Walker Once Again Plays Favorites and Fast and Loose With the Truth

July 11, 2011
Contact: Marty Beil 608 836-0024

When Gov. Scott Walker flip-flopped and decided to excuse assistant district attorneys from furlough days imposed on all other state employees, his administration promised the state would “account” for the furlough days taken by state employees who cooperated and took the full 16 days.

Now Walker has added a lie to his flip-flop. His administration has decided to compensate some professional levelemployees for furlough days while denying fair treatment to the vast majority of front-line state workers.

“Walker continues to pick and choose arbitrarily between classes of employees, rewarding some and punishing others, based on no rhyme or reason,” said Marty Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24.

At issue is Walker’s decision to excuse assistant district attorneys from taking the full 16 furlough days taken by other state employees, instead letting them off the hook with only 10 days. After initially threatening ADAs with layoffs, Walker backtracked and said ADAs don’t have to take the same furlough days as everybody else.

At that point, his administration noted that by treating the ADAs differently, the state could be liable for payouts to other workers. Indeed, on June 30 the state agreed to grant thousands of professional level employees six days of additional sabbaticalleave time to compensate for the furlough days. This approach required no cash outlay by the state. But notably absent was any attempt to account for the sacrifice of front-line employees.

“In our memorandum of understanding with the state, it says furloughs will be implemented ‘in a fair and equitable manner’. Once again, it appears that Walker has absolutely no concept of what it means to treat people in a fair and equitable way,” Beil said.

“Apparently, Walker is happy to bow down to bureaucrats while telling correctional officers and custodians to pound sand,” he said.

The unequal treatment of employees is similar to the way Walker’s attack on collective bargaining rights targeted some types of workers while giving others a free pass. “It’s just another example of Walker making up his own rules as he goes along, disregarding not only the rule of law, but simple fairness and decency,” Beil said.

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