Back to school and slapped in the face by Act 10, the legislation which stripped Wisconsin public employees of most of their bargaining rights. Now the state is making it nearly impossible for unions to re-certify.
The scandal plagued WEDC (Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation) charges each local bargaining unit is $200.00 to $1500.00 to recertify each year-- a cash cow for WEDC. With 426 school districts in the state, the WEDC stands to take in $85,000-600,000 PER YEAR in application fees alone. This does not include re-certification application fees from other state bargaining agencies.
In addition, the WEDC has set the date for application for re-certification before the start of the school year -- applications must be filled out and in the WEDC office by Friday, 8/30 -- just 3-4 days before teachers usually report back to work. This forces the local unit to have to meet immediately upon returning to school, vote to re-certify, hand deliver the checks and application to the local Uniserv offices by hand. Then the Uniserv must drive the applications for recertification to the WEDC office in Madison.
If that weren't enough, teachers will be given 7-10 days to vote on re-certification -- by phone -- and the vote must constitute a majority of employees affected by bargaining -- not a majority of union members. Last, if employees don't vote, the vote will be automatically tallied as a 'no'vote.
WEAC, the state teacher's union is not recommending that local units recertify -- the costs outweigh the benefits.
This series of hoops is clearly making the process of recertification as difficult as possible for individual bargaining units and bringing in a monstrous amount of cash to the WEDC presumably so they can pay WEDC employees to invent an even more difficult obstacle course for next year's recertification.
http://www.law-inc-wi.com/