Photo © taken by and copyright by Jeff Dean

The Kenosha Professional Police Association on Monday announced its opposition to the provisions in the Budget Repair Bill designed to dismantle public employee unions in Wisconsin.

“We appreciate the fact that Governor Walker recognizes the unique work that law enforcement officers do. However the KPPA is unable to stand by while legislation moves forward that undermines the rights of our brothers and sisters in other public employee unions,” Steve Lampada, president of the KPPA said in a statement today. “We work with these public employees every day and cannot support a two-tier collective bargaining system that treats them so different than we are treated.

Gov. Scott Walker has proposed exempting public safety employees from his plan to reduce collective bargaining rights for public employees to strictly wages. Walker says the move is need to help close projected state budget deficits. Organized labor opponents to the bill call the loss of bargaining rights an attempt by the governor to break public employee unions.

Since early last week, tens of thousands of public employees have been showing up at the state Capitol in Madison to protest Walker’s proposal. Democratic state senators have left the state to avoid a vote on the bill in that chamber.

“We are all dedicated public servants,” Lampada said. “We each have unique duties and responsibilities and all are important to making our communities better places to live, work and raise our families. We therefore call on state legislators to reject the portions of the Budget Repair Bill that would permanently undermine the state’s collective bargaining law.”