AFL-CIO files suit on Wis. anti-union law

MADISON, Wis., June 15 (UPI) -- Labor organizations Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that affirmed a law that limits collective bargaining.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker "has created two classes of public sector workers, and that is unconstitutional," Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. "When a legislature discriminates among classes of workers, especially when doing so has more to do with political payback than with any legitimate reasoning, the law has been violated."

The lawsuit also says Walker's bill, which takes effect June 29, violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by doing away with public employees' basic rights to bargain, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. The suit aims to protect bargaining rights and does not contest the bill's requirement that pension and health insurance contributions be increased.

Two existing cases against the bill are already pending, Madison, Wis., attorney Lester Pines told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after the state Supreme Court ruled 4-3 a lower court judge who put the measure on hold improperly interfered with the Legislature.

The high court said a lawmaker committee was not subject to the state's open-meetings law and therefore did not violate the law in March when it hastily amended the bill eliminating nearly all collective-bargaining rights for most public employees, allowing the Republican-controlled Senate to get around a boycott by Senate Democrats.

The other lawsuits challenge the law on grounds other than open-meetings violations, Pines said.