MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) — The showdown over Wisconsin's law that strips most public workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights shifted from the Statehouse back to the courts Tuesday, but it remained unclear when or even whether the measure would take effect.
The law strips away workers' rights to collectively bargain for anything except wages. It also requires most public workers to contribute more to their pensions and health insurance.
In Ohio, meanwhile, Republican legislators pushed legislation forward to similarly deny workers bargaining rights.
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Wisconsin's Republican lawmakers pushed through passage of the law earlier this month despite three weeks of massive protests that drew up to 85,000 people to the state Capitol and a boycott by Democratic state senators. Opponents immediately filed a series of lawsuits that resulted in further chaos that might not end until the state Supreme Court weighs in.
That appeared even more likely after a hearing on Tuesday, when a county judge again ordered the state to put the law on hold while she considers a broader challenge to its legality. She chastised state officials for ignoring her earlier order to halt the law's publication.
"Apparently that language was either misunderstood or ignored, but what I said was the further implementation of (the law) was enjoined," Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi said during a hearing. "That is what I now want to make crystal clear."
Sumi also is considering claims by some officials that the law technically took effect last weekend after a state agency unexpectedly published it online.
The back and forth amplified the often angry debate between new Governor Scott Walker, his Republican allies in the Legislature and the state's public sector unions.
Walker and the Republicans have aggressively pushed forward their effort to remove the bargaining rights of state workers, using a surprise parliamentary maneuver to break a weeks-long stalemate to get it passed and then finding another route to publish the law after Sumi's order blocked the secretary of state from doing so.
The law has been a flashpoint of controversy since Walker introduced it in February.
The measure requires most public workers to contribute more to their pensions and health insurance. It also strips away their rights to collectively bargain for anything except wages. Walker, who wrote the law, insists the measure is necessary to help close the state's budget deficit. But Democrats see the law as a political move to cripple unions, who are traditionally among their strongest campaign supporters.
Tens of thousands of people staged almost non-stop demonstrations at the state Capitol for nearly three weeks and Senate Democrats fled the state for Illinois to block a vote in that chamber.
Republicans who control the Legislature ended the stalemate by removing what they said were the fiscal elements from the plan on March 9, allowing the Senate to vote without a quorum. The Assembly passed the measure the next day and Walker signed the measure into law on March 11.
In Ohio, a legislative committee approved a measure Tuesday that would limit collective bargaining rights for 350,000 Ohio government workers.
The committee's changes make the measure even tougher on unions, making it more difficult for them to collect certain fees. But the committee also removed jail time as a possible penalty for workers who participate in strikes and made clear that public safety workers could negotiate over equipment.
A vote on the bill in the Republican-controlled Ohio House could come Wednesday. The Senate then will have to agree to the House changes.
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