Labor & Employment Law

Mass Rally in Madison; Capitol Doors Finally Opened

By James Parks

 Working people staged a mass rally this evening in Madison, Wis., at the state capitol. The rally follows  a day of ugly actions by Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators. First, they had the state police locked the public out of the building?the people?s building?even bolting the windows shut and removing the tops so they could not be unscrewed. Then five hours late they finally relented and opened one entrance.

Before the doors opened here are the type of things that were going on  as reported by David Dayen on Firedoglake:

• A cancer patient needing a colostomy bag change ? a medical emergency ? was denied access to the Capitol building holding the patient?s medication due to a surprise lockdown that has lasted for hours past the scheduled and well-publicized 8 a.m. doors-open time Monday morning.

This patient was kept outside for 80 minutes in the cold while Walker ordered state officials to close the Capitol during normally–open daytime business hours in order to gradually muffle the overwhelming dissent of his proposed legislation, which denies health care to many of our most vulnerable citizens, including many children, and strips unionized workers of collective bargaining rights for which people have fought and died for decades.

? Meanwhile, Senate Republicans in the legislature have stepped up their pressure to try to get the Democrats to return. Now the Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald is basically holding their staff hostage:  He is clamping down on absent Democrats by seeking to take control of whether or not their staffers get paid.

Fitzgerald would have to review and approve time sheets for Democratic staffers, under a proposal put before a legislative committee Monday morning. Previously, Democratic lawmakers had signed off on their staff?s hours.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on February 28, 2011 (boomark / email).