After Failing with Recalls, Big Labor Spams State Employees

Despite failing to win a Democratic Majority in the Wisocnsin State Senate, the pulbic employee unions are continuing their rhetorical battle, including in the email boxes of state employees. Clearly unions are in panic mode now that their hope at winning legislative control here at the ballot box has been dashed.

[Madison, Wisc..] Just because state employees can no longer be forced to be members of public employee unions doesn’t mean the unions will refrain from contacting them using their government emails.

Thousands of Wisconsin state employees were met with a highly political email from their union when they came to work Wednesday morning.

“Walker thinks he can cripple our union by making payroll deduction for union dues illegal,” the email solicitation, sent by AFT-Wisconsin Communications Representative Jill Bakken, began. “By re-committing to our union, we are standing strong and sending a message: Walker doesn’t decide whether we have a voice – we do.”

AFT-Wisconsin is a labor union that had 17,000 public employees in the state of as members before the recent labor reforms became law.

Some thought such overt politicking in the workplace was a thing of the past, or that since they were no longer having dues forcibly deducted from their payment, they were no longer members of the union. Wednesdays email raises questions as to whether public employees are still considered ‘members’ of a union if they no longer are paying dues.

“Under the new laws, I thought I would be freed from this union harassment and propaganda,” said one state employee who wished to remain anonymous avoid harassment in the workplace. “I should not have to proactively opt out of an organization to which I never wanted to belong in the first place, but since I have to in order to avoid getting their spam emails, I certainly will.”