Wisconsin: It ain’t over till it’s over…

By Mike Andrew

"Madison is just the beginning!" AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told a union rally in Annapolis, Maryland, on March 14. "Like that old song goes, 'You ain't seen nothin’ yet!'"

The Annapolis rally was only one in a series of labor rallies reacting to stunning developments in Wisconsin.

Late in the night on March 9, Republicans in the state’s Senate cut out all fiscal provisions from Gov. Scott Walker’s so-called “budget repair bill,” thus freeing themselves from a constitutional requirement to have a 20-vote quorum.
They then voted 18-1 to strip public sector workers of their collective bargaining rights. Only one Republican voted No. All the senate’s Democrats were still boycotting the session.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called the dead-of-night legislative action a “coup d’etat.”

The next day, the state Assembly followed suit, and Walker signed the bill on March 11.

It was a month to the day since Walker introduced the “budget repair bill.”

That month had been filled by daily rallies at the state capitol in Madison, with crowds of workers and their allies sometimes topping 100,000.

Still more rallies followed, including a raucous and joyful “Welcome Home” rally on March 12 for the 14 Democratic senators who fled the state to deny Republicans their 20-vote quorum.

The AFL-CIO has called for a National Day of Action on April 4, the anniversary of the 1968 assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr King was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, were he’d gone to support the rights of city garbage workers.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, Judge Maryann Sumi stayed implementation of the new law on grounds that Republicans may have violated Wisconsin’s open meetings law.

Recall petitions have been filed for Republicans who voted for the Walker bill, and Republicans have also filed recall petitions for Democratic senators who left the state.

Legislation limiting collective bargaining rights has also passed the Ohio state senate, and Indiana’s legislature is considering a “right to work” bill.

The stakes of this fight are not hard to figure out.

With the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision lifting most caps on campaign spending, money has become even more “the mother’s milk of politics,” as Jesse Unruh used to say.

Of the top 10 contributors to the 2010 election campaigns, only four were unions. Of the four, three – AFT, NEA, and AFSCME – are public sector unions. The third – SEIU – also represents many public sector employees.

Cripple the unions and you deny people any organized vehicle to challenge the corporate political agenda. Period. Game over.

That’s why poll after poll – in Wisconsin, Ohio, and nationally – show that voters strongly disapprove of stripping workers’ collective bargaining rights.

Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on March 18, the AFL-CIO’s Trumka called for continuing the campaign to defend collective bargaining rights.

“Walker turned a moment into a movement…” he said.