Wisconsin: Health Care, Democracy and the Middle Class ARE AT STAKE!

[Segami]

:smoke: :smoke: :smoke:

"Mom’s in intensive care. Mom says: GO TO MADISON.."



Such was the conversation with my sister last week as demonstrations erupted across Wisconsin to stop Governor Walker’s union-busting, health-care-gutting, budget "repair" bill. My 88-year-old mother was admitted to the emergency room with heart problems just as a statewide emergency was being unleashed upon the heart of Wisconsin. An immediate and continuing response was, and is, required.


"Go to Madison." My dad walked the picket line in 1973 when teachers in Watertown went on strike for teachers’ dignity. As I drove to Madison last week, I learned that teachers in Watertown organized a sickout, resulting in the school district being closed for the day. Last November 75 percent of Watertown’s voters cast their ballot for Walker. As in 1973, public workers today know that the heart of Wisconsin is at stake. Now, with the Wisconsin State Assembly passing the bill Friday morning, Wisconsin is on life support - dependent upon the commitment of 14 Democratic senators who left Wisconsin to prevent a vote on the bill.


Walker is firing the opening salvo upon public worker unions in the same manner that Ronald Reagan fired the opening salvo in wars upon unions in 1981. While the 1970s were hardly an era of labor, it was Reagan’s firing of all striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association (PATCO) in August 1981 that signaled the federal government was fully on the side of the employer. Subsequent strikes at Greyhound, Phelps-Dodge, Hormel, Staley and elsewhere were defeated, with private sector union membership now standing at only 7 percent of the private sector.


- Public employers around the state recognize just how devastating this change will be to employer-employee relations. The Wisconsin Association of School Boards and the School Administrators Alliance (which includes the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators) each wrote letters to Walker that state that, while they sought modifications to the state collective bargaining law (especially as it relates to negotiations over health insurance and benefits), they did not seek a complete repudiation of the law. Cities and counties from northwest to southeast Wisconsin are passing resolutions opposing the elimination of collective bargaining. Walker is attacking health care in this bill, as well as public workers. This bill eliminates all collective bargaining rights - eliminates the very right to form a union - for workers at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics (UWHC) as well as for the recently unionized home care workers.


cont'


http://www.truth-out.org/wisconsin-health-care-democracy-and-middle-class-are-at-stake68083



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[midnight]

1. Hugs to your mom... I hope she will get better....

My sister and I were talking about the country counting on Wisconsin... During the Reagan years her husband was a Caterpillar employee who was wiped out because of the Republican greed.... I know there is a Hormel plant in Illinois, I pass several times a year, and I didn't realize they took a hit as well....