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Madison - Gov. Scott Walker used his broad new powers to reshape a rule to lower inflation-based raises that public unions can negotiate by 30% or more for teachers in public schools and technical colleges.

The rule change would not use an individual's actual salary as a "base salary" to calculate raises and would exclude factors such as a teacher's higher degree.

For instance, a teacher with a master's degree might make $45,000 a year while a teacher in the same district with a bachelor's degree might make $35,000. A 3.2% cost-of-living raise on $45,000 would be $1,440 - or more than $300 higher than the same raise on $35,000. Under the new rule, the teacher with the master's degree would have his or her raise calculated off the $35,000 instead of his or her actual salary.

A spokeswoman for the Walker administration said that the change was necessary to properly implement the labor legislation signed by the Republican governor last year.

Under that law, unions' bargaining is limited to cost-of-living adjustments, and Walker's change would limit that bargaining more than the original rule proposed by his own appointees.

Katy Lounsbury, a Madison labor attorney, said the rules effectively neuter teachers unions in their bargaining over salaries. She said the rules may result in legal action because she believes they violate people's rights to associate.

"It certainly seems worthy of a challenge," she said. "It penalizes members of a union."

The rule took effect just a month after Walker put in place a program for merit increases, allowing nearly 220 state employees to receive an extra $765,000 in bonuses and merit raises.

Early last year, Walker changed state law to give him more control over administrative rules. State agencies - including those not controlled by the governor - must get his approval before writing and implementing such rules, which have the force of state law.

Democrats called that change a power grab.

Walker's legislation limited any union-negotiated salary increases to the rate of inflation as applied to the employees' base salaries unless voters approved a higher increase in a referendum.

The dispute centers on how base wages should be calculated. The emergency rule as revised by the Walker administration will still be subject to eventual review by lawmakers. Walker's fellow Republicans control the Assembly and the Senate is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.

The original rule was sent unanimously to the governor's administration in February by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, which oversees issues involving public employee unions and which is controlled by Walker appointees. That version of the rule called for casting a wider net in terms of what wages could be used for figuring raises.

That total wage amount would then be multiplied by the recent increase in the federal Consumer Price Index. For July 2012 contracts, for instance, that increase would be up to 3.2%.

But Walker's administration ordered changes to the rules that would limit base wages to exclude pay given to workers such as teachers to reflect factors such as having a graduate degree. The rules were approved with those changes by the governor's two appointees on the board, James Scott and Rodney Pasch, with the commissioner appointed by Walker's predecessor Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, Judith Neumann, voting against them.

Under the governor's rules, none of the educational credit would count for teachers, said Peter Davis, the longtime general counsel of the WERC, who said the change would mainly affect unions in K-12 schools and technical colleges.

Jocelyn Webster, the spokeswoman for the state Department of Administration, said that the administration made changes to the rule because the original version didn't properly implement the law. The law called for excluding bargaining over merit pay and extra pay based on education, she said.

"What they clearly put into their definition of base wage was not a legal definition," Webster said.

Webster said that she did not have an exact number on how much on average the change would affect salary increases for school districts, saying it would vary by district.

Davis agreed, but said that a commonly used "guesstimate" for the effect of the changes was that about 30% of the wages actually paid to teachers would not be counted as part of the total wages.

The Wisconsin Association of School Boards said in a memo to members this month that legal challenges of the rule are likely.

That memo also noted that although the new law limits what unions may bargain over, employers can unilaterally offer higher pay with merit pay, step increases or other compensation.

Lounsbury, the Madison labor attorney, said she believes the rules could allow districts to actually cut wages for teachers by offering an increase to teachers' base wages but then cutting by a larger amount the remaining wages related to educational attainment that are not subject to bargaining.

Webster disagreed.

"To be very clear, there will be no salary decreases. Unions can bargain with employers at the state and municipal level for base wage increases for represented members," Webster said.

Davis noted that districts would be free to offer teachers more wage increases beyond base pay but could not bargain with a union over that.

The rule would only affect unions that continue to have official state status. Many unions have decertified over the past year because they could not meet the high bar for a yearly vote set by Walker's legislation or have chosen not to try.