Wednesday, September 6, 2017

State planning, WI-style; more depressed wages, divide-and-conquer

Walker's war on fair wages rolls right along.

He started it in 2011 with his punitive, sneaky and partisan Act 10 divide-and-conquer attack on public employees - - "dropped the bomb," was his uncharacteristically honest description - - then continued his offensive in 2015 by signing wage-depressing 'right-to-work' legislation in which he'd earlier feigned disinterest, and will expand again in a week, perhaps two, when he signs the final two-year spending plan approved by the budget-writing committee along party-lines Tuesday evening which slashes family-supporting blue-collar wages paid at the so-called "prevailing rate" on state road-building projects.

Prevailing wage standards help sustain working families and ensure high-quality work on public projects, not out-sourcing such projects to fly-by-night contractors hiring lesser-trained workers.

After all, we're talking about high-speed roads and bridges.

But the GOP budget-writing committee shelved prevailing wages ostensibly to take only a small step towards balancing a debt-ridden, overly-commuted major highway building binge which Walker has been pushing since 2003; shrinking construction workers' take home pay for ideological, union-weakening reasons just as he drained public employees' earnings and damaged their unions and bargaining positions through Act 10 six years ago.

Bruce Murphy at Urban Milwaukee has catalogued a longer list of anti-worker, wage-depressing measures Walker has championed and signed; organized labor calls Walker the worst governor for working people.

Ever.

While legislators in our low-wage-state-by-design have raised their own pay by boosting tax-free, honor-system expense account 'reimbursements'.

As Walker might put it, working people in Wisconsin can go suck lemons.



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