By now, if you've been following the Wisconsin Uprising, you know that Governor Walker's claims of budget-balancing are baloney. You also know that his proposal guts the ability of public sector workers to bargain over terms of employment other than wages. You've also heard that his proposal would end union shop rules as Wisconsin knows it, deny unions the dues workers pay for representation, and force labor to run yearly re-certification efforts of the type never before heard of in the United States. In other words, Governor Walker's budget-balancing equation is to simply gut public sector unions. And that's the simple answer of why we're seeing labor and progressive uprisings we haven't seen since the high point of the anti-Iraq War movement.
But it's about more than that.
The battle in Wisconsin is about the heart and soul of labor. It's about an attempt by the extreme right to kill worker's rights dead in their tracks. It's the logical conclusion of an effort to discredit unions by pitting the unrepresented against the represented and to fight for "the taxpayer" by gutting the benefits and pay of the worker.
This is our PATCO moment.
When Ronald Reagan busted the air traffic controller's union, it sent shockwaves through the country and signaled the dawn of an era of union-busting. The legal and political industry employed by Corporate America to destroy labor followed signals from the President of the United States that it was tolerable, nay, acceptable for management to bust the union instead of bargaining with their workers. Reagan busted the air traffic controller's and Big Business followed suit.
Now the extreme right has come back to finish the job they started 30 years ago. Because while they've had a great deal of success in the private sector, they've struggled to cut the public sector. They can't outsource public sector jobs. They can't move the shop away. And they've run into the strong will of powerful and resilient unions like the AFT and AFSCME.
So now they've moved back to government to kill labor once and for all.
Mark these words; if we are successful in fending off this frontal assault then we will turn the tide in the battle against labor. We'll show the right that they will fail in their battle to capture government and quash labor. We'll show Big Business than the era of union busting is over. And we'll remind the Democratic Party that it's not just ok to stand up for labor, it's a winning strategy.
But if we lose in Wisconsin, then you can bet your bottom dollar that states across the country controlled by radical Republicans will follow suit and gut their public sector unions.
This is a line in the sand folks. As Tom Geoghegan once asked, what side are you on?