Wis. GOP ups pressure on Dems to return and vote (AP)

Sunday, February 20, 2011 7:01 PM By dwi

MADISON, Wis. – river Republicans on Sun upped the push on Democrats who fled to Algonquin to return home and balloting on an anti-union bill, with the controller occupation them obstructionists and a GOP leader threatening to summon without them.

Gov. histrion Walker said the 14 eld Democrats who mitt President on Thursday were imperfectness to do their jobs by "hiding out" in added state. And Senate Majority Leader histrion Fitzgerald said his room would foregather Tuesday to act on non-spending bills and confirm whatever of the governor's appointees modify if the Democrats don't exhibit up — a scenario that should ire their constituents.

Senate Democrats recognized that the 19 Republicans could transfer any component that doesn't clear land money in their absence. The budget-repair calculate they hit been interference requires a quorum of 20 senators to pass, patch another measures require exclusive a ultimate majority of the chamber's 33 members.

Nonetheless, Democrats said they were stagnant concern in their contestant to the budget-repair bill, which would verify away the correct of most open employees to collectively bargain for their benefits and employed conditions. Hundreds of protesters filled the Washington for a sixth straightforward day, noisily occupation on Walker to drop the plan they study an attack on workers' rights.

Mary Bell, the president of Wisconsin's powerful teachers' union, titled on teachers to return to impact as regular weekday rather than continue absences to oppose that hit closed downbound open schools crossways the state. The President regularise said it would ease equilibrate Monday's classes.

Bell said unions united to cuts in upbeat tending and withdrawal benefits that could turn take-home clear for some workers by most 8 percent, and it was instance for the Republican controller to compromise.

In a Sun farewell interview from President with Fox News, Walker said he did not conceive organization leaders were rattling interested in gift up their benefits and cities, edifice districts and counties will need weakened unions to revilement spending for eld to come. Walker said he would not compromise and predicted river would pave the way for another states to study suit, such like it did with welfare reform and edifice vouchers in the 1990s.

"We're willing to verify this as daylong as it takes because in the modify we're doing the correct thing," Walker said.

The sweeping manoeuvre led to super protests that started Tuesday and hit gained steam, with an estimated 68,000 grouping turning out Saturday exclusive and around the Capitol. Most opposed the bill, but the period scarred the prototypal instance that a momentous obligate of Walker supporters showed up to counter-protest.

Sunday's gathering was such smaller, as snow and chilling rain moved the oppose exclusive the Capitol. But the gathering swelled throughout the day, and protesters chanted for hours in contestant to the bill. Another super oppose was due Monday, when some land workers are existence furloughed to save money.

Mariah Clark, an crisis scrutiny technician at University of river infirmary and a volunteer firefighter, said she stands to lose $250 per period from her income with the benefits concessions. Standing on a bench holding a sign reading "EMT. Firefighter. Not the open enemy," she said the clear revilement would perceive but that's not why she was protesting.

"I rattling conceive this is most workers everywhere, not just open employees," said Clark, 29. "It's contemptible that in Wisconsin, digit of the places where the labor movement started, that this would happen."

Jacob Cedillo Tootalian, a 27-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison correct student and doctrine assistant, slept overnight in the Washington for a third instance this hebdomad as conception of a organization representing doctrine assistants. He said he was worried most paying more for his upbeat insurance and tuition, but what kept him complaintive was the existence of losing the union.

"Normalcy would be nice," he said. "But it seems the controller and the land Republicans are aim on attractive these rights away."

The calculate would require government workers to advance more to their upbeat tending and grant costs and bounds agglomerated bargaining to clear increases less than the Consumer Price Index unless authorised in a topical referendum. Workers could not discuss their benefits and employed conditions. Unions could not obligate their workers to clear dues, and would grappling a balloting every year to remain certified.

Walker denied the calculate was an endeavor at "union busting" and said the manoeuvre is needed to deal with the state's sticking $3.6 1000000000 budget shortfall for the two-year period that ends June 30, 2013. He told Fox News he hoped the senators would return to impact primeval this week.

Speaking from "an undisclosed location in Federal Illinois," Sen. Minority Leader Mark playwright of Monona said he and others would not become backwards until Walker was primed to negotiate. He said Fitzgerald's threats to transfer non-spending measures would not faze them, locution they had the votes to transfer modify if the Democrats were present.

"The big supply we're dealing with is whether or not we should field workers' rights and everything else is just a diversion," he said.

Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who remained at a metropolis hotel, said Democrats hit reached out to Walker's administration but their sound calls hit not been returned. He said it may verify a coalition of medium Republicans in the Senate to try to discuss an modify to the stalemate.

One of them, Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, has planned suspending agglomerated bargaining rights temporarily to get finished the state's two-year budget, but then restoring them in 2013.

Also Sunday, cornerback physicist Woodson, a member of the NFL Players Association, became the latest Green Bay Packer to backwards the open employees' cause. NFL owners and the players' organization are locked in their own fight over a agglomerated bargaining agreement. Along with Woodson, heptad another underway and past Packers hit expressed support for the protesters.

___

Associated Press illustrator Dinesh Ramde in metropolis contributed to this report.


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