Phil Neuenfeldt, Wisconsin State AFL-CIO president, sends an update on the actions around Wisconsin’s Walkerville.

Day six of the Walkerville tent city protest has seen overwhelming support from Wisconsin workers, students and community members. Over the course of the week, thousands of Wisconsinites have gathered on the cement blocks lining the Capitol Square in order to call attention to Gov. Walker and his legislative allies’ destructive budget proposals—proposals which will cripple Wisconsin’s schools, health care system and communities.

Imagine one day you woke up and there were no sanitation workers to pick up the pile of stuff in your trash. No letter carriers or postal workers to move your mail. No teachers in the classrooms, no firefighters to stop your neighbor’s house—or yours—from burning to the ground.

One of the most bizarre and harebrained schemes offered as a way to fight cities’ and towns’ budget problems is a Michigan proposal to give fire fighters and paramedics guns and police officers hoses and combining their distinctly different duties into one job—an all-purpose “Public Safety Officer” (PSO).

Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) assault on fire fighters and other public employees—with the support of the Florida Chamber of Commerce—isn’t going over well with voters.

This is a cross-post from the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Blog.

On Saturday, March 12, an estimated 185,000 concerned citizens gathered to stand up against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s extreme attacks on workers’ rights and Wisconsin’s middle class. Despite the seriousness of the situation, the energy on the ground was unprecedented as young and old, union and nonunion, public sector and private sector came together to stand up for Wisconsin’s working class.

The attacks on public employees have energized working people across the country, motivating them and helping them to believe they are going to win their struggle to keep bargaining rights in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana, says Christine Kistner, vice president of AFSCME Council 40 in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is trying to take away the freedom of nurses, teachers and other workers across the state to bargain for middle-class jobs and living standards.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) and Republican legislators launched their biggest assault yet against Buckeye State public employees with a hearing yesterday on a bill to eliminate collective bargaining rights for all state workers, including faculty and staff at Ohio state colleges and universities.

The attacks on firefighters and other public employees by state politicians like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) are “like a tsunami rolling across the country….The attacks have never been greater, more serious or so vicious,” says Fire Fighters (IAFF) President Harold Schaitberger.