Free Labor, via Unemployment Checks!! Businesses Off Hook.

Wisconsin Works! That’s the name of the outrageous new program that subsidizes workers so businesses don’t have to pay them. They are considered “employees of the state.” How far will the Republicans go to meld government with business? Creeping fascism?

The job training concept isn’t a bad one:

According to a press release by Rep. Kevin Petersen: “Wisconsin Wins” matches Unemployment Insurance claimants to prospective employers in need of a skilled workforce. Program volunteers will receive unpaid occupational training directly from the employer for 20 to 24 hours per week up to 6 weeks. During the training period, each participant will continue to receive unemployment compensation from the state plus a $75.00 per week stipend. In order to qualify, a person would have to be in the first 26 weeks of their benefit year.

Here’s where it goes of the tracks:

The employer is responsible for on the job training costs, but will not have to incur the risks of hiring an unknown entity to their business … If the participant’s training is successful; it is up to the employer whether or not to offer the job.

That means our government will pay “employees of the state,” asking nothing of that employer. To quote our Republican counterparts; employers will have “no skin in the game.”

And what’s all this talk about the “free market,” when business doesn’t have to risk hiring an “unknown entity?” A new employee, an “unknown entity,” is now too risky for businesses?

   

What’s to prevent a business from eventually getting temp work subsidized by the state, with no real intention of employing that trained individual? How will we know? But it gets worse:

According to the summary provided by the non-partisan Legislative Reference Bureau; “The bill also provides that a claimant who is participating in special occupational training is considered an employee of the state for purposes of worker’s compensation benefits and prohibits such a claimant from making a claim or brining on action in tort against the employer that provided the special occupational training.”

That simply means if the workers gets injured, taxpayers pick up the tab. What's to discourage employers from giving dangerous jobs to "employees of the state?"

Small government Republicans like Rep. Kevin Petersen, who co-authored “Wisconsin Wins” with Representative Mark Honadel (R-South Milwaukee), Representative Mike Kuglitsch (R-New Berlin), Senator Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), and Senator Pam Galloway (R-Wausau), are now manipulating the free market by providing “employees of the state,” otherwise known as "unknown entities" in the private sector, and assuming all the risks.