Protesters vow continued actions, recall efforts, after GOP votes away union rights

Two nights ago Wisconsin Republicans rammed through their bill attacking working families without the 14 Democratic senators’ presence. Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt said Governor Scott Walker and the Republicans “acted in violation of state open meetings laws and have demonstrated they will do or say anything to pass their extreme agenda that attacks Wisconsin’s working families.”

The Republicans removed the fiscal measures of Walker’s budget bill to sidestep the required 3/5 quorum and passed a stand-alone bill stripping public sector workers of their bargaining rights.

After losing badly in the court of public opinion (poll after poll shows that a majority of Wisconsin voters oppose rescinding public sector workers’ right to collective bargaining) and failing to break the Democratic senators’ principled stand, Scott Walker and the GOP have eviscerated both the letter and the spirit of the law and our democratic process to ram through their payback to their corporate backers.

The Republicans’ war on the middle class and working families is now undeniably clear, and their willingness to shred the democratic process to pass a bill that 74 percent of Wisconsinites oppose is disgraceful. The public employees had already agreed to all of the concessions Walker was seeking. Provisions to take away their bargaining rights have no impact on the state’s budget.

The public-sector unions that represent teachers, nurses, snow-plow drivers, and firefighters, together with a broad coalition of supporters, vow to continue the fight. Thousands of demonstrators stormed the state Capitol after word spread about the Republican ploy, and organizers of recall efforts are already achieving record results.