Brookfield Personnel Director to Union Members: New Law doesn't cap wage increases to non-union members, so.....

As reality and the new collective bargaining law settles in, it's becoming more and more obvious how well thought out, and probably national, the plan is to break up public unions. Conservative areas like Brookfield will be showing the rest of the state how to speed up the unions demise.

From a position that came completely out of "right" field, Republicans dropped the bomb:

Patch: (Brookfield's) personnel director dangled an unusual carrot before city workers in arguing why they should vote to decertify their unions next year: the potential for larger raises. Future annual pay increases would be capped at the consumer price index for union-represented city employees except for police and fire fighters, under the state's budget repair law still being litigated in court.

But that law does not require local governments to cap wage increases for employees who are not represented by unions, city Human Resources Director Jim Zwerlein explained to aldermen. "It's not expected that a lot of these unions (statewide) are going to survive. The law is really incentivized to disband the union."

Theoretically, the city could approve larger pay raises to non-union staffers. Whether aldermen would actually do that is unknown.

Ah but the possibility exists, even though it's likely that city budgets would never really permit that from ever happening.

John Dillon, business agent for the Wisconsin Professional Police Assocation representing Brookfield's police personnel, said he was not surprised to hear pay raises could be an incentive to decertify. "The changes made to the collective bargaining laws provided a disincentive for union membership along with obstacles to remain an organized unit," Dillon said. "But that was the goal of the Republican Party. Destroy the Unions; destroy a major funding provider for the Democratic Party and eliminate your competition!"