A secret special prosecutor wielding “kitchen-sink” subpoenas takes aim at persons and groups who supported Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in his recent showdown with public employee unions. “The probe began in the office of Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, though no one will publicly claim credit for appointing Mr. Schmitz, the special prosecutor. The investigation is taking place under Wisconsin’s John Doe law, which bars a subpoena’s targets from disclosing its contents to anyone but his attorneys. … [Wisconsin Club for Growth director Eric O’Keefe] adds that at least three of the targets had their homes raided at dawn, with law-enforcement officers turning over belongings to seize computers and files.” [WSJ “Review and Outlook”]
Posts Tagged ‘Wisconsin’
Labor and employment roundup
- “Will banning tips prevent lawsuits? Some restaurants give it a try” [ABA Journal]
- “CEOs Beware: You’re Now in the Crosshairs of a Wage and Hour Complaint Under FLSA” [Connecticut Employment Law Blog/Daniel Schwartz, who’s just switched law firms]
- “Court: First Amendment protections don’t allow unions to engage in nuisance lawsuits” [Sean Higgins, D.C. Examiner]
- Judge rules strippers at club are employees, not independent contractors as management claimed [NY Times]
- Judge strikes down new Indiana right-to-work law, appeal to Indiana Supreme Court expected [WXIN] Court (again) upholds Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 on public sector union bargaining [Wisconsin State Journal, Milwaukee Business Journal]
- 1973 SCOTUS case of U.S. v. Enmons carves out convenient exception in federal extortion law for labor unions [Mark Mix; David Kendrick, Cato 1998]
- “State Department Says Unionizing Its Foreign National Workers Would Threaten Security” [Government Executive]
Call of Duty V: Bambi Raid
According to Ed Schulze, an employee of the Society of St. Francis animal shelter in Kenosha, Wisconsin, nine state agents and four deputy sheriffs were “armed to the teeth” and appeared “like a SWAT team” when they descended without warning on the shelter two weeks ago. Their target? A fawn that shelter employees had rescued and planned to release into a wildlife preserve the next day. Possession of wildlife is unlawful in Wisconsin, and officials proceeded to euthanize (kill) the juvenile deer. [WISN]
Asked later why the action was staged as a surprise raid, supervisor Jennifer Niemeyer told WISN, “If a sheriff’s department is going in to do a search warrant on a drug bust, they don’t call them and ask them to voluntarily surrender their marijuana or whatever drug that they have before they show up.”
Much of the reaction to this story concentrates on sympathy for the deer, which is understandable, but please spare some thought for what happens to humans when such police conduct comes to be accepted as normal. Our coverage of Radley Balko’s new book on police militarization, Rise of the Warrior Cop, is here, here, here, etc.
May 2 roundup
- Pigford and more: why do modern privacy laws so often redound to the benefit of those in power? [Stewart Baker]
- N.H. man who lost life savings at carnival game in exchange for dreadlocked banana concedes he was “foolish” but is considering lawsuit [WBZ, BoingBoing]
- The judicial humorist — I’ve got him on the list [San Antonio strip club case: MySanAntonio, Above the Law, ABA Journal]
- To be for capitalism, be against crony capitalism [Tim Carney, The Atlantic]
- “News Corp. Pays Itself $139 Million For Phone-Hacking Scandal — Minus Legal Fees” [Daniel Fisher]
- What must they think of the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932? Brennan Center lists Wisconsin bill providing for stays of injunction pending appeal among “Attacks on Judiciary” [Brennan Center Fair Courts E-lert]
- Federal Trade Commissioner Joshua Wright says it’s time to pin down commission’s vague Section 5 power [Andrea Agathoklis Murino, WLF]
Wisconsin voters confirm their court’s course
For a second time, labor unions and their allies have failed to unseat a member of the majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which badly undercuts their chances of getting the court to invalidate Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10. I’ve got details at Cato at Liberty.
March 22 roundup
- $10 million judgment “won’t hit Albuquerque property owners on their tax bills because it’ll come out of [city’s] self-insurance fund” Say what? [Albuquerque Journal via Ed Krayewski, Reason]
- Latest Bloomberg scheme: ban display of tobacco products [Jacob Sullum, Patrick at Popehat, Patrick Basham/Daily Caller, Ira Stoll, Elie Mystal/Above the Law]
- Female? Hispanic? Planted a backyard garden between 1981-2000, while wishing you could have gone bigger with the hobby? Feds’ ag-bias settlement may have bucks for you [James Bovard/WSJ, earlier on Pigford black-farmer settlement here, here, here, etc.]
- Newly published, includes blurb by me: Mark White, The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics and Libertarian Paternalism [Amazon]
- “NYC adopts nation’s toughest law against refusing to hire unemployed” [AP, earlier here, etc.]
- Estate of judge is suing prominent Philadelphia class action lawyer over fall at party in home [Legal Intelligencer]
- For Wisconsin’s left, Roggensack/Fallone judicial contest might be the last hope for derailing Gov. Walker’s labor reform [Rick Esenberg]
Labor and employment roundup
- Seventh Circuit upholds Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s public sector labor law reform [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
- In theory, California workers fired for cause aren’t entitled to unemployment compensation. In practice… [Coyote]
- Comstockery meets occupational licensure: how New York’s Cabaret Law tripped up Billie Holiday [Bryan Caplan]
- New Jersey lawmakers move to cut nonunion workers out of Hurricane Sandy recovery jobs [Jersey Journal]
- Cheer up, plaintiff’s bar, you’re doing very well these days out of FLSA wage-and-hour actions [Max Kennerly]
- Back to “spiking”: “CalPERS planning to gut a key cost-control provision of new pension law” [Daniel Borenstein, Contra Costa Times] When government negotiates with public sector unions over pay, the process should be transparent to taxpayers and the public [Nick Dranias, Goldwater Institute]
- Sacre bleu! Labor law reform reaches France [NYT]
Electronic communications intended “to annoy” with “no legitimate purpose”
With a new law, Vernon County, Wisconsin has put itself at the forefront of attempts to regulate disparaging email, online chat, blogs, Facebook posts (specifically cited by one advocate at a hearing), and Twitter. The law seems to be a product of the media hype over “cyberbullying.” [Popehat, Volokh]
Labor and employment roundup
- “Wisconsin Judge To Voters: Drop Dead” [Matt Patterson, CEI; Adam Freedman, PoL; J.D. Tuccille, Reason]
- “How much of Occupy rally shrinkage is due to unions moving on and focusing their energy elsewhere?” [@daveweigel]
- Should babysitters be legally entitled to work rules and meal breaks? California Senate approves “Domestic Workers Bill of Rights” pushed by celebs, AFL-CIO [Politico, earlier]
- Good luck in getting that “don’t disparage or defame” employment policy past the NLRB [Molly DiBianca, Delaware Employment Law Blog]
- “Hospital unionization harms the sick” [David Bier and Iain Murray, Capital Research Center]
- Penn, Columbia: we’ll use this big cash pot to discriminate in faculty hiring [Minding the Campus: KC Johnson, John Rosenberg, Roger Clegg]
- More on NLRB’s new curbs on confidentiality in internal employee investigations [WSJ Law Blog, earlier]
From the Globe and Mail
The Toronto Globe and Mail prints my letter to the editor correcting some misrepresentations of U.S. labor law by Canadian Auto Workers union economist Jim Stanford. The text of the letter as it ran, slightly abridged, in the paper:
Jim Stanford says that in the 23 states with “right to work” laws, unions are “effectively prohibited; indeed, in right-to-work states, private-sector unionism is virtually non-existent” (Wisconsin’s Disease Crosses The Border – July 3).
This would come as a surprise to millions of employees in those 23 states who join and are represented at their workplace by unions. In Alabama, for example, which has had a right-to-work law since 1953, 183,000 workers (about 11 per cent of the labour force) are represented by unions, including 84,000 workers in the private sector. (source)
Emboldened or otherwise, Republicans in the states have no authority to alter the 1935 Wagner Act or other federal laws. In states like Wisconsin, they have sought to alter laws prevailing in about two-thirds of states that prescribe collective bargaining by public employees; these laws are of much more recent vintage than the New Deal, often dating to the 1960-85 period. Given Franklin Roosevelt’s well-documented skepticism toward collective bargaining by government employees, it is no surprise that he did not see fit to build any such element into his New Deal.
Walter Olson, senior fellow, the Cato Institute, Washington