On Monday Gov. Scott Walker signed into law the Republican-dominated Wisconsin legislature's so-called "right to work" bill. From an astute English major's standpoint, something interesting happened at that signing besides the signing itself. Walker suddenly veered
away from the right. Not the
political right, where he has for decades maintained and even solidified his views. Rather, Walker moved away from a
declared "right" and toward
allusional freedom.
This shift was the latest of many Walker political rewrites. He treated as his own confection a law he said just months ago wouldn't reach or get past his desk. The law is not -- as Republicans have insisted for years -- about worker "rights," a word that implies legal and ethical considerations. Nope, it's now, in the Walker lexicon, about "freedom." That word is pretty much a lofty, feel-good, means-anything nostrum; or here it may just be a no-see-um, as in small, blood-sucking bug.
I am for this essay ignoring the additional freedom that this law gives our business caste by forcibly limiting union resources. That also was the key feature in Walker's 2011 measure that basically gutted most public employee unions in the state. That law limited their resources greatly (unions at best couldn't even "bargain" for a raise beyond the inflation rate) and made it in other ways more costly for them to operate (the law also exempted public safety unions that supported Walker -- there's that no-see-um bug, again).
Walker signed this new law in the Milwaukee suburb of Brown Deer at Badger Meter Inc., a manufacturing firm that has off-shored a considerable number of its job positions. Richard Meeusen, president, chief executive and chairman of the firm, said that thanks to the law he'll now create 30 to 50 jobs here in the US and implied they'd be at union contract wages "assuming the employees we hire want to join the union,” -- a complete non sequitur if you apply cause-and-effect logic. Another firm against the new law later said it would as a result of enactment move jobs to neighboring Minnesota. Whoops! Now that's what you call your freedom, right there.
Like other boiler-plate "right to work" laws, this one makes it a misdemeanor for any Wisconsin business or private-sector union representing employees of that business to negotiate a labor contract that requires all members of the bargaining unit to contribute to the union's bargaining costs. This will as it has in other "right to work" states create a new class of union-shop workers who'll get a free ride by gaining the benefits negotiated by the union while avoiding the responsibilities of sharing in the cost of the effort.
That sickening, sucking sound you hear is current wage and benefit levels going down the drain as some union members turn into opportunistic individualists. Or, as Walker -- overheard talking to a billionaire business supporter -- described the intent behind the law several years ago: "Divide and conquer."
It is a rare moment when Republicans actually mandate freeloading, other, that is, than freeloading by big business or the elite one percenters. But while the Wisconsin GOP just created a potential new blue-collar class of working freeloaders, that's not the party's focus, here. Rather, this law is just one more GOP tactic to weaken labor unions, which Republicans perceive not as voluntary worker organizations with an all-for-one, self-help mission, supervised elections and other traits of a true democracy, but rather as, simply, an opposing power base. Businesses rule! Employees shut up and get back to work!
In any event, instead of celebrating Wisconsin's dumb new law on the myopic basis that it creates a new "right" for workers, Walker sat surrounded by state GOP lawmakers (mostly aging, overweight white guys in suits) at a desk adorned with a Republican confection common since the Reagan days: a large sign, this time emblazoned with the legend, "Freedom to Work."
And all week since then, Walker has been stumping on "his" freedom to work bill. And he now indeed owns it. Because he took that legislation, yanked the word "right" from the bill's informal title and replaced it with "freedom" Wow. So bold; so innovative! What a guy! Pretzel-dential material for sure.
However, Walker's shift in rhetoric may be good news for progressives, because it suggests that Republicans including Walker know he just signed an unpopular law of a type likely to get even more unpopular among voters and workers as negative effects kick in.
Why Walker's switch from "right" to "freedom"? Several distinct possibilities:
1. "Right to work" isn't really polling that well for Republicans these days. Progressives have mounted strong, fact-based campaigns against the GOP meme that such laws, now in effect in half the states, not only protect individual worker rights but help raise wages.
As ably documented here at DailyKos and other institutions that value reality, such laws do exactly the opposite. Which is why, in polling, majorities of American citizens unionized or not increasingly are smelling the coffee and opposing this type of law. Thus Team Walker may have decided to distance its guy from the word "right" and thus the entire phrase "right to work," seeking to make this "me too" cookie-cutter law sound special. Walker does, after all, like to feel and look special.
2. Beyond sheer facts, progressive activists have made rhetorical mincemeat of the phrase "right to work," deploying amusing and devastating alternatives, such as "right to work for less" and (my own, latest contribution) "right to twerk." The original phrase now increasingly serves just to remind voters and workers of the alternate phrases that are more descriptively accurate and amusing. Again, Team Walker may have decided to put some space between its guy and a catch phrase that, for presidential campaign purposes, is now problematic.
Renaming tired ideas to make them seem new is an old political tactic. Another Wisconsin Republican governor, Tommy Thompson, renamed the state's welfare reform bill "Wisconsin Works." In today's more loosey-goosey political climate, that might have become "Wisconsin Freedom!"
3. "Freedom" doesn't have the increasingly unfortunate and unintended connotation that "right" has, in the context of right-wing politics, which polling shows is decreasing in public popularity (Walker himself right now only garners 43% approval in polling of Wisconsin residents, a noticeable decline since his fall re-election).
4. "Freedom" might to Walker be a way to elevate the entire policy conversation to the international spectrum. That's something the presidential hopeful has strained to focus upon in the past few months as he fights the suggestion that he has no foreign-policy insights or experience worth mentioning. Except perhaps for "boots on the ground" and "terrorists washing up on our shores."
In modern conservatism, "freedom" is a placeholder phrase meaning nothing but lending effective emotional weight to even the most outrageous policy pronouncements, like say bombing Iran. Because, hey, freedom! How can you argue with that? When you've said freedom, according to Republicans, you've said it all. Whatever it is you didn't actually say, that is.
It's a wonder Walker didn't call his re-named "right to work" law the "Freedom Fries to work" law. Heck, about the only lunch that an increasing number of blue-collar laborers can afford these days are the value fries from Mickey D's or Burger Regent.
Or maybe he could try this: The Free-dumb (or Fee-dumb) to Lurk Law.
Meanwhile, bending campaign laws and using taxpayer resources to flit across the US and overseas, campaigning for president in his unannounced campaign for president, Walker is the epitome of his own rhetoric. Governor, you are now free to get up and move about the country. Enjoy that while it lasts.