Wisconsin: a turning point

Submitted by Matthew on 2 March, 2011 - 12:39

The corporations, and the politicians in their service, have launched what they hope will be a decisive offensive against America’s unions.

In the past weeks, hundreds of bills have been introduced seeking to weaken, if not to effectively ban, unions in virtually all fifty states, facilitated by the corporate media’s message about states going broke because of government workers’ wages, pensions and benefits.

In the living experience of the American working class, we have not confronted such a threat. It isn’t as if these types of attacks are new; what’s different is their scale and their real possibility of success. And public employees are fighting back, nowhere so dramatically as in Madison, Wisconsin.

The epicenter of this struggle is Wisconsin where through Governor Walker’s “budget repair bill”, Walker would limit collective bargaining to wages (not exceeding the rise in the cost of living), end payroll deduction of dues, compel unions to hold votes each year to recertify their status as bargaining units, and impose higher employee contributions for pensions and healthcare, which, if the bill passes, cannot be negotiated.

This bill is a union-buster, but it’s more than that: it would slash Medicaid and BadgerCare, the health care program for kids in low-income families, massively cut public education and public services, affecting union and non-union workers alike. The full budget is anticipated to be even worse than this bill.

The stakes in Walker’s war on labor are clear. If he wins, he’ll set an example for Republican governors and legislatures out to break public-sector unions. He’ll also make it easier for Democratic governors to appear more reasonable as they press their demands that public sector workers suffer cuts in wages, pensions and jobs. The difference is that Democrats will leave unions mostly intact — they want labor’s fundraising and get-out-the-vote operations at election time.

That this is a strategic, ideologically driven attack is demonstrated by the reality that while many states face real budget problems, those in Wisconsin were manufactured by Walker. Walker cut business taxes, threw state funds at special interests, and turned a $121 million budget surplus into a $137 million deficit. Two-thirds of corporations in Wisconsin paid no taxes at all last year.

Walker won the election in 2010 with Tea Party backing and funds supplied by the billionaire Koch brothers, who are also major funders of the Tea Party movement.

While the attack and resistance is sharpest in Wisconsin, we are facing a nationwide escalating corporate offensive — not helped by President Obama calling for a freeze on federal workers’ pay. Severe cuts in public jobs and services have become standard fare across the country. Employers, the two political parties, and governments at all levels have decided that the time has come to move against what is the last bulwark of American unionism: the public employee unions.

The attack on public sector workers, often focused on teachers, is long standing. Teacher tenure is being targeted in five states. And in Providence, Rhode Island, the school board recently voted to send notice of termination to every single teacher.

Policymakers are proposing legislation that would effectively let states declare bankruptcy. This would let them rip up contracts with current public sector employees and walk away from their pension fund obligations.

Right-to-work legislation has been filed in 12 states; this is in addition to the 22 that already have such laws on the books. Such legislation makes union shop or agency fee agreements illegal even when a majority of workers vote for them. Practically speaking, right-to-work laws make building and maintaining a strong union very difficult, which in turn makes it harder to organize. The average worker in a right-to-work state earns over $5,000 less than workers in other states. Twenty-one percent more people lack health insurance.

We expect 12 more states to file bills or initiatives banning the collection of union monies for politics. In twenty states there is legislation expected to ban Project Labor Agreements (measures which facilitate negotiating union standards for construction jobs with public financing).

Simply put, the employers are exploiting the fiscal crises in 44 states to go after what is left of organized labor — public workers’ unions. The overall union membership rate in America has declined to 11.9%, with union density in the private sector at just 6.9%. The public sector, with union density at 36.2%, is labor’s last stronghold.

An Inspiring Working Class Response

In the face of this aggressive anti-worker offensive, teachers, janitors, clerks, plumbers, steelworkers, teamsters and many more have stood together and pushed union leaders and politicians where they weren’t willing to go.

Mass demonstrations, sit-ins and civil disobedience have so far prevented Governor Walker from muscling through a bill that would undermine public sector workers’ basic union rights. In Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and, above all, in Wisconsin, public employees demonstrated, called in “sick”, and stormed their respective state legislatures in opposition to proposed laws. Madison schools were closed for four days with their sick-strikes. Demonstrators began occupying the Capitol building on 15 February, and at this writing have remained there for two weeks. The firefighters were among the union workers who have taken turns occupying the Capitol through the night, with the knowledge that it would be harder for police to throw out the student supporters if the firefighters are also sleeping in. Even the Wisconsin Professional Police Association took the unprecedented step of calling on members to come sleep in the Capitol.

Last Saturday, over 100,000 people rallied in Madison in the largest demonstration Madison has seen in 40 years. The response by private sector unions has been excellent, with no apparent split between private and public sectors. The favorite chant was, “This is what democracy looks like!” — the slogan of the 1990s global justice movement.

This movement is not confined to the Midwest as Wisconsin workers are being reinforced by supporters coming from all around the country. On 26 February tens of thousands of people marched in solidarity protests in more than 65 cities to support the workers’ resistance in Wisconsin.

On Sunday night, hundreds of demonstrators defied police orders and slept inside the State Capitol building in defiance of Walker’s order to leave. The protesters couldn’t be dismissed as excitable students — the occupiers were multi-generational and included union firefighters, electricians and teachers, as well as students. Capitol police decided not to enforce Walker’s edict after hundreds of labor activists, students and supporters insisted on staying put.

Despite the splendid show of union power and broad community support, labor leaders have already agreed to Walker’s demands for higher employee contributions on health care and pensions — as long as he agrees to maintain collective bargaining and allow the collection of dues that sustain the union apparatus.

Officials excuse their offer by saying that their polls indicate strong public support for preserving collective bargaining, but not on economic issues. That contradiction has rankled activists, who are frustrated that officials haven’t fully challenged Walker’s claim that workers must make sacrifices to help close state budget deficits.

Yet, the Republicans have no interest in compromising — Governor Walker has said that he will not budge, and that’s how you win, by breaking the other side like Reagan did to PATCO! Hearing Walker say that is strengthening the resolve of rank and file workers and supporters to fight the whole bill. A broad unity is building to oppose Walker’s other attacks: from wage, health and pension cuts to the attacks on public health, the environment, transportation, affirmative action, reproductive rights, and sexual orientation.

More militant unions, like National Nurses United (NNU) and the South Central Federation of Labor, are arguing for rejecting any more concessions for workers. According to Rose Ann DeMoro, NNU executive director, the first lesson to be taken from Wisconsin is that: “Working people — with our many allies, students, seniors, women’s organizations, and more — are inspired and ready to fight… Working people did not create the recession or the budgetary crisis facing Washington or state or local governments, and there can be no more concessions, period.”

A transformative moment?

In Wisconsin, the old concept of labor solidarity, that “an injury to one is an injury to all,” has been reborn. Some of the unions increasingly see themselves as fighting on behalf of the entire working class. And nonunion workers, professionals, and students are coming to understand that the organized working class has the power to hold the line against employers and politicians who are determined to carry out a permanent and deep cuts in public services, education and the standard of living of working people.

We are seeing signs of the birth of a real labor movement where public sector unions join together with private sector unions, manual with intellectual labor. This is different from traditional parochial business union practices where unions largely ignore other unions and often neglect the issues of the labor movement as a whole, to say nothing of broader working class issues.

The new labor movement that is arising is from the beginning a political movement. It may lead to political confrontation. It must focus on the political and programmatic issues usually take up by political parties: the right of workers to bargaining collectively, state budget priorities, and the tax system which funds the budget. This has tremendous implications for the traditional relations between organized labor and the Democratic Party, especially since the Democrats, from Barack Obama to state governors, are also demanding that public employees give up jobs, wages and benefits.

Today the labor movement is at a turning point. When large numbers of workers go into motion, political consciousness grows and changes rapidly. Many of those demonstrating have never before participated in a strike or a political event. Some would still characterize themselves as conservatives. Yet workers who today simply fight to defend union rights will, if we succeed in resisting the attempt to destroy our unions, go on to fight to expand not only our rights, but to improve our working conditions and standard of living. Most importantly, we will fight to expand our power.

A revitalized labor movement will challenge the old political relationship between the unions and the Democratic Party. With the Democrats lowering taxes on the rich, cutting budgets, and laying off public employees, we may be in for the kind of confrontation between workers and a pro-business Democratic party that can produce a potent political alternative. Unions will fight to force the Democratic Party to give up its conservative budget, tax and labor policies, and failing in that, may finally seek another vehicle. Whether we will develop the vision and build the power to put forward a national political alternative remains to be seen.

The right wing offensive and the massive union led resistance in Wisconsin and beyond are bringing the ideas and experience of class politics and power into working class life on a scale we haven’t seen in the US for over 35 years.

We see this in the extraordinary example of the South Central Federation of Labor in Wisconsin, which represents 45,000 workers in 97 affiliated branch unions, raising the idea of a state general strike if the law passes. The last time we saw this was in 1946.

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