new personnel system is being created over the next year and we should be engaged in that process.
• Whistleblower protections. This was a statutory protection that was lost with the civil service law.
• Advocating for institutional integrity. This includes being “budget watchdog.” We’re watching the action so you don’t have to.
• Protecting rights of individual employees. The grievance committee process is weak and at best deeply flawed. Most people don’t know what to do. Effective employee representation can serve an important function.
• Improve rights of academic staff in regard to layoffs, transfers, etc.
• Advise employees. Many employees don’t know where to go for reliable information on important personnel decisions such as retirement. Having a practical and immediate function builds membership support too.

Some of the external roles and objectives were:

• Positive public information on UW. Our problems in compensation go beyond the immediate budget shortfall. Popular opinion of UW-Madison is low.
• Support the lobbying effort. Given the number of affected employees, the lobbying effort is low and can benefit from additional support.
• Working with other UW campuses. We are not alone in this mess and need to work with other faculty and staff on other campuses. It appears that the current inter-campus faculty committee has been disbanded by the UWS.

Obviously, more ideas were brought up. But the discussion turned to how do we do this? It was suggested that we do a survey of staff and faculty to directly determine their interests and priorities. It was agreed that we could do that in the next few weeks. Following the completion of the survey we will meet again, hopefully bring more people into the discussion and continue the process. If you would like to participate or be kept in the loop let me know at dmahrens@gmail.com.

DMA

Save the date!

Saturday, Sept 24 — 10 AM- 3 PM

Building an Effective Organization for Faculty and Staff

If you read Sifting and Winnowing then you recognize that the events of last semester underscore the need for a viable organization of University staff and faculty. The Wisconsin University Union (WUU) invites you to a planning discussion about what that might look like. We’d like to hear from campus employees what they’d like that organization to focus on and do.

What issues should this organization prioritize?

• Improve compensation?
• Protect academic freedoms?
• Secure employee protections on layoffs, promotion, etc?
• Re-gain right to collectively bargain?
• Retain rights of self-governing institutions?
• Other?

What function/activity should this organization prioritize?

• Provide accurate and timely information on issues affecting employees?
• Advocate for individual employees in workplace disputes?
• Conduit information to decision-makers at state and campus level?
• Develop political capacity to advocate for campus interests such as lobbying or organizing a PAC?
• Work with similar grassroots groups on other UW campuses?
• Other?

We intend this to be a wide-open/no-preconceptions meeting — a frank (and fun) discussion of what’s really needed and how best to organize getting it. Please join other individual and organizational activists to discuss and plan an effective organization designed to meet our real challenges.

• On-campus location
• Ample food and drink available throughout!
• (More precise agenda to follow shortly)
• RSVP: dmahrens@wisc.edu / 334-1156

In the past week, I have attempted to make a list of the immediate and long-term implications of this new law for the employees of UW-Madison.  We need to keep track of all the effects of this law so that we can literally show the members of the legislature who supported this bill exactly WHY we were screaming back in February “This bill does not repair the budget!  And this bill does not help the people of Wisconsin!”

As a TA at UW-Madison, I am concerned about what this means for me when I return to work in August — I have no idea how this law will affect my life in the near or distant future.  But I do know that my union no longer has the right to bargain with the State of Wisconsin about anything other than my salary (which by law can now only be raised to match the rate of inflation, meaning that although we haven’t been bargaining for a pay raise in years, now we legally can’t even ask for one).  Other questions I have about the implications of this law for me as a UW employee include:

1. What does this mean for my healthcare coverage?
2. What does this mean for the grievance procedures, workload limits, sick leave, and emergency family leave policies that were granted to me in my contract?  Do I even have a “contract” now?
3. How can we as graduate student workers make our needs and desires known and recognized?  And who should we be trying to make our needs and desires known to (i.e. the administration, politicians, lobbyists, etc.)?
4. What does it mean now that the TAA can no longer charge non-members for the cost of representation (i.e. the TAA can no longer collect dues from non-members even though they will be representing them in salary negotiations) — this surely means that the TAA will struggle in raising funds, which makes me wonder how the staff and volunteers for the TAA  will be able to work towards protecting things like my salary, healthcare, workload limits, etc. when there is no money – but who will they be “bargaining” with now that they won’t be “bargaining” with the state?
5. What does this mean for my tuition waiver?

I am also concerned that people may not realize how MANY people working for the UW are affected by this law – in addition to graduate student workers, this law will affect the lives of classified staff, academic staff, non-reps, and the faculty.

Additionally, I am concerned that the effects will not all be felt at the same time (unlike in February, when we all felt attacked at the same time with the introduction of the bill).  Many things will change as a result of Wisconsin Act 10, and these changes will not all happen at once, making it difficult to keep count of all the impacts of this new law, and difficult to support each other when we’re all being attacked from different sides at different times. Two already-observable implications of this law include the revoking of academic staff and faculty members’ right to unionize (which they just won) and the decision by UW system to prohibit all UW employee organizations (unionized or otherwise) from collecting dues as of August (as discussed in the S&W article).  But it’s only July.  Who knows what changes in working conditions will occur for UW employees between now and the start of fall semester.

Wisconsin has not lost, however.  Wisconsin is still very much in this battle, and we need to do more than just look back to the protests of February and remember the feelings of solidarity — we need to vote, we need to stay united, we need to ask questions, and we need to keep turning to each other for support and help — Please share the ways in which this law impacts you, your friends and family, and please continue to speak out and up and QUESTION those who make decisions with inconceivable ramifications so that we can combat these attacks on our rights and livelihoods with empirical purpose and unrelenting solidarity.

- Alyson S.
Graduate student teaching assistant

In that vein, we’d like to look back and regard the events of last semester as an aberration and not indicative of the life we live now or how we will live in the future. We’d rather not consider all of the facts and face the new reality: that we no longer know what life will be like in the future other than that it will probably be worse in some distinct but as of yet, unknown, ways. But “the facts get in the way” of our attempts to ignore our new and discomforting reality.

The fact is that as of August when the new health and WRS deductions go into effect, we will have a cumulative 20% loss in real income over the last 10 years (21% increase in cost-of-living and a 1% increase in compensation). And except for a small fraction of the faculty that might receive a retention award, no increase is in sight for the next two years regardless of inflation.

Or that Walker’s attempted putsch to control UW-Madison will not deter him from his goal of controlling the University. If the Democrats do not win control in the Senate as a result of the recalls, it is likely that Walker will attempt to change (through statute) the terms of the Regents to give him immediate control of a majority of the Board. A deeply conservative ideological Board will then appoint the new Chancellor for our campus.

Whether a “public authority” was or was not created may make little difference in the balance of power between the State and University. (As UW Regent Walsh mused, “What’s a public authority? It’s anything you want it to be.”) The UW Hospital is a “public authority” but unlike the University, it receives no funding from the state. Nonetheless, new law inserted into the budget prohibits Gyn-Ob residents from performing abortions despite the fact that the training is conducted off-premises of the Hospital with no public funds. (See Wisconsin State Journal: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_803d71f6-9c51-11e0-b739-001cc4c002e0.html) The Governor declined to veto this budget item explaining disingenuously that he believed the state should “not fund abortions.”

Abortion politics aside, the political power at the other end of State St. feels empowered to decide what is taught and probably not far off, the content of our research. Clearly, that’s the motive behind their attacks against the Havens Center, the Extension’s School for Workers and most recently, the Center on Wisconsin Strategy.

The political leadership has sought to implement policies to control the university with as little opposition as possible. The administration’s move to defund (and in the process “de-fang”) all of the campus employee organizations by terminating automatic dues deduction is an unabashed tactic to quash organized opposition. While the administration previously argued that it would not deduct dues for organizations that engage in collective bargaining, it has now extended the same prohibition against any employee association or advocacy.

Yet despite these concerted attacks, tumultuous protests and likely challenges in the future, the vast majority of faculty and staff remain unorganized and thus, relatively incapable of responding to on-going challenges. With the exception of the TAA, no organization was capable of mounting a response to the loss of state funding or collective bargaining rights. Though a petition was circulated among faculty in support of collective bargaining, a concerted campaign in conjunction with other campuses could not be conducted. (In fact, the major organization for academic staff, ASPRO, remained opposed to collective bargaining.)

I raise these issues as means of setting the discussion of some fundamental questions:

• How can we respond to these formidable current and future challenges?
• Is the current mix of organizations appropriate to the tasks ahead?
• Should the traditional divide of faculty/academic staff/ classified staff continue or does the new reality (classified staff will be unrepresented) require new forms of organization?
• What would an organization(s) do that is different from what is happening now?
• What should be the relationship of these organizations with the existing shared governance institutions? Should they be part of, aligned with or separate from them?
• What should our relationship be with organizations of faculty/staff on other UW campuses? Should these relationships be a primary goal of a “Madison” organization?

While it had been anticipated that the state would end the deduction for the unions, the end of the deduction for organizations that do not engage in collective bargaining comes as a surprise. In Walker’s initial budget, the prohibiting language was limited to “labor organizations” which are defined as “an organization that engages in collective bargaining.”  However, when the bill was amended in Joint Finance a more expansive amendment was added that prohibited dues deduction for any employee organization other than those representing public safety employees.

The unions have been preparing for the end of their dues deduction for some time. Their response has been to ask their members for monthly bank or credit card deductions. (Bank deductions are preferable because of fewer problems of changes in credit card numbers.) It is too early to tell their level of success but predictably, many members are not enthusiastic about signing an authorization for a 1% reduction in pay at the same time they are suffering a 10% reduction in pay.

In contrast, the voluntary organizations such as PROFS, WUU , ASPRO charge only nominal fees of one-tenth of 1% or in some cases only $5. Additionally, their memberships, as a whole, have significantly higher incomes.

The real issue here, however, is organization. We need it, and our employer, the State of Wisconsin, is doing everything possible to prevent organization or even effective participation of an opponent. Whether it requires photo ID of voters, defunding potentially oppositional non-profits or stripping the rights of employee organizations- the tactics change but the strategy is consistent.

If it hasn’t been clear yet to faculty and academic staff that we are in the same boat as our campus colleagues with blue and pink collars, this should be the final piece of evidence. The end of the dues deduction for non-bargaining employee organization is another message that from the perspective of the new rulers at the other end of State St. we are a single indistinguishable mass. We are the enemy that must be disenfranchised by whatever means are at hand.

Is it obvious that our response to this attack must be to join every available organization and pay the dues? What are less clear are the strategies of campus organizations. How shall we organize? What shall we do?

At a meeting Sunday, March 20, 2011, the general membership of the Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA) approved a motion to oppose the New Badger Partnership. The TAA opposes the separation of UW-Madison from the UW System and the formation of the public authority model.

The motion reads:

The TAA opposes the New Badger Partnership, especially the separation of UW-Madison from the UW System, the formation of the public authority model, and the threat to affordability and accessibility it poses to public education and the lack of protection for labor unions on campus. The TAA also objects to the non-transparent and undemocratic process by which the New Badger Partnership was designed.

“Our members have serious reservations about the sweeping changes being proposed to UW-Madison and UW System and the process through which these proposals have been pushed through without the full engagement of the UW community,” said Kevin Gibbons, TAA Co-President. “We see these provisions in the Budget Bill as a blatant attempt to privatize public education in Wisconsin. The budget bill divides the campuses of the UW System and makes sweeping cuts to our institutions and thus higher education in the state.”

As proposed a 21 member Board of Trustees would oversee the University. According to the budget bill, UW-Madison faculty, staff and students would have just four seats on the Board. “Given this governor’s antagonism toward our university system and the lack of adequate representation of the UW community on the proposed Board of Trustees, TAA members have said that they cannot accept these provisions. The TAA calls on the University to maintain its commitment to the principles of shared governance and the Wisconsin Idea,” said Gibbons.

The TAA advocates for a transparent, deliberative and democratic process that engages the university community should significant changes be made to UW-Madison and UW System. TAA members have continually expressed concern over the lack of transparency that they have witnessed over the formation, planning and legislative advocacy surrounding the New Badger Partnership.

“We are calling on the University to begin a long overdue conversation and evaluation,” said Adrienne Pagac, member of the TAA Stewards’ Council and a graduate student in Sociology. “Members of the UW community should have been consulted about the details of the plan prior to their inclusion in the Governor’s budget proposal. We should have been presented with a variety of solutions to our ‘problem’ of sustained competitiveness, but we were provided with just one, the New Badger Partnership, as the savior of UW-Madison’s reputation and mission. We should solicit alternative possibilities to address issues of competitiveness, funding sources, etc. before we move forward on a plan for which we have very few concrete details at this time.”

The Teaching Assistants’ Association represents nearly 3,000 graduate employees at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and is the oldest graduate employee union in the world.

In addition to that egregious example, here are two more that show how destructive and miserably crafted this bill is:

• At the Law School’s forum last night on the budget, one specialist talked about the fiscal consequences of the provision that requires employee unions to be recertified every year. The state agency that runs such elections has about 20 people now.  According to somebody who was there, the expert “did some projecting and concluded that the agency would have to have 100 or even 200 new employees. And this was only one cost of such provisions.”
• An accounting professor from a UW campus (not Madison) has identified a provision that apparently would cost the average employee around $1,500 per year in federal taxes, AND cost the state money. (From what I’ve heard, the actual budget bill is likely to fry our retirement system completely, but that’s the next plague we’ll suffer.)

One is that all limited term employees (LTEs) will be PROHIBITED from being eligible for health insurance or participation in the Wisconsin Retirement System. That’s right: they are not simply being asked to contribute to their benefit plans; they will not be allowed to have any state benefit plan at all!

According to this article in the Capital Times, this affects about 1,500 folks.

It should also be pointed out that many of these LTE positions are actually funded by private and other non-state sources, NOT by the Wisconsin taxpayer.  This is true for many other state employee positions as well, especially in the University and Hospital system.

In short, life-changing reductions in benefits would be imposed on workers whose pay and benefits have nothing to with the state budget.

-AC