Protests held by state workers over Walker budget

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State employees held protests Sunday at the Capitol, the Governor’s Mansion and the home of Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald in Horicon. They railed against Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal to do away with many collective bargaining rights by Wisconsin’s public employee unions.

More protests are planned this week. About 150 people showed up yesterday at the Capitol where Mike Vanden Brook dressed as a dying patient to dispute Walker’s claim that people must have been “in a coma” if they didn’t see what was coming.

Vanden Brook, a psychologist at the Oakhill Correctional Institution south of Madison, said he’s willing to help reduce the state’s budget deficit and take some cuts, but he was upset that the employees were never included in Walker’s decisions. The Republican governor said public unions should only bargain for their wages and nothing more than inflation unless voters approve more in a referendum. He also wants to make them pay more for their health insurance and pensions.

About 100 people protested at the Governor’s Mansion. Union carpenter Sandy Thistle said there are a handful of Republican lawmakers who could be influenced by the protestors. She said union wages raise the pay for everybody else, and they prop up the state’s economy.

In Horicon, over 100 union workers marched through the downtown before converging on the Assembly Speaker’s house. Jeff Fitzgerald wasn’t home at the time. He later issued a statement that Wisconsin is out of money, and the union workers are being asked to tighten their belts just like other families have had to do.

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