Large Rally in WI Against Stripping Collective Bargaining Rights - Green Bay Packers Criticize Gov: 'Right To Negotiate Wages, Benefits Fundamental'

Two articles:

Large Rally in Wisconsin Against Stripping Collective Bargaining Rights for Public Employees

An extremely large crowd of 5,000 activists, by some estimates, has gathered at the state Capitol in Madison, protesting the attempt by Governor Scott Walker and Republicans to strip collective bargaining rights for public employees. Earlier today, high school students in a nearby city in Wisconsin walked out of class in solidarity with their teachers.

Green Bay Packers Criticize WI Gov: ‘Right To Negotiate Wages And Benefits’ Is ‘Fundamental’ To Middle Class

In response to Walker’s intent to misappropriate the deployment of the National Guard in an effort to intimidate state workers, the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers released a statement today, expressing that collective bargaining is “fundamental” to the middle class:

As a publicly owned team we wouldn’t have been able to win the Super Bowl without the support of our fans. … They are the teachers, nurses and child care workers who take care of us and our families. But now in an unprecedented political attack Governor Walker is trying to take away their right to have a voice and bargain at work.

The right to negotiate wages and benefits is a fundamental underpinning of our middle class. When workers join together it serves as a check on corporate power and helps ALL workers by raising community standards. Wisconsin’s long standing tradition of allowing public sector workers to have a voice on the job has worked for the state since the 1930s. It has created greater consistency in the relationship between labor and management and a shared approach to public work.

These public workers are Wisconsin’s champions every single day and we urge the Governor and the State Legislature to not take away their rights.