Milwaukee County Board members really, really wanted to help AFSCME get a contract before Wisconsin’s budget repair bill took effect. Problem was, the union negotiators at AFSCME jumped the gun sending a tentative proposed contract to their members before the Milwaukee County Board could review it.
Apparently, even though AFSCME has represented the 3,500 Milwaukee County employees for years, it was ignorant of the county ordinance requiring a 48-hour notice before a vote could take place.
As a result of AFSCME’s inability to correctly follow the rules, it has put it and its members under the new budget repair law.
Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway says the fault lies with the AFSCME Union leaders, when it came to reaching a new contract for its 3,500 workers.
Holloway said “I was pro union wanted to help them out, wanted to help them out, Mr. Pratt wanted to do the same, but they didn’t move.”
[snip]
Holloway says, “I think we physically, it is impossible to do a contract with them right now if we had an agreement.”
Supervisor Joe Sanfellipo wanted to wait for a new union contract, until after the collective bargaining law went through, but stressed what Holloway said.
Sanfellipo said “There’s a whole lot [of] work that has to be done ahead of time even just preparing, these fiscal notes take days if not weeks because there’s a lot of facts and figures that have to go into them”
The union will need to follow policies set by the State of Wisconsin and because of this they will only be able to negotiate salary and nothing else.
