As Jobs Flee WI, Legislators Lock-Down Their Own With Unlimited Dark Money

Whow. I did not know about Quad Graphics. whow



As Jobs Flee WI, Legislators Lock-Down Their Own With Unlimited Dark Money

By Brendan Fischer on November 5, 2015 - 6:05pm

This week, two major Wisconsin employers sent shockwaves through the state when they announced plant closures and layoffs that could affect thousands of jobs.

The Republicans who control the Wisconsin state senate called an "extraordinary session" for Friday--not to address the loss of family-supporting jobs in Wisconsin, but to allow out-of-state billionaires to secretly pour even more money into state elections.

Rep. Terese Berceau, a Democrat, calls the bills nothing short of "an effort to create a permanent one-party state," helping give job security to Republicans for years to come.
Oscar Mayer Abandons Wisconsin, 1,000 Jobs Lost

Wisconsin's economy is in rough shape. Statewide, workers’ annual earnings averaged $51,214 last year, 10.1 percent less than the national average and also lower than every surrounding state except Iowa. Walker fell far short of his 250,000 jobs pledge, only creating about half of the jobs promised in his first term. And the state lags both its neighbors and the national average in its rate of job growth, even as the U.S. economy has recovered from the recession.

To make matters worse, the state's economy was rocked this week by plant closures and layoff announcements. The Oscar Mayer factory that employs 1,000 workers in Madison and has been a fixture in the community since the early 1900s abruptly announced it would be closing and moving its headquarters to Chicago, a move that will send shockwaves through the state economy. The same day that the Oscar Mayer news broke, Quad Graphics, which employs 7,000 people at 14 facilities in Wisconsin, announced it would have to close some plants and cut $100 million in costs.

Mass layoff notifications are way up from last year, as this graph shows.

The state senate is calling an extraordinary session, not to address jobs or the economy, but instead to vote on two bills that make it easier for politicians to secretly raise money from out-of-state billionaires..............


- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/11/12969/kochs-wisconsin#sthash.vnyiqmhm.dpuf



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Depicted in Figure 1 are the mass layoff notification statistics as of end-October for 2014 and 2015; these do not include the Oscar Mayer statistics.