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WI Capitol Blocks Pro-Union Web Site
ISoldat53 writes "State government workers are unable to connect to a pro-union web site, defendwisconsin.org, from the wifi at the state capitol." Someone probably should let Hillary Clinton know.
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The Capitol building wifi network blocks all outside access requests unless it is on a whitelist.
Once theblock was notice it took them 30 minutes to adjust settings to allow it. I don't agree with thatmethod but it is better for important networks.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Before you spout, do your homework. While government jobs are good for people in relatively low-skilled jobs, most government workers are paid less than equivalent civil sector workers. The divergence grows as you get more experience and seniority. Show me one job in the civil sector where you run a department or bureau with 500 employees and make less than $150K.
I'm not especially pro-union, but without unions government workers would be subject to the whim of every politician out there.
Lastly, union activity is typically specifically allowed on government networks provided it is outside of work hours. So it's legal on lunch breaks, before and after work, etc. Union organizers are allowed to use government networks to disseminate information essential to the union members.
Governments also have strict limits on curtailing speech.
So it's a dick move, that violates employer-employee trust, and most likely the first amendment and union agreements.
Clinton was complaining about shutting off the internet in Egypt, et al.
et al. isn't a smart-sounding synonym for etc.
Actually it works here, since it's just Latin for "and others". It mere convention that we tend to use it almost exclusively for group authorship in English.
The only substantial difference with etc. is that the latter denotes that you know who or what the others are.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The wifi connection is labeled "guest". It isn't for state workers. It is for the general public. This is a clear cut first amendment violation.
It's not the union's website, it's a site favoring a political stance by the union. That's not part of anyone's job.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
In this particular case the union has agreed to an effective pay cut of 9%, they've also (unofficially) agreed to suspend collective bargaining for 2 years to give local governments a chance to get their budgets straightened out. In return for those concessions, governor Walker has given back... nothing. Not one thing. He trumpets the same old lines over and over again regardless of how much the pro-union groups give in and has shown no willingness to compromise. Saturday there were 70,000 people at the capitol in Madison, that's 1.2% of the population of the entire state. People are pissed, and the republicans are committing political suicide if they don't start to move towards an agreement that actually makes sense, rather than an agreement which neuters the unions, which so far seems to be the only real goal to this piece of legislation.
Interesting topical article over at The Economist that's basically saying the public sector workers earn less when they have a degree (e.g. District Attorney vs. corp. lawyer). Workers without degrees earn more (e.g. janitor at the District Attorney's office earns more than a janitor at a private law firm, unless the city has outsourced the work).
They've also been running articles for a while now explaining that people with public pensions are screwed. The States have been allowed to get away with bad accounting or rather far too lenient forecasting and so there's a huge pension liability So maybe public worker's lower wages won't be compensated for by better pensions.
The story of the Wisconsin pension system....
Many years teachers ago contibuted 6% of salary to the pension system and the state contributed another 6%. The state said, we can't afford to give you a raise this year, but we'll reduce your pension contribution to 4% and we'll pay 8%. A couple years later the state said we can't afford to give you a raise this year, but we'll reduce your pension contribution to 2% and we'll pay 10%. A couple years later the state said we can't afford to give you a raise this year, but we'll reduce your pension contribution to 0% and we'll pay 12%. A couple years later the state lost a lot of pension money through bad and fraudulent investments, but nobody was fired and nobody was jailed. A couple years later the state said "Look at those greedy teachers, they don't contribute anything to their pension, but they think they're entitled to one." And then the state said "we need to bust the teachers union so we don't have to give them that pension they didn't contribute towards and we lost."
The moral of the story is "Never take pension contributions in lieu of pay raises, since the state can take those away from you."
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