Budget committee approves labor relations cut

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The state Legislature’s Budget Committee on Thursday approved Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to reduce the workforce of a commission that deals with labor relations.

A proposal in Walker’s 2013-15 budget calls for eliminating 13 attorney positions, including seven vacant ones, and 2-½ administrative positions at the state’s Employment Relations Commission, which administers Wisconsin labor relations law. The Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee voted 12-4 on a party line to approve that plan with minor changes.

A budget paper from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Committee had questioned whether the governor was calling for too large of a cut to the agency’s workforce. It said the Employment Relations Commission is likely to hear fewer of certain sorts of cases following the adoption in 2011 of Act 10, which stripped most public workers of the bulk of their collective bargaining rights.

Act 10, though, could also be expected to cause more of certain types of cases to go before the commission, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The Bureau suggested the likely change in the commission’s caseload could justify keeping two of the positions the governor had proposed cutting.

Walker’s proposal would also put the Employment Relations Commission under the state’s Department of Workforce Development. The commission is now an independent agency.